👋+: Garlic Scape Focaccia & Rhubarb White Chocolate Cookies

something different + a sneak peek for paid subscribers

Allô! 👋

Welcome (back) to seasonal sundays, the supplement to good food at home that takes a closer peek at produce at its peak — with a short introduction, at least one recipe, and a (sometimes related) cooking Q&A. Thank you for reading! If you’d like to invite a friend to subscribe, annual subscriptions are currently discounted until the end of the season.

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Happy Sunday (last one this spring)!

This week I’m doing something a little different.

Instead of the usual newsletter format, today you’ll be getting a recipe for paid subscribers plus advanced access to a recipe that will be published on the website later this month. (The version you get here is more detailed than the one that’ll eventually be shared publicly for all, and you also get an easy-to-print PDF if you’d like to save and easily access the recipe later.)

Let me know what you think, and I hope you enjoy today’s recipes and Q&A!

— Simone⁣

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The focus in this week’s recipe are garlic scapes, the flowering offshoots of garlic bulbs trying to go to seed. Most garlic growers want their plants to focus their energy on growing big juicy bulbs instead of producing gorgeous flowers, so their towering tendrils are sliced before their buds can erupt: enter, the twirling garlic scape.

seasonality

Late spring, early summer.

availability

Farmers’ markets or farm stands, your or a friend’s garden, and specialty grocery stores.

shopping tips

Look for firm, bright green, loopy tendrils with closed buds at their tips, and juicy cuts at the base of the stem.

storage

Keep in a vase of water, like flowers, and use within three to five days of buying or harvesting (or, tuck into a barely damp cloth before popping into an airtight container in the fridge, like herbs, and store for up to a week or two depending on freshness and moisture levels).

taste

Like garlic, but milder and “greener”.

uses

Prepare as you would green onions or chives (or, if you love garlic, as you would green beans and asparagus); to preserve a large bunch, consider making pesto or compound butter.

fun little story: I actually bought green garlic, popped it into water, and soon noticed it growing buds — two weeks later, still cooking with their leaves but leaving the stems and root intact, I had scapes!

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garlic scape, roast garlic & thyme focaccia ✨

If you don’t have access to sourdough starter, I must apologise. You have my permission to skip on down ahead to the next recipe (or use the toppings I suggest here together with your favourite yeast-based recipe).

My favourite focaccia toppings/add-ons are (so far) the undefeated combination of kalamata olive and rosemary, but a close second is tomato (more specifically, the tomato oregano focaccia sold at Luciano Foods in Ottawa’s Little Italy), and I have yet to say no to a potato onion combo.

When I make focaccia at home, I try to use whatever is looking best at the moment. This week, that meant garlic scapes and some flowering thyme from the garden. (I didn’t have lots of scapes — only three, to be precise — so that’s where the idea for roast garlic boost came in).

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INGREDIENTS
makes approx. one quarter sheet pan of focaccia (24.5 x 37 cm or 9½ x 14½″), 4cm tall