WTF do I do with this: garlic scape edition

First, we probably need to address the question of "WTF is a garlic scape". Garlic scapes look like this:

Oooh, snakey! 

They're the stems that a bulb of garlic sends up out of the dirt as it grows. If they were left alone, they would eventually flower and die off, but of course we don't leave them alone because: HUMANS. Instead, we cut them off before they have a chance to flower because, let's face it, pushing up stems and making flowers is hard fucking work and takes a lot of energy. Energy that could instead be used to grow nice fat cloves of garlic underground! The garlic bulb will still grow if you don't whack off the scapes (ooh, phrasing...), but it will be a lot smaller and not as tasty, so that's not how we do it. OFF WITH YER SCAPES!

By the way, see those weird bulbous lighter-green things part-way up the scapes? Those are actually the beginnings of the flowers. They look like this inside:

It looks like one of those tree people spirit things at the end of The Dark Crystal. Kind of. If you squint. And are me.

You know...just in case you wondered.

Anyway.

So, in a not so shocking turn of events, garlic scapes taste...garlicky. They're not as pungent as garlic cloves, but they're still pretty damn garlicky and you can use them in place of cloves of garlic for just about anything - stir-fry, salads, sauces - just remember that because they're not as strong as regular garlic, it will take more of them to achieve an equivalent level of garlicky-ness. You can also grill them, pickle them, use them to keep vampires away (note: theory not tested, I cannot be held liable for any vampire related damage you may sustain)...all kinds of fun stuff.

One of the most popular ways to use garlic scapes is to make pesto. I like regular basil pesto, so I figured hey, why not, let's try garlic scape pesto. I took some pictures during the process so you can laugh at my ineptitude. I'm kind like that.

The first thing you have to do is wash and trim the scapes. I actually forgot to wash mine because I'm a bonehead, so if I die of dysentery or something later on tonight you'll know why. Anyway - so once you've theoretically washed the scapes, you want to trim off just below the bulbous flower bud part (which is technically edible but pretty stringy) and also a little bit at the other end if it seems dried out. My scapes sat in the fridge in a plastic bag for over a week with very little deterioration whatsoever, but conventional internet wisdom seems to be that you should use them within a week as they will start to go mushy and lose their flavor.

So curly and fun.

Next, you want to chop them. They're eventually going to go into your food processor or blender so you can probably get away with just a rough chop, but if you know your food-pro struggles with bigger pieces, obviously cut them smaller.

Now they just kind of look like green beans.

At this point, it's time to start gathering other shit you need for pesto-making. I don't know about you, but I can't damn well afford pine nuts these days, so I said screw it and decided to use pistachios instead. Yes, they're a pain in the ass if you can't find (or afford) shelled ones, but sacrifices must be made. I actually ended up liking the taste of the pistachios in the pesto MORE than pine nuts, for what it's worth. Pistachio companies, feel free to sponsor me if you're reading this!

I have never wished for stronger thumbnails so hard in my life as I did for the 20 minutes these took me to shell.

You're also going to need Parmesan cheese (if you like it, anyway - feel free to omit or substitute), extra virgin olive oil (this is where extra virgin really matters - use the good stuff!), and some kosher or sea salt.

Oh, and a food processor or blender. Or a mortar and pestle if you're hardcore, in which case I bow to not only your commitment, but your forearm strength as well.

I can't really wring too many fun-to-caption steps out of pesto making, folks. You just dump everything except the oil into the food-pro and let fly until it's all ground up, then slowly add the oil in, either while the food-pro is running, or you can stop it every couple seconds and drizzle more oil in. Fun fact: I actually started out dumping everything into my blender, thinking that it was going to do a better job of grinding everything up, but had to make a mid-course correction and switch to the food-pro when I still had inch-long pieces of scape knocking around after three solid minutes of blending. I am much more willing to do things like that now that I have a dishwasher. Weird how that works.

Anyway, you'll eventually end up with something that looks like pesto:

So green. Very garlic. Wow.

