Every few years I permit myself to carry a bit about garden produce that is misunderstood. Judging from what I see at farmers markets, green garlic is misunderstood. Because here’s the important thing: green garlic is green. It is bright vibrant green and not yet yellow-green or beginning to yellow, and certainly does not show any garlic scape yet. If the scape has appeared, it is no longer high-quality green garlic, although soon the scape will become a tasty item. Green garlic is very delicious from the time the leaves first show up on the ground to the time that the leaves are large and developed and the stalk is elongating, but even the lowest leaves remain bright green and are not yellowing. For the most part, the white underground shaft will not show enlargement, but might be beginning to swell as you see in the five stalks on the right above. Peel off a couple of lower leaves, cut away the roots, and wash, and it is ready to use. The upper leaves are no longer of culinary interest, but by peeling them off you can get more tender stalk and still use most of the plant.
Now look at the stalk on the left in the top picture. It shows a definite forming bulb, but the leaves are still bright green with no sign of yellowing and there is no scape. It is still usable, and delicious, it is just a little closer to being mature garlic than the others. Your best kitchen knife is an extension of your hand, and will tell you whether it’s still usable. If the skin slices easily and finely without presenting any obstacle to slicing and is not at all papery, you will still enjoy eating it with the rest of the green garlic. Just slice the bulb part thinly and chop it up a bit, skin and all. Garlic is a true nose-to-tail vegetable and you can eat every bit of it, but each part has to be eaten at its proper time.
Green garlic is significantly more delicate than mature garlic, and you can use a lot more of it and achieve a very good flavor without an excessive garlic taste. I used all these stalks to make a pilaf with just over a quart of cooked basmati rice, and the garlic flavor was not at all excessive and the general quality of the pilaf remained sweet. Whatever you use it for, sauté the thinly sliced green garlic in butter or oil for 15 to 20 minutes over fairly low heat, until it is soft and tastes sweet. Watch carefully, because it burns easily, so don’t leave the kitchen. At the end of that time, proceed with your cooking as you usually would.
If you are interested in plant polyphenols, it may interest you to know that the green parts of garlic and the immature skin as shown in the bulb above contain a lot more allicin than the garlic cloves themselves. What this means in practice is anybody’s guess, but since I love green garlic anyway it gives me a good excuse to think that it might also be good for me. If you want to read a bit more about allicin, there are some references here. But please, rather than thinking that any one polyphenol is the answer, eat the widest variety of green vegetables that you possibly can.
At this glorious time of year, perennial edibles are coming up everywhere. Many of them are herbs used as seasoning for generations, and at this time of year I start making seasoning butters to take advantage of them at their best. The butters change throughout the season, according to what is available and fresh and goes well with other herbaceous ingredients that I’m considering.
I used to make a lot of the classic Montpellier butter, and I still make it sometimes, but overall I tend to prefer something a little more spontaneous. I do think that the anchovy fillets ground into the classic butter add a rich and savory resonance to nearly anything, without being identifiable as anchovy. But I don’t keep the fillets around much anymore, so instead I substitute a good grade of fish sauce actually made from anchovies. Do not use the inexpensive ones made from hydrolyzed fish protein, which range from execrable to mediocre. Red Boat is a good grade of fish sauce made in the classic fermented fashion, and it’s not very expensive when you compare it to true Italian colatura, which taste very similar and costs at least three times as much.
The other things you need are a clove of garlic, about 8 ounces of good butter, 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of good olive oil, half a lemon, and herbs. Which herbs depends a lot on what is fresh, good, and available to you. Give some thought to whether the flavors can harmonize. Personally, although rosemary is throwing out fresh growth right now in my area, I don’t find rosemary to be a good team player and if I use it, I use it by itself. Other people view this very differently, so see what you think. For this amount of butter and olive oil, you need the equivalent of a large bunch of fresh herbs, and for herbs I consider a large bunch to be the amount I can just barely get my thumb and forefinger around.
My most recent butter included a large bunch of half garlic greens and half perennial arugula, with several sprigs each of tarragon and thyme. At this early point in the year the new growth of thyme is tender and just needs chopping, but later in the season I would pull the leaves off the wiry stems. If I didn’t have a permaculture garden, I would use the green parts of a bunch of green onions and a few large leaves of mustard greens with the center stem removed.
Set the butter out to soften a bit. Chop the garlic, and separately chop the herbs. Heat a small saucepan over medium heat, put in the chopped garlic and sauté until it’s cooked but not colored, add the chopped herbs, turn the heat to low, and cook for a few minutes until the herbs look definitely cooked but still bright green. This usually takes about five minutes for me. Put in one or 2 teaspoons of fish sauce and a good pinch of salt. Set the pan aside and let cool to room temperature. Put the cooked herb mixture in the food processor, add the butter cut up into pats, and process until the butter is well incorporated but you can still see distinct pieces of the herbs, not green mush. Squeeze in some lemon juice; I use about a tablespoon. If you want to, you can grate off a little of the lemon zest and blend that in too.
