Lately I’ve been experimenting with dehydration, and it occurred to me that I object to the mucousy quality of cooked onion scapes and dehydration often solves such problems. So I put a large bunch of scapes in my dehydrator to see what happened.
Lesson learned: they really are juicy inside, and in future I will split them in half lengthwise before dehydrating, because it took about twice as long as it should have to dry them thoroughly. The bulbous tops should also be cut off at the time of initial preparation. But I did eventually achieve brittle-dry scapes that I could grind into a fragrant green powder.
The powder is tasty and sweet, and I’m still considering how to use it. I started with the ultra-simple scramble above: four whole eggs and four yolks beaten with a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream and a dash of salt, then scrambled in butter with one large green onion leaf chopped and four ounces of smoked salmon chopped, finished with pepper and a lavish sprinkling of scape powder. Yum.
This is my favorite way so far to use onion and shallot scapes and the remaining ones will all become scape powder. I think it would be delicious if used to finish chicken, fish, and seafood, and might be good on a steak as well. I have heard of dehydrating garlic scapes, and I tried a couple but didn’t care for the result and will continue to gobble them up as a fresh vegetable.
Archive for May, 2016
21 May
The Season of Scapes
Back in 2009 I wrote a post on onion and garlic scapes that you can find here, and all I can say is that if I had known that hundreds of people were going to look at it and it would still be going strong in 2016, I would’ve been more thorough. But then, when I think about it, I think my advice to get young tender garlic scapes, chop them in about 1 inch lengths, and pan fry them in hot olive oil is still my favorite way to use them. These days I usually cut the whole bud off before cutting them up to cook. It has a slightly starchy quality that does not, in my current opinion, go well with the greenness of the rest of the scape. Try it both ways and see what you think.
I also still enjoy putting them under roasting meat and poultry to stew in the juices, and in fact tonight I will be having roast chicken thighs on a bed of garlic scapes, almost exactly as I described in that post seven years ago. Make sure that they get 20 minutes or more to cook. If necessary, you can take the meat out to rest and continue roasting the scapes until done. Make sure the pan doesn’t get dry, which will cause them to burn. Add a little water or broth if needed to keep things a little juicy but not soupy.
I can also add that allicin, the antioxidant in garlic and other alliums that is thought to have many health benefits, is present in much higher levels in the green part of the garlic plant than in the cloves that you typically cook with, so eating the plant bits is good for you as well as tasty.
I am also experimenting with dehydrating scapes and grinding them into powder. I am not doing this with garlic scapes because I prefer to eat them as is, but I have been dehydrating onion and shallot scapes so that they can be ground into an attractive green powder that, I hope, will be useful for seasoning. So far, I have sprinkled some over salad with good effect. I am thinking about using it to coat chicken thighs, along with salt, and then searing them in olive oil and finishing them in the oven. I’m not sure how the green color will play out in this context, but I think it will brown enough that it will not be particularly startling.
The best advice that I can give to vegetable gardeners is: grow green garlic. Grow a lot of it. Use the greens, and ignore any rigid advice to use the white parts only, because you would be missing the best part of the garlic. Remember to slice crosswise in 1/4″ slices when using the whole stalk and leaves, since they are not as tender as the scape, and once the scape appears, the stalk and leaves are too tough to use. Try it every which way, because you are probably going to love at least some cooking methods. Click the tag for “green garlic” at the head of this post to look at all my various experiments with it. If your space is limited and you can’t grow enough for your yearly needs, you can eat all your garlic as green garlic and then buy heads of garlic at your farmers’ market, grocery, or food co-op for winter use. If you are limited to a small space, there is no point in using it on storage vegetables.
Be aware that you can create a very long season by choosing a number of different varieties. My green garlic season starts in mid-March with the very early Chinese Pink, and right now in late May the late Mount Hood and elephant garlic are still providing wonderful green garlic. I buy all my garlic from Territorial Seeds, and I strongly recommend getting your order in by June because the most interesting varieties sell out quickly. It will be delivered in fall in time for planting. This year I have finally planted enough that I think I will be able to replant from my own stock; in previous years, I’m afraid I have gluttonously eaten it all.
17 May
Sunflower Stems
Lately I have been inspired by Pascal Bauder’s cookbook The New Wildcrafted Cuisine and can’t quit yapping on about it. Most recently I found myself trying to apply his eye to sunflowers. They are a common weed in my area, and so useful to the birds and so pretty in bloom that I can hardly bear to pull them out, so I have far too many of them. Recently there was internet info that ” You can eat the leaves and the stems and the buds!” This does not accord with my own experience; edible yes, choice not hardly- so I set out to experiment.
The leaves are very coarse and fibrous, and my own experiments in cooking them have been totally unsuccessful when there are so many other wonderful things to eat. They might be a useful survival food, but for thriving at the table they are not good fodder. I do like the sprouts in salads, the first two cotyledons that emerge when the plant sprouts, but when the leaves are any larger than that they are not to my taste. Incidentally, it is easy to plant a large handful of viable seed in an out of the way area maybe a foot square in late fall, and at whatever time it comes up in the spring you will have a bunch of sunflower sprouts ready to harvest and all in one place. They are delicious in salads. Just remember to get them before the true leave start forming. There is no toxicity at any point, but I only find them pleasant to chew before true leaves form.
