Ok, this might be a little late in the season, since scape season is so short and it takes a whole garlic bulb to make one scape, so it might be tricky to find them towards the end of June, but I got really inspired looking at my beautiful garlic scapes and was thinking outside of the box on this one, and wanted to share.
If you haven’t harvested your own garlic scapes, or if you can’t find them on the shelves anywhere, you could substitute green onions, or just leave the green stuff out all together. Either way, this savory hash has a wonderful texture and mouth feel and goes really well as an accompaniment to something off the grill, but could also be a delicious breakfast hash with a few, perfectly, poached eggs on top, maybe drizzled with a little Hollandaise…
The texture of the sweet corn, slightly crisp, buttery potato, and earthy crunch of the scapes, is a wonderful combination. Add to that a slight, tangy sweetness of balsamic vinegar and a velvety, emulsion of creme fraiche and you have a pretty stellar side dish, which almost upstages whatever protein you end up serving it with.
Savory, Sweet Corn, Potato, and Garlic Scape Hash, with Creme Fraiche
- 8-10 Fingerling potatoes cut into bite-sized cubes.
- 5-8 Garlic Scapes (or Scallions) cut into 1 inch lengths
- 2 T butter
- 1 fresh, raw, corn on the cob (using a knife, cut the corn from the cob)
- 1/4 C minced red onion
- 2 T Balsamic Vinegar
- 1/4 C creme fraiche
- 1T canola oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
In a non-stick pan, melt butter until foaming, over medium high heat, swirl to coat bottom of pan.
Add diced potatoes and season with salt and pepper. Leave cooking on one side until slightly browned and crisp, about 3-4 minutes. Shake pan to loosen potatoes, toss and continue cooking until evenly browned and crisp all over. Watch heat so as not to burn potatoes. To check doneness, pierce a larger piece of potato with the tip of a knife. The knife should feel little resistance and potato should fall off of knife when you pick it up.
When done to your liking, put potatoes onto a side dish or metal bowl and set aside.
In the same pan that you cooked the potatoes in, add the canola oil. When hot, toss in red onion and cook until wilted. Then add sweet corn and garlic scapes, or scallions. Season and toss until scapes turn bright green, begin to wilt, and corn kernels should also be wilted and slightly browned.
At this point, drizzle in balsamic vinegar and give the pan a few shakes to coat veggies. Take off heat, and put potatoes back into pan. Your pan should look like this:
For the finish, fold in creme fraiche until veggies are completely coated and creme fraiche is absorbed. Check seasoning and serve.
tpchow 