The Great Dill Scape

I fermented garlic scapes with dill and named it The Great Dill Scape!

Then I drew this label and wrote a blog about it, and now here we are.

CSA season is in full swing in Rochester, which means fridges across the city are being filled with weird vegetables that nobody knows what to do with like, for example, garlic scapes. Those long and curly green stalks that grow from garlic bulbs were once relegated to the compost bin until one day somebody realized that, not only could you eat it, but you could sell it.

Now they show up on menus at hipster restaurants where waiters with curly mustaches talk excitedly about how the dinner special made with garlic scape pesto pairs exceptionally well with the single hop IPA they have on tap, a Moscow Mule in a copper mug, or jumping barbed wire fences in your motorcycle.

And you know what? That waiter is right!

But the rest of us are left more concerned than excited about what we're going to do with this giant pile of vegetables. So when the scapes showed up in week 1 of our CSA my plan was simple, roast them into garlic scape fries! Its simple, easy, tastes great, and makes a good side dish. Of course I promptly forgot about that plan right after I put them in the fridge until the next week when scapes showed up in the CSA once again and I found myself in a bit of a situation.

I was going to add a caption here but the thought e'scapes' me right now. Get it?

Two and a half pounds of scapes don't exactly fit well in the fridge. The unruly bastards are impossible to pack into a reasonably sized container, so they end up in a loose bag taking up all kinds of space, space that I need for more important things like craft beer and boxed wine (really cheap boxed wine too. I buy that stuff on price alone.)  So I did what comes naturally to me....I sat on the couch and didn't wash dishes. But eventually I got motivated, grabbed a fermenting crock, and went to work!

A new addition to the kitchen of Fridge Top Ferments is a scale capable of weighing things in the crock, which means for the first time ever I can record my recipes accurately so I can repeat them in the future. What an improvement!

My handwriting, however, remains horrible.

 Here are the ingredients in The Great Dill Scapes:

• Scapes - 2 lbs 6.5 oz
• Dill - 1.2 oz
• Garlic - 10 cloves (1.2 oz)
• Peppercorns - 0.1 oz (thats all the peppercorns I had on had or I would have added more)
• Brine - 4.5% salinity (133.5 oz water, 6 oz sea salt)

For the most part I tried to keep things similar to the ingredients I used in making Chloe Beans since those turned out pretty great.

I considered keeping the scapes whole because I thought it would look cool served as a side dish, but then I realized I'd never be able to wrestle those enormous scapes into jars when they were done, so I cut them into pieces a few inches long.

The beer makes fermenting easier, just like it does for parenting!

Once the scapes were cut, the dill and garlic were chopped, and everything was thrown into the crock and covered with the brine. Then I put a plate on top of the veggies to keep them submerged, covered the crock, and put it in the basement to ferment for 2 weeks.

The results? Pretty great! They don't have the snap of a pickle or green bean, but they taste similar and have a subtle garlic flavor. And the best part is the kids love them! They must have eaten 20 of them while "helping" me jar them.

I told her she was eating the profits and this was her response.

They're versatile too. You can put them into salads, add them to cooked dishes like stir frys, or just eat them straight up like pickles.

So if you find yourself buried with garlic scapes and aren't sure what to do, ferment them. It comes out great and is easier than you think.

And then name them after a movie and put silly labels on the jars. Its the best part!