The Great Garlic Scape

If garlic were art, it would be a triptych, deserving of a place in the most holy of culinary shrines. Garlic gives of itself thrice in a single season. In May, when the young garlic plants pop up, we're treated to an aromatic garlicky scallion called spring or green garlic （青蒜 qīngsuàn）, wonderful in eggs and soups and pastas. In the fall, the garlic itself is ready to harvest, to be stored hanging in the basement throughout the winter, with the perennial hope it will last until the following fall harvest. But in between these two deliveries, we have the lesser-known, and some might even say lowly, garlic scape (蒜苔suàntái, 蒜芯 suànxīn, 蒜苗 suànmiáo, or 蒜毫儿 suànháor, depending on where one is in China). My first experience with garlic scapes came in Beijing in the fall of 1988 when I was attending Peking University . Back then, I was a carnivore, and one of my favorite Sichuan dishes was 鱼香肉丝 yúxiāng ròusī (shredded pork in garlic sauce). Usually the dish is served with a green vegetable such as 空心菜 kōngxīncài (water spinach), 芹菜 qíncài (celery) or 莴笋 wōsǔn (celtuce, also called stem lettuce, celery lettuce, asparagus lettuce Wikipedia). However, our favorite place to eat, the Restaurant Number 5 at the Friendship Hotel, 20 minutes from our dorm by bike, used garlic scapes whenever they were in season. And these babies will last for months in the fridge, so they were available for at least half the year.

A fairly large and robust garlic crop this year. I've raved about this wonderful Italian variety in previous blog posts.

The scapes are actually the flower of the garlic plant. As such, it pays to remove them when they're still young and tender as the plant can then concentrate its energy in developing large bulbs and the 5-6 big cloves this variety is known for.

I think they're king of cute, like a pig's tail.

Yikes. This is but one third of the harvest. I better get stir frying. Perhaps to make my go-to replacement for 鱼香肉丝, 鱼香茄子 yúxiāng qiézi, which replaces the pork with eggplant. Quite delicious.