My current experiments are with the stem. This gives me the opportunity for another blast at Internet information provided by people who have never actually eaten the plant in question. You will find information that “you can eat the stem and it tastes just like celery!” Do not just grab a stem out of the garden and start chewing, even a small one, because from a very early age they have a very fibrous outer layer. But yesterday I found myself engaged in a long boring kitchen task that required continual presence but very little attention, and decided to do some experimenting. The first part was simple: peel off the outer layer. This is easily accomplished with a vegetable peeler, but if you don’t have too many stems to work with you will lose a fair amount of edible material this way. I started by working my thumbnail under the fibrous layer of the lower cut end of the stem, peeling upward, and then using the vegetable peeler just to skim off whatever stringy bits were left. I started with stems about the size of my index finger, and they were about as thick as my little finger when I finished. They seemed to discolor slightly as I worked with them, so I dropped them in a bowl of water with a squirt of lemon juice in it.
Tasted raw, they were pleasant in a mild way, with a touch of sunflower flavor, mostly a generic mild green taste, and a great crisp texture. I wouldn’t bother to eat them that often, but they were nice enough. But when cooked, they came into their own.
I combined them with some tender shoots of wolfberry (goji,) probably about half and half. Be sure to cook only goji shoots that snap cleanly off. If any peeling of bark occurs, they’re too tough to eat whole.
I’ve become a fan of using macadamia nut oil for dishes like this, where I want to be sure that I can taste the nuances of flavor in the plants. Macadamia nut oil is very stable, has a high smoke point, and has a pleasant rich buttery flavor but does not mask other flavors in the way that a strong olive oil might. I added a good pinch of salt and stir fried the mixture until the goji leaves were dark green and beginning to crisp, but not to the point of any browning.
The result was delicious. The goji leaves and stems had a pleasant mild herbal flavor, and the peeled sunflower stalks had come into a rich nuttiness with artichoke overtones but retained some crispness.
It made an excellent cook’s treat, and I will try it again on a larger scale. I think that a minute or two more of stirfrying would have benefited the sunflower stems a lot, and next time, I will not combine them with other shoots but will work on getting the cooking time exactly right for them. But this was an excellent simple dish that I would not be ashamed to serve to anybody. Now I find myself speculating about the gray stripe sunflower grown for bird food, and whether its enormous single stem would be palatable at a young age. Only one way to find out.
And don’t worry, I will always leave plenty of sunflowers for the birds.
12 May
Wild Lettuce
Wild lettuce is everywhere. I see it all over the downtown area of our city, growing in cracks in pavement and against buildings. Wherever you are right now, there is probably a plant of it growing nearby. Its endurance is extraordinary and there is no getting rid of it, which suits me fine. A green that will grow in unwatered parts of my desert yard is an unusual thing, and I’m not likely to turn down a gift like that.
It’s quite variable in leaf shape and a few species are common in the U.S. In my area I mostly see Lactuca serriola, which is covered with small spines. I borrowed the photo above because the spines show more clearly than in my own photo. Accounts online and in foraging books differ, some reporting that the young leaves are delicious, others considering them a very poor food, and all commenting on the bitterness of the adult plant. In my area they don’t seem to get very bitter, not half as bitter as dandelions or chicory, and I love to eat the growing tips regardless of the age of the plant. This may relate to soil or temperature factors. I have noticed the same thing with sow thistle that grows in my yard, which lacks its characteristic bitterness, while dandelions in the same area seem even more bitter than those found elsewhere. Nature always has the last word and does not have to provide us with explanations. You have to get to know your home area.
I pick the tips as shown on the right, but if I find a plant growing in shade I will pick larger leaves because they remain more tender than when grown in sun. They exude sticky white sap, which washes away easily. I toss the tips in boiling water for about 90 seconds and drain and squeeze, which renders the spines soft and harmless. Proceed as desired. With greens that have any tinge of bitterness, I like to sauté with garlic, olive oil, and pepper flakes, preferably the deep earthy Turkish Urfa pepper flakes or smoky chipotle flakes. A ten minute sauté creates a lovely vegetable.
The rest of the plant is a favorite treat for my goat, who is totally unbothered by the spines. It’s one of the few plants that she never seems to get finicky about.
There are some very weird things to be found online. Wild lettuce has acquired a strange internet reputation as “lettuce opium” and there are places that sell the seeds and tincture and swear it will cure insomnia and/or get you high. I have no idea where this idea came from. I was startled to learn about it when I searched for a good photo, and overall I would disregard the whole idea. So do the people who have actually tried it; customer feedback includes comments like “very mild,” “placebo buzz only,” “nothing going on here,” and “useless.” One commenter who thought it was great admitted to being “crazy drunk” when he tried it, which no doubt makes a difference. Some think it is a useful mild sleep aid if smoked or brewed as a very strong tea. I don’t advise smoking anything at all so I wouldn’t know. For those interested in soporifics I can only say that when I eat it at dinner I feel sleepy at bedtime, and when I eat anything else for dinner I feel sleepy at bedtime.
My urban homestead 