Garlic Spears or Garlic Scapes? Who Cares?

Wherein Mr Ullman shares his passion for garlic spears.

This week's box brought with it garlic spears (a.k.a garlic scapes). I was looking forward to them, a friend told me about them last year and I was waiting for them to come back into season. I had a recipe in mind and it worked. Note that this isn't all the involved but it does use a good number of ingredients. The recipe uses noodles so make some.

Cut up pork into squares following the grain of the meat. Take a couple of garlic cloves and chopped them fine. Add some grapeseed oil to a wok and cook the pork and garlic for about 10 minutes. Once it is cooked drain the oil and retain it. Put the pork and garlic off to the side and add a couple of splashes of vinegar to the retained oil.

Now it is time to workover the veggies. Start by chopping up a green pepper into chunks. While somewhat tricky julienning the garlic spears. Take some kale and a tart parsley and rip these into small bits and then chop them together into small bits. Place all the veggies into a bowl and toss.

By this time the pork should be cooled. Using you fingers rip it into smaller pieces along the grain and toss it into the bowl. Add a generous spoonful of cream of celery soup and fold in the oil/ vinegar mixture. Add the noodles and toss everything again.

Transfer all this into a casserole dish and cook at 350 for twenty minutes. Add a dusting of tarragon and thyme and digin.

Garlic spears are simply great. I got ten of them and ate them raw, fried with asparagus and mushrooms, with fish and used them up in a Mac and Cheese dish.

Stuff cabbage with shrimp and lots of other stuff.

Wherein Mr Ullman gets a good meal of the cheap

This is easy and quick. Stuff cabbage with shrimp, spring onions, normal radishes, rhubarb, avocado and rice. Throw in some grape seed oil and some flavored vinegar and life is good.

You start it by making the rice per instructions and putting it off to the side. Steam good sized leafs of cabbage making sure you steam an even number. The cabbage should be steamed long enough to it easy to wrap around something.

Slice the onions and radishes in a food processor and chop up some rhubarb with a knife. Chop up a garlic clove and quickly stir fry some shrimp in the grape seed oil just long enough to firm it up. Pay attention.

Once the shrimp is cooked put it into a bowl. Take a leaf of cabbage and lay it on a plate. Add four or five shrimp on it. Add the onion, radish and rhubarb in measure. Crumble some goat cheese and grated Parmesan on top.

Fold the cabbage leaf over the stuff and fold another cabbage leaf over the top. Get out a casserole dish, cover the bottom lightly with the flavored vinegar. Heat the oven to 250 degrees, put the cabbage rolls into the dish and cook long enough to melt the cheese and heat the vinegar enough to give up its taste. Ten minutes works for me.

Spread the rice on a plate and lightly dust it with paprika and a pinch of cinnamon (go light here). Put the stuffed cabbage on top of this and place a generous plop of avocado on top.

Plan on two stuffed cabbages per person.

Sunchokes would be good here (not for me, that's a food allergy of note for me). A mild sausage or pulled chicken might work in place of the shrimp.

By the way, Parmesan cheese sold in the US is the poor relative of an Italian cheese called Parmigiano-Reggiano. Check it out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmigiano-Reggiano

Pork/chicken/shrimp cooked in a Veggie Broth (Select any two as long as one of them is shrimp)

Wherein Mr Ullman announces that he will be slacking off

I don't know a number of the ingredients that went into making a part of this dinner. My crock pot runs full time making a veggie broth. Whatever I don't use veggiewise-- be it stems, overly-enthusiastic chopping or things that are not going to last much longer-- I add. I strain it every other week and start over when necessary, usually with regret.  This also adds a permanent wonderful smell to your kitchen.

So this recipe uses the broth. A store brought veggie broth and a bit of experimenting with spices should do the trick.

The recipe also includes rice so make some. I used brown basmati but any short grain should work.

Oh, heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Since I am cool I strain about a cup of the homemade broth.

Cut up a goodly sized pork shoulder or chicken breast, slightly more then you would use if you were going to eat it whole. If nickles were square that would be the size you are looking to achieve. Put the pork off to the side.

Take some citarto (it does not taste like soap!) and two sharp greens (I used red dandelion greens and kale) and chop somewhat finely with a knife. Don't use a food processor since you don't want the greens extremely fine.

Put the pork or chicken in a Pyrex pie pan and add enough broth to cover the meat about 2/3s of the way. Add the greens and mix everything around. Add some Allspice, tarragon and a bay leaf. Add a splash of apple cider vinegar. Cover with aluminum foil shiny side down (no clue if this is important but it was something my mother believed in) and put into the oven. Cook for twenty minutes.

Take about ten medium sized shrimp and remove the tails and , if necessary, devain. Smash a good sized garlic clove.

Once the oven buzzer sounds remove the pie pan, add the shrimp and garlic, cover again and cook for seven more minutes.

Put the rice in a strainer. Pore the concoction in the pie pan over the rice (I recover the broth and return it to the crook pot). Toss and serve. I put a sweet relish on the side and used it as a dip.

This was very good with pork and chicken but next I am going to try a variation of this with a fish.

This is a one of my favorite “Do it quick” recipes. Another nice thing is that it is a versatile as a stir fry so you can do it with damn near anything you have in the fridge.

A Note:

Thinking about this blog over the last couple of weeks I decide that trying to do this weekly was to ambitious. I have been cooking for something to write about rather then the joy of screwing around with food. Therefore I am going to try doing a cooking entry once every two weeks for a while. Might end up doing this only once a month.