These little curly gems are plentiful this time of year here in New Jersey.  They are curly little garlic flower stocks that ironically do not flower.  Scapes, like ramps, can only be found for a short time and that time is NOW in the Jerz.  I found them at the Summit Farmer’s Market last Sunday and I received a bunch of them from the Just Farmed program out of Westfield.  At any rate, I have a ton of them now so luckily they freeze well.  I threw some in the freezer but I’ve been enjoying them in all sorts of different ways.  One basic way to use them is to simply toss them into a salad, finely chopped.  I also made a mayonnaise with scapes that turned out great.  A few weeks back, I posted a recipe for Basil Aioli and the process for making the scape mayonnaise is basically exactly the same.  I’ll post the recipe below.  However, if you are lucky enough to get your hands on a few scapes, you can add them into dishes just as you would regular garlic.  For me, they have a much more mellow flavor than regular raw garlic and evidently the scape flavor mellows even more as they age (frozen or not).  Hopefully though, we can all enjoy this brief seasonal vegetable together as it’s super tasty and, let’s face it…they are curly and fun to boot!

Scape mayonnaise recipe follows after the jump.  Enjoy!

Scape Mayonnaise:

Ingredients:

2 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

2-3 scapes, chopped roughly into small pieces

1 Cup grapeseed oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Instructions:

• Place egg yolks, scapes, and Dijon mustard in food processor and process until scapes are in little pieces.
• While food processor is still on, take grapeseed oil and begin to drizzle oil into the processor bowl slowly, drop by drop.
• SLOWLY continue to drizzle oil into the processor bowl until finished, stopping and starting the flow of the oil thus allowing the mayonnaise time to integrate the oil into itself.  This will take more time than you might think…maybe a good five minutes or so for one cup of oil.
• Once finished, stop the food processor and hopefully you have a nice, thick mayonnaise that is light green in appearance.
• If you do not have a thick mayonnaise, then either you added the oil too quickly or your eggs weren’t as fresh as they might be.  Either way, simply take the mayonnaise and remove it from the processor bowl. Add another egg yolk to the processor bowl and turn processor on.  Once yolk is mixed, SLOWLY begin adding the mayonnaise back into the food processor drop by drop and continue on as instructed above.  This should do the trick if there was an issue.
• Once finished, add a bit of salt and freshly ground pepper and mix completely.  Taste and adjust based on personal preference to seasoning level.

Serve the scape mayonnaise as a dip with fresh veggies or use as you would any mayonnaise.