I won't lie...it's not like basil pesto. It's definitely good in that garlicky nutty cheesy fatty way and I wouldn't kick it out of bed, but don't go into this thinking it's going to be the same as the basil version because it will make you sad and I don't want you to be sad.

The four zucchini that I got in this week's CSA share were pretty much guaranteed to be made into zoodles eventually so I figured, why not toss them with some of my newly-made scape pesto?

Things got a little juicy. Ohh, err.

The white part is cod filet that I baked for 15 minutes at 325 degrees. Don't knock the pesto-fish combination until you've tried it - it's actually really tasty.


Here's a recipe for the pesto with actual measurements, if that's how you roll:

Garlic Scape Pesto

10-12 trimmed and chopped garlic scapes
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup shelled UNSALTED pistachios
kosher or sea salt and pepper to taste

- Put everything into a food processor except the olive oil. Process until uniformly ground up. Slowly add olive oil a little at a time, processing until incorporated. BOOM. Done.

WTF do I do with this: kohlrabi edition

Friends, I am back! We've had a very busy spring around Chez One Girl - moving apartments is some majorly time-consuming shit. Thankfully, we're all settled into the new Chez O.G. now and really enjoying it. We're in a very pretty spot with lots of nice quiet road for walking the our small canine overlord, plus there's woods and a brook in our back yard so I can go out and get my hippy Earth Mama thing on if I want...assuming I douse myself with plenty of bug spray, anyway. I'm just never going to be crunchy enough to be ok with bugs, and that's all there is to it. Fuck bugs. Not even sorry.

Anywho.

So, one of the super exciting things in my little world this spring has been participating in my first-ever CSA program! We live in rural Vermont and there are lots of farm stands around, but I liked the idea of a CSA in terms of basically being forced to use new and different veggies every week, rather than just going to the farmer's market and buying the same thing week after week. I looked into a few different local CSA options and ended up deciding to go with Root 5 Farm - partially because they offer a pay-by-the-month option (which is way easier for me than coming up with a big wedge of money all in one go), and partially because they're the closest farm to us - they're literally three driveways up from the house I grew up in, and just a couple miles from where we live now. In other words, they're as local as it gets!

We're a month into the CSA now and I'm a total convert. I love, love, love it. We've had everything from purple potatoes to a giant bag of storage carrots to arugula, pea shoots, dill, scallions, lettuces, chard, plus all kinds of other stuff...and it's only June! We get a weekly share until December! By the time the CSA is done, I'm going to be SO fucking spoiled veg-wise. I'm totally going to spend all winter grumbling about the sucky produce at the local grocery store, I know it.

In last week's and this week's share, there was an extra special happy-making prize that made me dance with glee: kohlrabi. Kohlrabi is a totally weird looking cat:

This is not my picture. Credit to www.georgeweigel.net

You can't quite see in the picture because it's kind of mounded up with dirt, but there's a stalk down at the bottom that the kohlrabi grows on, and it grows up into these weird purple or green balls with crazy random leaves shooting up from them. It's a brassica, related to broccoli, kale, etc, but it usually tastes much milder. It also has a long shelf-life - once the greens are removed, the bulb will easily keep in your crisper drawer for a couple of weeks. It will actually keep much longer, but the longer it's stored, the more tendency it has to get kind of woody and dried out.

Kohlrabi looks pretty intimidating but seriously, friends...it's well worth your time. It's very versatile - you can do everything from grate it and make it into fritters, to cube it up and roast it, to throw it into curry, to just eat it raw. It's also a great two-fer veggie, because the greens are just as edible as the bulb. It's also packed with vitamin C, B6, and potassium, along with the cancer-preventing indoles that brassicas are known for.

One of my favorite ways to prepare kohlrabi is to grill it. Seeing as how Mom and Pop O.G. were so kind as to give me and Hubs a brand spankin' new grill as a housewarming gift, I thought perhaps I'd make y'all a little photo odyssey of how I prep and grill kohlrabi.

So, here goes!

