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Spring is the time for green garlic. Look quick, because it will be gone from the farmers markets in the next week or so. I've never used it before and so I decided to buy a bunch a try a few things.
I did try some straight green garlic butter sauce on cod earlier in the week, but it occurred to me that maybe I should combine garlics to create something new. I actually wanted to go crazy with a four garlic scampi: regular, roasted, green, and black garlics. I still might due that later in the week, but for now I restrained myself and stuck to green and black, figuring it sounded enticing.
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| drying on paper towels |
I no longer have pasta in my house. I've started some new diet rules which includes not pasta, rice, white potatoes in my home. I wanted a linguini, though, and found a simple way to make zucchini linguini which was not only easy, but super healthy and fresh. It's a paleo recipe since folks on paleo diets don't eat grains. The zucchini is julienned, drained and squeezed of excess water, and then served without evening having to cook it. It was surprisingly good.
Here you see the green garlic as you would find it at the market. It's starting to look like garlic you know - with lots of individual cloves - but it's still green. Farmers will pull extra garlic from their fields in order to thin out the crop and give room for the leftover garlic to grow.
This is a picture of the fermented black garlic that I had from last year. I still had a package in the cupboard and decided it was time to pull it out and play with it again. I bought it straight off of Amazon.com. (Last year's recipes: Black Garlic Brownies and Black Garlic Poke)
Green and Black Garlic Shrimp Scampi with Zucchini Linguini
1 lb of fresh shrimp, peeled
1/4 cup of ghee or clarified butter
2 green garlic, chopped, including most of green shoots
1-2 cloves of black garlic
1/4 cup of white wine
salt
4 zucchini, peeled and julienned
Prepare the zucchini: Place a folded paper towel at the bottom of a colander. Toss the julienned zucchini with a tablespoon of salt and place on top of paper towel to drain. Set aside for 15-20 minutes. It is important to get out as much water as possible. Remove from colander and, with fresh, dry paper towels, squeeze out as much water as possible from the zucchini. Quickly toss the zucchini strands to fluff them up and plate.
Scampi:
Pat shrimp dry with paper towels. In a skillet melt half the ghee over medium heat. Add half of the green garlic and the shrimp and saute and toss until shrimp is cooked, about 2-3 minutes. Remove shrimp to a side plate. Add the remaining ghee and green garlic to the hot skillet. Lower temperature to medium low so as not to burn the garlic. Add black garlic bulbs and mash them and stir into the butter mixture. Pour in white wine, stir until heated. Turn of the heat. Add back the shrimp for just a quick reheat in the sauce.
Scoop shrimp and sauce over prepared julienne zucchini noodles.
