Jul 2nd, 2023 Sunday Sunny
For beginner gardeners, what is the one thing that I recommend they should try growing?
Garlic. Hands down. The most fool-proof vegetable (?) that requires little care but produce reliably good (at least acceptable) results.
Garlic plants have a strong scent that naturally drive away most of the pests, from insects to critters. If you can plant them in a packed way, leaving very small spacing in between plants, garlic plants form a stunning patch of stalk forest that keeps out weeds as well. In addition, once you finish burying garlic cloves in the fall (ideally adding some compost to the soil first), covered in mulch, you can forget about them for the whole winter. When the weather becomes suitable, they will sprout and develop into healthy garlic all by themselves. All you need to do is to occasionally water them if long droughts persist.
The best part of growing garlic is the once-in-a-year chance to enjoy garlic stems 🙂
Garlic stems, also called garlic scapes, are the flower stems of garlic. They can be easily distinguished from the leaves by a curvy, slender tip. They are the garlic’s attempt to make baby garlic. From the perspective of farmers, they are unnecessary parts since pretty much all garlic are cultivated from cloves/bulbs rather than baby garlic “seeds”. If the flower stems are left alone on the plant, the garlic will direct all its energy to reproduce, rendering the garlic bulb – the part we want to eat – dull and shriveled. It is therefore a common practice to pinch them once they reach a certain length (i.e. as soon as they start looping around, but before a full loop is created).
You might think: what a waste!
Luckily, garlic stems are perfectly edible and actually very tasty if cooked right. They are juicy, with a subtle aroma of garlic and a hint of sweetness that pair well with slightly fatty meat, especially pork.
That is how this classic delicacy – garlic stems stir-fried with Chinese bacon – was born. 😛
Honestly speaking, in my parents’ generation, garlic stems were not considered as valuable at all. Compared to pork, a good source of protein that most families could only get a bite of during spring festivals, garlic stems were available and cheap throughout summer. While delicious, they were by no means so outstanding in a season when large varieties of vegetables were bountiful.
In contrast, nowadays, freezing and vacuuming techniques, together with large-scale industry meat farms, have greatly reduced the price of pork year round. I never need to worry about going into an Asian grocery store and not being able to find or afford a pack of Chinese bacon, but garlic stems, if you are lucky enough to come across them in the store, they are usually only on the shelf for a few weeks in late spring. After that, you will have to wait till next year to catch their beauty.
In this sense, these garlic stems we harvested from our own garden (yes, we have a remarkably-sized garlic strip with over a hundred garlic bulbs) are a true luxury of the season.
Rarity increases the worth, doesn’t it?
I started counting down the days till when we could harvest them – timing is important to maximize yield and preserve the flavor because over-ripened stems are woody and chewy – and I bought the meat in preparation. My husband did all the collecting of the visible parts, not following the traditional method (he found it too challenging ?). In the end, thanks to the number of plants, we had just enough for ONE dish.
Bon appetit!