Carrie and me really went into a very happy state of emotion last week when we received the best news that our all time favorite product, Garlic Scape Pickle has been nominated for this year’s prestigious Good Food Award in the pickle category. Garlic Scape Pickle was one of many products which the members of the award committee blindly tasted, I’d certainly love to blind taste test one of these crunchy little scapers!
We would like to share the award committee jury’s observations about Garlic Scape Pickle (so far, they are Anonymous to us!).
— Excellent flavor, nice spice balance. The texture is good. Complexity. Some pieces are a bit woody, but overall like the bias cut chop and texture.
— I love this! Great flavor, excellent complexity, perfect balance between earthiness, sweetness and acidity. Delightful! Novel, interesting and fun.
— Good flavor, nice creeper spice. Rough chop is unusual but I'm not mad at it. Unusual and nice.
This gives us an opportunity to share with you the story of the birth of this wonderful food, Garlic Scape Pickle.
The Story of Garlic Scape
The first time I saw a Garlic garden in my American life was in Catskill, July 2014, a few weeks after my arrival from India. It was the hard neck variety of garlic, bulbs shoot their stems into long tender beans like curly-ish bodies holding flowers and seeds, a magical beauty. It was called Garlic Scape, Carrie introduced it to me, for which I ate quite a number and fell in love with that amazingly pungent soft flesh. At the first sight and touch, I felt something deep for it and it has stayed with me forever since. I love Garlic scape which brings the joy of sun and spring.
The garden was cultivated by our friends Jared and Portia, who gave us the flowers to wear during our wedding ceremony in early spring 2015. In the late Fall of the same year, they blessed us with some Garlic cloves to grow in our new garden. It was the first time experience in life for me and Carrie, to grow Garlic by ourselves from scratch. We built a small patch of soil beds overlooking the Mother Goddess Atina standing on the foothills of majestic Manitou mountains. We prayed with many friends who came to help us to put the cloves on the ground.
In the spring 2016, our Garlic bulbs started shooting out the scapes. It was incredible experience to watch the plant grow with many leaves and stem shoot out from the center. The scapes like snakes, grow a foot straight and start curling to another half a foot or so and ends as a circular base of flower with many mini garlic bulb seeds. But the unfortunate part of this beauty is that if we allow it grow, the garlic cloves left to grow under the ground will have to share the plant energy and remain small. So we had to cut it. It was a good harvest of scapes from our garden.
We did not know what to do with them. We asked many friends and farmers around and most of them said they cook with it meat or make pesto. There are not many recipes available around in our search. I ate so much. Mountains of Scapes everywhere in our house, and, wherever we went. Many farmers cut and trample them to the side of the garlic patch, or throw them in as compost. Just for a few weeks they sell in the markets, but we have heard nothing of them selling internationally - these are strictly available locally, with a short time frame. A seasonal food.
For a Garlic farmer, the yield comes from the healthy big cloves under the soil. For the plant to give full maturity for the cloves below the soil, removal of scapes are necessary. This is an additional labor expense on the producer, which makes Garlic farming a less viable option compared to growers in other parts of the country/ world. The Garlic scapes are not consumed in large quantities, unlike Garlic cloves which are a major food / health item. The perishable nature of garlic scapes demands large storage space and refrigeration electricity, additional costs on the producer.
The Scape, a beauty thrown as compost, a waste in business calculation.
This is the context which was available for Carrie and me to create our favorite ferment, The Garlic Scape Pickle.
Garlic scape when it is cut early before it flowers and stem become hard, it is still juicy and we felt we could try our lacto-fermentation. The idea of naturally preserving a discarded vegetable excited us. We sliced the long curly scapes into small sizes, mix with salt and fermented them in ceramic jars. No water added and we only use vinegar to clean surfaces. We opened the vessel after three weeks and spice them with a mixture of freshly ground fenugreek, mustard, asafoetida and chili pepper powder. From our experience we knew that this method would control acidity formation, we then hot bathed the filled jars in boiling water.
When we opened the pickle jar after a week it tasted so freshly great. As one of first customers, and so many since, said “ I love it and used it in everything!” We felt happy that the combination Garlic Scape and spices also provides many valuable minerals, vitamins and other useful beneficial components for the user..
Our Garlic Scape Pickle is shelf stable for a minimum of three years and as the pickle matures it gets even more delicious! Sometime we open our vintage collection of matured ferments. Garlic scape is something that changes its taste, so pleasingly fresh, with time..
Over the past three years we have developed thousands of devoted customers for the product.
In the last three years we have preserved several metric tonnes of Scapes into value added products, which otherwise would have gone to waste. Our initiative helped many local farmers and they are looking to us to expand and contributed significantly to the local economy.
This year, we collaborated with our friends at Burlap and Barrel, and used their spicy Bird’s Eye Chili in our spice combination, it gives it just the right, well rounded kick - a great Garlic Scape pickle!.
Garlic scapes have most benefits as Garlic cloves.
Check out our Next post on the super powerful benefits of Garlic!
Stay warm and wishing you a healthy winter with Garlic, the natural Immunity booster.
Suresh and Carrie
