June Scapes

Across much of the country, now is when garlic plants are sending up the green flowering shoot called the scape. Farmers and gardeners snip it off to concentrate the plant's energy into its below-ground bulb. Turns out that scapes deliver great garlic flavor - as well as an additional source of income for farmers.

Now's also the time for green garlic - the immature bulb of the garlic plant, harvested before it. It's the lb before it has developed has fully developed cloves. To me, it's the purest, freshest way to experience garlic's blissful pungence.

Pasta with sauteed bitter greens, scapes, and green garlic
1 pound dry pasta (spaghetti, farfalle, linguini)
2 large handfuls greens (such as kale, chard, or mature arugula or spinach), bunched and sliced into ribbons
2-3 garlic scapes, trimmed of tough part, cut into half-inch pieces
One stalk green garkic, peeled, and chopped fine
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted for a few minutes at 300 F and chopped coarsely
Extra-virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Crushed chile flakes
Red-wine or balsamic vinegar
Parmeson-style cheese for grating

Put water on highest heat for pasta; prepare ingredients as stated above. Put a skillet (large enough to handle the greens) on low heat. Add a little more than enough olive oil to cover the bottom, and add garlic, scapes, a pinch or two of chile, a pinch or two of salt, and a vigorous grind of black pepper. Give it all a stir, and let it cook until garlic and scapes are sizzling and fragrant; be careful not to let the garlic brown. Add the greens and turn heat to medium, tossing the greens so that they're coated in the garlic-scented oil. (When the water boils, which might be about now, salt it well and add the pasta.) Now cover the greens and turn heat to low. Cook, checking and stirring often, until the greens are tender. Once they're tender, remove from heat and taste. If the flavor is bitter, give them a splash of vinegar or lemon juice. Once the pasta is done, drain it and return it to its pot. Scrape the cooked greens into the pot, the walnuts, and a healthy splash of olive oil. Toss and taste; correct for salt and pepper. Serve. Pass the cheese and grater at table, and be sure to have a bottle of olive oil handy.

Pasta with scape pesto and sardines
1 pound dry pasta
Extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup to 1 cup garlic scape pesto (see below), to taste
1 tin good-quality sardines packed in olive oil
A pinch or two of crushed red chile flakes
Sea salt
Black pepper
2 oz fresh goat's cheese (optional)

Put pasta water on to boil over highest heat. Put a large skillet on medium low heat, and add enough olive oil to cover bottom. Add chile flakes and a grind of pepper. Add pesto, working it into the olive oil with a wooden spoon. Open the can of sardines. With a fork, lift the sardines one by one out of the can--letting them drain a second or two of the olive oil they were stored in--and drop them directly into the pan. When they're all in there, use the wooden spoon to smush the sardines into the pesto. What you'll end up with is a kind of coarse--and quite fragrant--sauce. Remove from heat. When the pasta water boils, salt it liberally. (Mario Batali, the famed New York chef, says it should have the salinity of seawater.) Add the pasta to the water when it returns to a rolling boil. Just before the pasta is al dente, take a ladle and scoop up a cup or so of the pasta water; add it to the sardine sauce and stir it in. Now drain the pasta and, return it to its pot (which will be empty of water but steamy hot). Scrape in the sardine sauce, add a dash of olive oil and a grind of pepper (hold off on salt here; you've already added salted pasta water, and the sardines can be briny). Toss, and correct for seasoning. Serve.
Optional note: Though no Sicilian would do it, we've found a way to make this dish even more delicious. When you've dumped the pasta into the colander and you have a steamy but empty pot, add 2 oz fresh goat cheese and immediately dump the pasta on top. This will melt the cheese. When you toss the pasta after adding the sardine sauce, you'll be incorporating the cheese.

scape pesto
1 pound scapes, trimmed of tough flower part and chopped coarsely
I handful Italian flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup walnuts, lightly toasted in a 300 F oven
sea salt, to taste
black pepper, to taste
Extra-virgin olive oil

Combine first five ingredients in a food processor and process for 30 seconds or so. Scrape down sides of bowl and process again. With the blade running, add a thin stream of oil until a paste forms. Scrape down sides of bowl and process again, adding more olive oil if needed.

Humble Pie

As storms rage on the prairie, strawberries and rhubarb bring comfort
By Kurt Michael Friese
12 Jun 2008

Gaia has been hard on us prairie-dwellers lately. A dear friend who's the director of the area's largest CSA lost her 102-year-old barn to a storm this weekend. Swelled with recent rains, the Iowa River has been raging, sloshing toward levels never seen before.

Fortunately, my restaurant sits on high ground, so if the floods reach us here, you'll see the animals lining up two by two and Kevin Costner frowning from the roof. We're lucky, too, that many of the local farms that supply us are also keeping their heads above water, and bringing us loads of those sure signs that it's June: strawberries and rhubarb.

Known for its puckeringly sour stalks, rhubarb is a humble plant that's not often toyed with in "gourmet" kitchens. Historically, it was a medicinal herb, grown mainly in monastery gardens "to stock abbey pharmacies with its medicinal roots," food historian Waverley Root tells us. Its status as food came later, in England. Rather than focus on the stalks, early rhubarb lovers actually ate the leaves as some would spinach. The flavor must have been enjoyed by survivors, since the leaves contain oxalic acid and have, according to the Oxford Book of Food "sometimes caused death."

Today, we stick to the stalks.

In our restaurant garden, the rhubarb is only two years old, and it's best to wait until its third birthday before harvesting it. Like asparagus, it's a perennial that needs time to develop a strong root system and thick stalks.

Strawberries have been known and prized all over the world for centuries. Until relatively recently, they were rare treats, since they only grew wild and were extremely perishable. Today, farmers have learned to cultivate them on an industrial scale. But those golf ball-sized wonders bear little resemblance to the real thing on the palate. They've been hybridized beyond recognition in an effort to maximize shelf life and portability. Flavor and nutritional value have not been concerns among their growers or purveyors.

At my restaurant, we use the perishable heirloom varieties that actually taste like something. Since they need to be harvested and consumed quickly, you won't see strawberries on our menu in January. So when their time does come, we revel in them eagerly.

Strawberries draw considerably more enthusiasm among eaters than rhubarb, but almost no one disapproves of the two in combination. Few dishes are as down-home-prairie as a strawberry-rhubarb pie. The sweet berries and sour stalks offer contrasting flavors, but both emerge from the garden at the same time. And in pie, they combine for a kind of harmony.


Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie
Here is a very simple recipe for a filling to use in your favorite crust.

1 1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups fresh rhubarb -- peel with a vegetable peeler and chop
3 cups fresh strawberries -- clean and slice in half
1 plain (homemade or store-bought) pie crust -- enough for bottom and top crust
Preheat oven to 425 F.

Sift together all dry ingredients. Sprinkle bottom of crust with 1/3 of dry mixture. Gently add rhubarb and strawberries and heap onto pie shell. Create a slight mound in center. Sprinkle remaining mixture over rhubarb and strawberries. Dot with butter; cover with top crust, arranging the pastry in a lattice pattern, or leave whole with decorative cuts to vent.

Bake 10 minutes at 425 F; reduce to 350 F, and bake 40 - 50 minutes. Cool on a wire rack before cutting.