I’ve been cooking with garlic forever. Not the powdered stuff but the bulbs you break apart, crush, and chop into chicken cacciatore, which you can’t make without fresh basil and fresh parsley (nope, no discussion, it’s not really cacciatore without them). But for most of my cooking life, I had no idea the difference between the store-bought soft neck garlic, over 90 percent of which now comes from China, that noted organic grower (NOT), and the local fresh hardneck variety. Until I was given some.
Hardneck garlic is grown locally by Colchester Farms right now but there are bound to be others when people realize the difference between dried soft neck and local hardneck. Fresh hardneck garlic is crisp and moist with a pungent flavor. It’s available from about July through November, depending on supply.
“The New York chefs always waited for the hardneck garlic to come in,” says Theresa Mycek, manager/grower at Colchester, who worked at a CSA in New York state and brought produce twice a week to Union Square Farmers Market.
One of the bonuses of hardneck garlic is the scape. BEFORE you get the garlic bulb with six cloves clustered around the hard stem (neck) you get a scape, the central shoot that will, if you let it go, bloom or produce a little bulb. Garlic growers need to cut off the scape, which looks like a big green curly fry, so the plant can concentrate its energy on creating a big juicy bulb at the bottom.
It’s a serendipitous need, since the scape when cooked tastes like a marriage of chive, garlic and scallion. It’s good chopped, sautéed in butter or olive oil, and thrown into an omelet, or added to stir-fry. You can cook it in tempura or steam it like asparagus and dip it for an hors d’oeuvre in a little aoli or curry mustard and mayo. You can even make soup – sauté lightly with chopped scallion in a little butter and add it with some fresh yogurt and chopped fresh basil to some herby chicken stock.
But it’s truly superb when lightly oiled and popped on the grill. Have it with fish or steak (we did it with marinated grilled Canada goose one Sunday) and enjoy it until its next stage – the hardneck garlic bulb– arrives next month.
Lindsay says
Thanks, Nancy! Very interesting and useful information (especially for an amateur herb gardener, like myself).
Joan Smith says
You’re making me hungry…….
Angela says
I tried this for the first time from our farmer’s market recently (and I think it was Colchester Farms I got it from). I am loving it, I chopped it up real small to throw in a bean salad and all other sorts of fresh salads and a stir fry. Yum!
Nancy Robson says
Next come the peas — snow, sugar snap, shelling! Ain’t it great we’ve got innovative growers around top provide all these great ingredients?