Pack into a small airtight container or bowl, store in the refrigerator, and use within a week or two. As for how to use it, it can go on almost anything else that you are cooking in a simple fashion and want to add a little extra pizzazz to. Generous globs melting on top of cooked green vegetables are wonderful, and it is good on scrambled or fried eggs or on top of omelettes. Some slices of the butter put on top of broiled fish or seafood are very good, and it’s also good on roast chicken or chicken pieces. It is excellent folded into plain white rice. Try it on egg noodles with some Parmesan and maybe a little bit of cream. For all these applications I use generous amounts, but of course you can use a lighter hand if you prefer.
Every week, walk through your garden or farmers market or a good grocery store and see what flavorful herbs are around, and make seasoning butter accordingly. Bronze fennel is beginning to leaf out on my property, and fennel butter with some thyme and a small amount of tarragon is going to be delicious. My lemon balm is just coming up, and I am speculating about whether a generous amount of lemon balm and green garlic and a bit of rosemary would create a context in which rosemary could shine without taking over.
Personally I think that some alliums are always needed for a really good flavor, and if green garlic was not in season I would use perennial green onions or garlic chives, both of which will grow extremely happily in almost anybody’s soil. But don’t get too concerned about specific ingredients, just think about what is fresh and what tastes good together. The whole idea is to have the pleasure of something on your plate that tastes of the growing season.
The post below was one of my very first blog posts back in 2008, and it remains true that arugula is one of my favorite early spring greens and grows everywhere that it is allowed to seed, even in my high-desert climate. I still let it seed itself around in the way described below, but I also reserve a few square feet of bed space to grow it’s specifically for salads. Enrich the soil in the fall, and in late fall or early spring scatter arugula seed thickly around, scratch it into the soil surface or cover it with some compost, and water the area about once a week if you live in a climate as dry as mine. Bymid-spring it will be 4-5 inches high. To gather, hold clumps of leaves with one hand and use scissors to cut them off at the bottom of the leaf, leaving the stems behind. They will still be young and tender and will be quite clean because the closely spaced plants hold each other up off the dirt, so after a rinse and drying in a salad spinner or towel, they will be ready to eat.
In my view it isn’t worthwhile to try to get a second crop, because they are so closely spaced that they are eager to shoot to seed. I just dig up the area and plant something else. They are delicious with a good simple vinaigrette made with some garlic or green garlic and your best red wine vinegar and olive oil. Don’t forget the salt. Do note that once the dressing is put on it arugula wilts very quickly, so don’t dress it until the last minute before serving. If you are making a mixed salad and want to dress it ahead of time, combine the other greens, dress the salad, and toss in the arugula just before serving.
Once you have it washed and handy in the refrigerator you will find other uses for it, such as scattering around the plate to serve chicken or fish or nearly anything else on, or stuffing into pita with hummus and some tahini dressing. It is one of the joys of spring, so use it instead of those commercial salad mixes.
At times I’m very surprised by what grows well in my high desert garden. I wouldn’t have guessed that arugula would not only grow well but would naturalize and happily spread itself about. Arugula is my favorite salad green, and I’ve learned to love it for cooking too. Something about its tender nutty sharpness is like watercress gone to heaven. It likes cold weather, and manages with surprisingly little water.
First, get your seed. I don’t recommend the wild-type often sold as “sylvetta” because the leaves are small leading to low yield, and in dry conditions it can get too sharp to be pleasant. Try to get the type designated as ‘cultivated” or the named variety Apollo, although the latter lacks the frilly leaves that make such a nice show on the salad plate. In winter or very early spring, scatter the seed in drifts on prepared ground and rake them in lightly, or scatter them in prepared containers and scratch the seed in a little with your fingers. Water occasionally and keep an eye out. Early in the spring, you’ll notice the little plants struggling up bravely. Give them a little water when the soil is dry, and thin them out to stand about 4-6″ apart. Throw the washed thinnings in your salads, of course. When the plants are about 6″ tall, harvest them heavily for salads, but don’t cut the crown or pull the roots up. Use dressings containing nut oils and good olive oil. Never dress the arugula more than a couple of minutes before eating, because it wilts easily. Eventually the plants will start to bolt to seed. Do nothing to stop them. The next phase of the arugula season is starting.
