Eric Rochow: So, here we are in a giant field of garlic. This is a local group, who would certainly grow garlic in town as a philanthropic effort, really they want to grow garlic, have a garlic festival and raise money for the town, raise money for the fire department, for the paramedics, for the little league teams, that kind of things. So I think it’s really kind of a neat and noble effort, it is kind of a lot of work, it’s all volunteer, but what they’re doing is nice, I like it. What is happening today is they are harvesting the scapes of garlic, garlic scapes they’re called. The scape is the flower of the garlic plant, generally what you do is you cut the scape off because what you want to do is send more energy into the bowl because you want to grow big bulbs because you want the big garlic, as it taste great.
But you can also eat the scape, it’s like a garlicky scallion and what they’re doing here today is they are harvesting all the scapes, they’re going to make a garlic scape butter and they are also going to wholesale the scapes to a couple of local stores. So, you can either eat them raw, you can cut them in a salad, what I like to do is, I put a little olive oil on them and you can grill them on a grill. They are just like a roasted or grilled scallion, they taste great. So, we’ll make some of those later on, but first let’s go, watch these guys, pick some scapes. So Gay, could I have the five-second-elevator speech?
Male Speaker: On the garlic?
Eric Rochow: Yeah.
Male Speaker: It’s a community effort; it’s very hard to find people to help weed with you. Can we give them a little golf clap?
Eric Rochow: So it’s pretty easy to harvest scapes, you just break them off, pretty simple. It’s kind of mild and then it hits the back of your threat, put these may be in a salad or grilled. So, when you are harvesting your scapes, you want to leave a couple of scapes on for each different variety of garlic that you’ve planted. So, these guys like this, just leave a couple of them on because what happens is, when the garlic is ready to be harvested the scape actually uncurls and stand straight up and when it stands straight up like this, it means it’s ready to harvest.
So, how do you get that garlic smell off your hands after you’ve pulled out the scapes, you have cut garlic or you have done something with garlic? I’ve seen these magic bars in these catalogs listed where you can buy this magic soap bar and it’ll take all the garlic smell off, but it’s basically a bar of stainless steel, so what you do is, you just take anything that’s stainless steel, like this pastry chopper or a big spoon or a laido or anything that’s stainless steel; run the water, so you just rub your hands under it and away goes the garlic smell. I don’t know what happens, I don’t know some kind of ion transfer or subatomic something or other, but really that’s for someone else. That works pretty good.
So, I found the best way to cook scapes is basically just grill them on a grill or you can use a propane grill or a charcoal grill, I’m more parse with the charcoal, I think it burns hotter. I just use a regular chimney starter like this is basically put a half a piece of paper underneath here, crinkled up, not real tight, sometimes you can do one sheet, sometimes two sheets, half sheet I start with this then see how it goes. The charcoal on here, put it down and start it up. Sometimes the piece of paper peers up before the charcoal is caught, so just lift it up, slam another piece underneath there, put it down and light it again, being very careful of course. But after a couple of minutes, basically heat rising and it gets all flames crop through here and then you got fire.
Hey, hey. So, it’s really pretty simple, you just basically take some olive oil, put them in your scapes like this, just a couple of tablespoons like that and just toss it a little bit, nothing fancy as there is seasoning on here. And then literally, just place this right on the grill. This is a lot of fun because we had this for dinner last night and I put them down on a plate and the people we had over for dinner had no idea what these things were and then they tried them and they were immediately just amazed, and they taste great.
They are pretty sharp tasting when they are raw, but you put them on the grill like this Ouh! That’s hot. I just -- they are just a lot of fun at these round curly kind of things that people have never really seen before and yeah it really taste great. So, these are ready, they are kind of like, you know, toasty on both sides, they are not to be perfect at all. Hey, come, oh, oh, oh. So, the key to this is some salt and then -- these are kind of hot. I’ll just find when this is not too hot. They are great. And people who know what this is, go to the store and ask for garlic scapes or better grow garlic in your yard and then harvest these, that’s amazing, I bet these are, oh, it’s hot.
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