Beer Battered Garlic Scapes

About a month before the garlic bulbs are ready to harvest, they send up green curly shoots, which are the flower of the plant. These get cut off (otherwise the bulb will be smaller, the plant will go to seed, or the bulb won't keep as long), and they're a nice, mild substitute for garlic in whatever you're cooking.

Ingredients:

• Handful of garlic scapes, cut to 4-5" lengths

• 1 cup of beer (I use the shitty stuff people leave in our fridge after a weekend)

• 1 cup all purpose flour

• 2 litres canola or vegetable oil for frying

• Salt

Method:

• Heat the oil to 350 degrees in a pot

• Mix beer, flour, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt together in a bowl, and whisk gently until smooth. It should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, but still liquid enough to drip off slowly.

• You can add powdered spices to the batter as you like

• Dip the garlic scapes in the batter so they're well coated, and put in the hot oil - be careful not to overfill the pot - fry in batches if you have to

• Stir a couple of times to make sure they cook evenly and don't stick together

• When they're a nice golden brown, lift them out with a slotted spoon, drain the excess oil, and put on brown paper or paper towel to dry

• Salt immediately to taste (if you wait even a minute to salt, it won't stick)

• Eat as soon as they're cool enough