33
37
Turning Japanese
When most people think of Japanese food, the first thing they tend to think of is sushi, but the Japanese are very very fond of grilling, a quick sear to intensify the flavours of the food is the way forward here, a simple teriyaki glaze, or some chilli flakes and sesame oil, as I have used here.
By Marcus Bawdon
Garlic Scapes are a wonderful seasonal ingredient only really available in early Summer as the garlic feels the warmth of the sun, it starts to produce a flower head, if this flowers then it takes a lot of energy away from the developing bulb, so it's good to remove the scape (flowering stem). But what do you do with it? throw it in the compost? or cook and enjoy it!
You can use elephant garlic, regular garlic, wild garlic, shallot or onion scapes here instead, they taste like a mildly garlicy apsparagus alternative, and when charred taste like nothing else.
Simply pick a handful of scapes, and as fresh as you can pop them onto a red hot grill, the Japanese Konro Hibachi I used is a lovely authentic way of grilling little skewers or beautiful simple ingredients like these scapes, the diatomite walls of the grill keep the intense heat of the lumpwood charcoal directed towards the food.
Simply drizzle over a little seasme oil onto the scapes, a sprinkle of Togarashi chilli flakes, a lovely Japanese chilli seasoning and grill for a few minutes, turning occasionally until charred and soft. I served mine with some simple charred pepper and rice. But these would go great alongside some grilled wagyu steaks too!
The video of this cook is below, hope you enjoy, and take a moment to subscribe to the CountryWoodSmoke YouTube channel.
The beautiful Konro grill was from Chef's Locker and is a seriously beautiful grill.
http://www.chefslocker.co.uk/konro-grill.html