Pickled Garlic Seeds...who'd a thunk it?

This is the view out my kitchen window, and look what I found over at Gothamist. I just love it when that happens.

Recipe of the Week: Pickled Garlic Seeds

After garlic scape season is over, garlic flowers are ready, full of garlic seeds. You don't usually see these at the greenmarkets unless you ask a kind farmer to bring them in for you, but if you do, they are just wonderful, a rare treat.

The garlic flowers are bursting with seeds like tiny cloves of garlic, packed all around the surface of the spherical flower. When you get them home, it takes some work to pull the seeds off the flowers, but you can pickle and can them and enjoy the tiny intense bursts of flavor for the rest of the year.

Pickled Garlic Seeds(from Baconbit of Greenmarket Report, who adapted it from The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich)

1/2 C white wine vinegar
1/2 C white wine
1 small dried chile pepper
1 small thyme sprig
1 small rosemary sprig
1 small bay leaf
10 black peppercorns
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp pickling salt (a finely ground salt with no additives; you can use an equivalent amount by weight of kosher salt instead)
1 C garlic seeds

Put all of the ingredients except for the garlic seeds into a large non-reactive saucepan. Bring to a boil, then gently boil for 5 minutes. Add the garlic seeds, then return to a boil, cover the pan, and remove from heat.

Let stand at room temperature for 24 hours.

Sterilize canning jars in boiling water, then set out to dry a bit.
Bring the pickle to a boil again, then divide the seeds and the liquid among your sterile jars.
Process the jars in boiling water for at least 15 minutes, then set them out on the counter. As the jars cool, you can hear the lids pop down as the vacuum seal is formed in each. Store them in a cool dark space, and wait at least a week before tasting.



(And yes, those are last year's tomato cages, full of weeds. I moved to the front this year. Haven't gotten around to cleaning those up. It happens.)