First things first: you're going to need a good sharp paring knife. Cut off the greens right up where the leaves start. You can throw them away if you want, but you'd be wasting a good thing, believe me. If you want to keep them and deal with them another day, all you have to do is stash them in a ziplock bag with a damp paper towel. They'll easily keep at least a week.

Once you've cut the leaves off, you'll want to cut the stems off as close to the bulb as possible. If you pull down on the stems, you can sometimes partially peel the bulb. Once you've cut the stems off, you'll have something like this:

Sorry for the blurry. Sometimes my phone pictures come out great, sometimes...not so much. 

 

Peeling the bulb is the most complicated part of dealing with kohlrabi...and it's seriously not that complicated. The bulb has a thin outer skin (the purple or green layer), and then a thin kind of woody layer under that:

See how right under the purple layer there's a striated layer that kind of looks like an onion layer? That needs to go.

You'll be able to see the woody layer under the skin, and you can just pare it right off. For that matter, you CAN just leave it on there...it's not going to do anything terrible to you. It's just not a texture most people really dig. But hey...I don't judge.

Once you've peeled your kohlrabi, you'll have juicy white balls (yes I do that on purpose. I am secretly 12), all ready for cooking. At this point you want to slice them up - I do mine about a quarter inch thick, give or take. I usually lose at least a slice or two to snacking during the slicing process as well:

Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's ADHD! It's...it's definitely ADHD...

Now, you may have noticed at the start that I had one big kohlrabi, and one little one. The little one was like golf ball sized, so the slices of that one were going to be too small to try and cook directly on the grill (for me, anyway. I'm not super dexterous with the tongs. Or anything else for that matter, really). For these smaller slices, I decided to cook them in a foil packet on the grill instead. I just drizzled the slices with a little olive oil, added a little kosher salt, and folded the foil over to make a packet. Heavy-duty foil works better for this, but I didn't have any, so I chanced it with regular and no harm befell me OR the kohlrabi.

Here's my packet, along with the oiled and salted slices of the bigger bulb on the grill, plus bonus pork chops, which I flipped after about five minutes over medium heat:

Inch-thick pork chops for the win!

It's hard to see it there, but the foil packet is puffed up with steam from the kohlrabi cooking, which is a good thing. Also, my crappy phone picture doesn't do the browning on the slices justice. They were less black-on-white and more golden-brown-delicious, trust me.

The kohlrabi is done when it's tender. The longer you cook it, the more tender it will get - you can actually cook it to the point where you can mash it, if you so desire...but that wasn't what I was going for this time. I ended up cooking mine for about 8 minutes total, and that was plenty for both the slices in the packet and the ones directly on the grill.

The ones in the packet looked like this when they were done:

While I let my grilled chops rest, I steam-sauteed the rinsed and chopped kohlrabi leaves (along with a handful of salad turnip greens I had hanging around) with some grated garlic. Keep in mind that the bigger the leaves, the tougher the center stem will be and the longer it will take to break down during cooking. If you're planning on a quick cooking method like steaming or sauteeing, you probably want to slice the center stems out beforehand, like you'd do with collards or kale. Also, don't forget to salt your greens. Please, oh please. It makes a world of difference taste-wise.

Here's my finished plate:

I know this post is about kohlrabi, but come on. Look how sexy that pork chop is. Unf.

So, there you go - two ways to grill kohlrabi, and plenty of reasons why you shouldn't be skeered of it even though it kind of looks like some sort of alien kale hybrid thing. Trying new things is fun! Don't be intimidated by vegetables that look like they're going to be a lot of work to prepare - most of the time they're not nearly as much of an ass-ache as you're imagining them to be, and who knows what kind of deliciousness you might be missing just in the name of being lazy!

As always, feel free to comment or email any questions, and you can also find me on Facebook and Instagram (warning: the Instagram is my personal account and also has lots of nerdy selfies, crafting pictures, and pictures of the tiny canine overlord). I'd love to hear from you about your kohlrabi experiences, what your favorite weird-looking veggies are, what types of things you like to grill, what your favorite color is...talk to me!