Carl‘s got the greenest thumb this side of the East River. Our basil plantings are out of control. And I am grateful for it. If I manage to get my shit together and make a megabatch for the freezer, winter will = pesto too.
Our fridge is full to bursting, what with the CSA and four people constantly “picking up something I found at the Greenmarket” several times a week. But Carl is on a sauce rampage tonight and has turned a quarter of the fridge’s contents into garlic scape dip (using butter beans instead of cannellini), cilantro chutney, and salsa verde (a condiment I could put on anything and everything, especially headcheese. And boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, poached chicken…).
God, I love summer.
Fat is flavor 
it’s funny you mention garlic scapes b/c andy and i just picked some up at the farmer’s market in town. andy read that they’re used in korean cooking, and sure enough when i asked my mom about them she said she loved them. she likes to stir-fry them by themselves or w/ tofu and you can also put them w/ kimchi for extra garlic goodness. i’m making her cook me some next time i go home.
by garlic scapes do you mean jiu-tsai? they are also pretty good chopped and scrambled into eggs. i got some seeds from the store this weekend, so we’ll see if it grows indoors. I was actually trying to look for plain old chives but couldn’t find any.
Nope. Jiu cai are garlic chives, garlic scapes are the shoots that grow out of hardneck garlic heads (I think the center of a bulb is what remains after the scape is cut away and the garlic heads are dried). Scapes taste straight-up garlicky, while garlic chives have a grassy quality to them.
I’m fairly certain chives are fairly difficult to grow from seed. Though I might be thinking of something else.
If you put a bulb of garlic in a bowl of water, and use the shoots that come out, is that the equivalent of a scape? I have a lot of garlic lying around, and the same trick with onions provides a nice batch of green onions.. maybe i should try with garlic.