Green Peas and Garlic Scapes

Early treats from the garden are some of the most exciting.  Nothing drives away the doldrums of winter and the dreary rains of spring like the first greens and peas harvested from the garden.  Over the last weekend, we harvested garlic scapes.  These are the flower-like tips of hardneck garlic varieties.  Cutting the scapes encourages greater growth of the garlic bulb, but it also provides nice kitchen fodder for the evening meal.  Think crunchy vegetable, like fresh asparagus... and yes, they are garlicky.  We made two meals over the past weekend that included garlic scapes.  For the second of these meals, we did nothing more than saute sections of the scapes in butter and sprinkle them with some kosher salt.  Then we served them with some rare grilled whitetail deer backstrap, an arugala salad, and homemade marinated mushrooms.  We ate it on our back patio while the mini-HHMM played under a giant green sycamore tree with sunlight filtering through the leaves and a warm early summer breeze keeping the smoke from the Weber away from the table.  Does life get any better than that?

According to the World-Wide-Web, this is a good time to harvest scapes... when they make their first full curl.

One of my favorite ways to put fresh off the vine vegetables to use is in a stir-fry.  Cooking in a carbon steel wok over high heat and for a short period of time is one of the best ways I have found to cook vegetables and still showcase their freshness.  We employed the wok to render us an epic snow pea, garlic scape, and venison stir fry.  Here is the recipe (remember, I don't measure so you probably shouldn't either, use the volumes and quantities described as a rough guideline only.  Just keep adding the stuff listed below until it tastes good):

1 small pile of snow peas picked from the garden
1 slightly smaller pile of fresh garlic scapes, cut in to 1"-2" lengths
1/2 pound venison strip steaks cut from backstraps or hind quarters, shaved in to even, bite-sized chunks
1/4 cup canola or peanut oil
1 tablespoon chili paste, Sriracha, or other Asian chili sauce (adjust to taste)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder, or 3-4 crushed cloves
1 teaspoon ginger powder, or 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon ground mustard

For the marinade: combine the chili paste, fish sauce, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and mustard in a bowl and whisk.  Add the meat and allow to marinade for an hour or more.

Add the oil to the wok and turn the heat to high.  Remove the meat from the marinade (save the liquid) and put the meat in the wok once it starts to smoke.  Stir fry the meat until it is brown on the outside (won't take long) then remove the meat and set aside.  Add the peas and garlic scapes and stir fry for a minute or so.  Add a portion of the left over marinade as a cooking liquid and stir fry for another minute or so.  The vegetables should still be bright green when you remove them from the heat.  Add the meat back into the wok and stir.

Assuming you remembered to start cooking your rice on time, dinner is served.