Comments on: Garlic Scapes Recipe: Garlic Scape Carbonara

By: John

John — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:02:16 +0000

A HIT! Made some adjustments based on what I had. Used asagio and cheap parma blend. Used 50% more scapes but could have tripled them. Added scapes to bacon when it had 4 minutes to cook and then added two handfuls of snap peas a minute later. My teenage daughter who never eats leftovers ate her brothers portion from the fridge during the night.

By: Sarah W. Caron

Sarah W. Caron — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 04:02:04 +0000

So glad you (and your kids!) liked it, Leslie!

By: Leslie Witherspoon

Leslie Witherspoon — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 04:00:40 +0000

Made this for dinner tonight fully expecting a fight from the kids. To my amazement, they all dug in without comment and only looked up to ask for seconds. I will be growing garlic scapes throughout the year if I can manage it. Too tasty!

By: kim

kim — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 21:21:21 +0000

Love love that you cooked them in bacon, i just discovered these this year and i am going crazy, literally, trying NOT to ewat them all raw. Thank you for a beautiful post!

By: Garlic Scape Soup | Feeding Brian

Garlic Scape Soup | Feeding Brian — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 01:46:15 +0000

[...] I discovered garlic scapes last year at the Montclair Farmer’s Market and have been waiting patiently for them to reappear at my new local market in Sunnyside. Low and behold, they did! There are a lot of different scape recipes out there on the good ol’ internet that I want to try such as scape pesto and scape carbonara. [...]

By: friday night dinner « SARAH STUDER

friday night dinner « SARAH STUDER — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:27:17 +0000

[...] stay in last night and cook off as much as we could. That turned out to be only dinner, which was this. I can’t suggest that you make this recipe yourself, since the garlic scape season came and [...]

By: Sarah Caron

Sarah Caron — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 00:15:49 +0000

Again, thank you for your comments — And very interesting on the cast iron! I don’t typically use my cast iron for pasta, but that is certainly good to know.

By: Psipsina

Psipsina — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 00:05:59 +0000

Oh, one other thing – if you use a very heavy pot, like enameled cast iron, to cook the pasta, you don’t need to put it back on the heat. This type of pot holds heat very well, and adding more heat might cause the eggs to scramble.

By: Psipsina

Psipsina — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 00:04:28 +0000

I encourage you to try this with long pasta, because I don’t think pasta shape in any recipe is mere preference. Some treatments lend themselves better to different shapes, and I think you’ll simply get better results with long pasta.

In Italy, carbonara is nearly always served on spaghetti, and there’s a very good reason. To get a creamy sauce, you need to keep the eggs from curdling in scrambled-eggy lumps, and the way to prevent this is to keep the eggs in constant, fast motion. The slipperiness of the long pasta assists with this, whereas a short pasta shape with ridges, holes, ruffles, or doodads where the egg can get caught mean that the egg stays still, and scrambles.

Of course, if you use long pasta, you need to chop the bacon and scapes much finer, and when I chopped the scapes finer, I found I needed twice as many to make their presences known. But who could complain about extra scapes?

By: Sarah Caron

Sarah Caron — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 16:57:56 +0000

Psipsina, you can use any shape/type of pasta you prefer. I really like the way the sauce works with this type of pasta, since it really gets (as you said) into the ridges and curls — it’s a preference. With a long pasta, like linguine or angel hair, the sauce wouldn’t be so integrated into the pasta.