The maturing plant will now stand about 2 feet high, with small clusters of buds. It’s perfect for cooked greens now. Leave one or two plants to bloom and make seed, and cut the rest down to about 3″ high, and bring the cuttings into the kitchen. Pull off and save all leaves, and break the bud sections off wherever the stem will snap without resistance. These are your cooking greens. Wash them carefully. If you want to use the large stems that are left over, cut them in cross sections no more than 1/4 inch long, because they contain strong stringy fibers. I compost them instead of eating them. Blanch the washed greens in a large quantity of rapidly boiling water for 1 minute, no more. Drain and proceed as desired toward dinner. They have a flavor a little like broccoli rabe, and I love to eat them with pasta. See recipe below, or go to the categories in the sidebar, and click on “greens.”
Now, what about the plants you left alone? They will develop into great wispy clouds of small white flowers, a little like annual baby’s breath. Bees adore them. Then they’ll set hundreds of tiny seed pods. When these dry out, let some spill around the mother plant (which can now be pulled up, and should be, because it looks pretty scruffy by now) and toss the rest around wherever you want more arugula. Usually these seeds will be dry and ready for seeding in late summer, will sprout by September, and will be in the salad stage by late October. Leave them over the winter, and the cycle continues.
Pasta with cooked arugula: For two hungry people, or four if using as a first course, Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Meanwhile, chop up a slice of good pancetta about 1/4 inch thick into 1/4 inch cubes (or chop up two slices best bacon, if you don’t have pancetta, but the pancetta is better here.) Render the little cubes in a skillet over medium heat until the fat is released. Don’t drain off a single drop of it. Toss in two cloves of garlic, chopped, and stir briefly. Add half a teaspoon or so of red pepper flakes, stir in, and immediately pour in half a cup of good dry white wine. Boil vigorously for a minute, add salt to taste, and take off the heat.
Meanwhile, your big pot should have come to a boil. You did salt it, didn’t you? Few foods are worse than bland pasta. Throw in half a pound of good pasta. Whole wheat pasta is good here if you like it, but get a very good brand or it can be gluey and awful. When the pasta is about 2 minutes short of done, ie there is a bit of white core remaining when you cut or bite a piece, throw in the arugula greens, stir them in, and continue boiling until the pasta is done to your liking. Drain the pasta and arugula together, toss them with the pancetta mixture, and toss in a generous cup of the best Parmesan you can get, grated. Plate the pasta, grind a little pepper over the whole, shave a few artistic slivers of Parmesan on top, and bear to the table.
A vegetarian version can be made by starting with 1/4 cup of butter in the hot small skillet, stirring in a teaspoon of chopped fresh rosemary and two teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves with the garlic, and proceeding as above.
In my last post I wrote about horta made entirely from green alliums, the first greens of spring. Horta is very good all by itself, but it can also be fun to elaborate, and I have written before about hortapitas, the many types of greens pies that are filled with horta. They can be large or individual in size, the crust can be phyllo or bread dough or pie crust or no crust, and the filling can be horta alone or include cheese or meat or eggs or egg mixtures like the one show here. The horta can be based on one green or on as many edible greens as you can gather. Herbs can be subtle or dominate the filling. They are all delicious.
In this case, I had almost two cups of green allium horta to use, and fresh eggs were on the counter waiting to be used. I decided on a quick and easy phyllo crust and an eggy cheesy filling. A package of phyllo pastry from the freezer was set out to thaw. I wanted to maintain a fresh springlike quality in the filling, so I made a run to the perennial paddock to grab a small handful of green garlic and garlic chives.
I made a tangy cheese custard for the filling using three egg yolks and one whole egg beaten together. These went in the food processor with half a cup each of fromage blanc and Greek yogurt. I used fromage blanc because I had it around, but another half cup of Greek yogurt or crème fraiche would have worked fine. This mixture was processed until smooth and turned out into a mixing bowl. To this basic filling I stirred in the fresh alliums chopped finely, the allium horta, about 4 ounces of crumbled feta, and about 2 teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves. I also added half a teaspoon of salt, which along with the feta makes this filling come out just a touch on the salty side, which I think suits it.
Next came the crust. If you’re used to working with phyllo, this takes less than 5 minutes. Unroll the pastry, brush one sheet at a time with olive oil using a pastry brush, and align them in the baking pan the way you want them. I used am 8×12” pan, but you could also use a square pan or round pan. The filling will be thicker in the smaller pans but the flavor will be the same. Don’t get hung up on details like exact pan size. If you haven’t worked with phyllo before, there is a great tutorial on the wondrous Food 52 site. Just have ready a damp but not wet towel, about half a cup of good olive oil , and a pastry brush. I used about half a package of phyllo.
Once the crust is ready, pour the filling into it and roll up another few sheets of oil-brushed phyllo and put them around the edges, messing them a bit with your fingers. Now bake at 350° until the filling is set and the phyllo is golden-brown and crisp. Let sit out of the oven for 10 minutes and serve, or serve later at room temperature. Simple, delicious, quick, and very good for you.
My urban homestead 