Another experiment for me that will certainly be on the list for each year from now on. This should appeal to all the garlic growers in particular. I am now down to growing 100 hardneck garlic a year. Each year I'm always looking for something to do with my garlic scapes that I harvest in mid June. I store them in plastic grocery bags with some wet paper towels in the basement fridge and they last a real long time. So with around 75-80 left I decided to experiment and make a spread/dip with them and it turned out great. So far I've had it as a veggie dip, on crackers with smoked oysters and smoked sardines, mixed in pasta after draining it and before adding my Puttanesca sauce and garlic shrimp and today as a spread on a sandwich with some fresh from smoker pulled pork I got from a local food truck called the Smoke Box that I swapped for a bag of smoked bread crumbs.
So out of all my scapes I ended up with 4 cups of trimmed and chopped. I took 2 cups of that in the food processor down to a finer grind, removed it and then added 1 large vidalia onion and a over a cup of chopped wild leeks and ground them down before adding them to the mix. Then I took a half pound of feta cheese, a block of cream cheese, whipped that up and then added a good grind of black pepper and a good 1/4C of EVOO to the mix, enough to soften it up so it will just flow off a spoon at room temp. Then I added all the garlic/onionmix and whipped that for a couple of minutes. Out of the fridge it's definitely thicker. Did up the other batch today as I needed more cream cheese. Very happy how it turned out with a very unique flavour profile, my daughter found it quite strong but still liked it, my only hope now is that it will freeze well as I'll be vacuum sealing at least 10 of the containers and putting them away. In the meantime I'm sure I'll find some other uses for it, I've got some smoked chorizo burgers in the freezer that come to mind. Might make for a good salad dressing base too.
Cheers