Garlic Scapes Galore

Thanks to my cousin, I am a proud recipient of a CSA share. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and I have been looking out for something suitable for the last 4-5 years. There weren't any farms/distribution centres close enough to our place to be called local(according to me), and I didn't want to commit to driving 15-20 miles one way each week to get fresh (and supposedly local) produce. When Denish told me about one opening up in our town itself, I jumped at the idea.

I've been getting fresh vegetables for 3 weeks now(today is the 4th distribution), and I have been introduced to a slew of vegetables that I have before only looked lovingly at the grocery store, or read about, and didn't have the courage to buy them; for lack of recipes to try, and lack of guinea pigs to try upon.

We've got bok-choy(tons of it), kale, collards, radishes, beets, lettuce, chard, spinach, turnips and turnip greens, mustard greens, arugula, peas etc., but my favorite happens to be garlic scapes.

Garlic scapes are to garlic what spring onions are to onion. They have a mild subtle garlicky flavor, and have found their way into rotis, uttapams, daal, sambhar and thecha. You could use them in lieu of (or in addition to) spring onions.

The garlic-scapes thecha(based on the Maharashtrian garlic thecha) was a simple mashed mixture of a couple of garlic scapes, with 4-5 green chillies and salt, pounded with a mortar and pestle (because I still haven't made a decision on what mixie to buy after my last American blender gave way more than a year ago). The mortar and pestle treatment does wonders to the texture (and taste, and rusticity) of the resultant chutney though.

More accounts/adventures of my CSA experience to follow. Will update the post with pictures soon...