It can be a bit annoying for a seasonal cook reading Northern Hemisphere food blogs. Like what the hell are “garlic scapes“, known for their extreme curliness, which are bursting into their brief season in the Northern Hemisphere now? Are they - as I strongly suspect - the same dead straight thingies that are imported into Australia from China and sold as “garlic stems”? Inquiring cooks need to know.

Another recent mention of these garlic scapes came from Heidi Swanson who lives in San Francisco and writes the humungously popular 101 Cookbooks. Last week she published a recipe for Broccoli Pesto and Fusilli Pasta.
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Phil Lees writes a terrific blog called The Last Appetite and has just started a world food blog at the SBS television site, cooking from the Food Safari back catalogue. It should be fantastic, as his writing is characterised by great humour and expertise. I have already left a comment asking him to do something about Maeve O’Meara’s shirts, so no need for you to worry about that.

Coincidently I caught the last bit of SBS Food Safari last night, where O’Meara explored Lebanese food. The last item, running quickly over the credits, was a breakfast pizza called manouche. Owen started groaning about how good it looked - and as we’d coincidently had pizza for dinner and there was coincidently some dough left over I told him he was in luck.

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