Gardening for Garnish Garlic Scape & Soup

Here's a snapshot of Elizabeth's parents nursery back in Virginia during high Spring. We were visiting at the end of their growing season and as always, on the hunt for interesting ingredients and flavors to take back to Philly.



This is the main growing greenhouse - you can see the tables filled up with pots of herbs and the odd ornamental plant. Earlier in the season, this house was choked with blooms, covering nearly every surface.



Growing just outside the greenhouse, at the edge of the field, was a huge patch of garlic with numerous garlic scapes poking out from the leaves.




We grabbed a knife and cut off several garlic scapes to take back home with us - having missed alot of the Spring veg at the market, these scapes offered up a remote opportunity to put in a few Spring-inspired dishes before Summer arrived.

We also harvested nearly 3 pounds of fresh asparagus from the garden - we settled on fixing a soup with all the garden offerings.



Back home, we slit the scapes down the center, reserving the pungent bulbs for another use.



Then I flash-fried the scapes into a crispy pile.



I sliced the tips off the asparagus and halved the spears. The rest of the asparagus I boiled until slightly soft in a broth of vegetable stock, along with a diced single small potato, then blitzed the mix a food processor.




The trick to keeping this soup velvety smooth was to push it through a fine-meshed strainer - here you can see the resulting liquid and solids have been separated.




The finished soup was dressed with three or four butter-poached shrimp and then topped with the crisped garlic scapes.



Another variation of the dish used fried bits of thick bacon, fennel fronds, a dollop of Greek yogurt and the asparagus tips to season the soup. Served with a crunchy bread topped with Pecorino cheese, it was a hearty Spring soup plucked straight from the garden.

The Other Kind of Awesome Blossom

Summer time is here again and that means one of our favorite ingredients are in full bloom - zucchini blossoms!

Here's an example of a typical harvest from our patio garden. It's best to pluck these early in the morning and then stand them in cold water in the fridge.

This year we went overboard planting the zucchini & squash in the hopes of extending our growing season.

Although we were careful to only harvest male flowers, we found that over-picking the blossoms caused the plants to give up early and yellow-out before any fruit appeared.

Often times we found several ants crawling around inside the flower, which called for a thorough cleaning - here you can see a flower that's been cleaned and prepped for stuffing.

Here's a typical full-on Sunday dinner incorporating the blossoms - Lamb with crispy seasoned onions, a simple grape tomato salad, a ramekin of squash, topped with bread crumbs & a fried blossom and then two cheese stuffed blossoms.

Here's a closeup of the goat-cheese stuffed blossoms. This year, instead of a heavy tempura-style batter, we're dusting the blossoms in seasoned flour and frying them up as-is. The result is a much lighter fried blossom with all of the great cheese filling.

I know that Headhouse farmer's market has been bringing in some great blossoms lately, so now is the time to experiment - stuff the blossom with a spoonful of your favorite semi-soft cheese, twist the blossom top closed, dip in a batter and then fry till it's golden brown.

Memorial Day Dinner Party - Bebe's BBQ, Seared Scallops & Summer Corn, Balsamic Strawberry Panna Cotta

Clearing out the camera today!

We had a series of small dinner parties in our patio garden over Memorial Day weekend that was a mix of some previous favorites and a few brought in dishes.


Our brother-in-law is particularly addicted to seared scallops, so we grabbed these at WFM (Reading Terminal was closed) and applied a bit of heat. Regular readers will recognize the corn & poblano pepper salad. The little dollops of avocado mousse helped to keep these little guys anchored to the dish.

In the background you can see a bottle of Cantillon Vigneronne, a sharp gueuze that my visiting brother-in-law fell in love with at Monk's - we picked this bottle up at the Foodery...not cheap but we were splurging for our out of town guests.



Speaking of guests, here's a shot of some gorgeous flowers that a family friend brought from her garden (Thanks Michelle!)...perfect centerpiece for the table.




Did I mention that my family hails from Texas? I wanted to prove to them that Philly does food right across the map, even Southern standards like BBQ, so we stopped by Bebe's in the Italian market for some BBQ pork and brisket.

Bebe's doesn't normally sell brisket by the quart but when we told the lady chopping up the BBQ we were building some brisket sliders to go with the pork, not only did she load us up with excellent brisket to go, she also sold us a bag of slider buns...one-stop shopping. By the way, the brisket sliders went fast...what you see above were the lonely remnants of a once proud tray of sliders.




For dessert Elizabeth pulled out another tried & true favorite, the Balsamic Strawberry Panna Cotta. This uses whole milk Greek yogurt (Fage) along with some heavy cream. The strawberries marinate in balsamic vinegar and the panna cotta is topped with lemon zest and cracked black pepper - the little pops of spice and zing played great with the classic, sweet combination of strawberry and balsamic



The chef relaxes! As the evening came on we enjoyed plenty of good cheer & wine... a great start to the summer season. Had a great time everybody...thanks for visiting.