Charred Asparagus With Green Garlic Chimichurri

What is green garlic?

Green garlic is the young garlic you'll find at the market in early spring (i.e. now) it's not in season long. It looks like a scallion with a larger bulb: the flavor is much milder and sweeter than mature garlic. You can eat the green offshoots, they are fantastic grilled.

A great combination. I served it last night as a salad counterpoint to fish burgers. Two notes: you can easily take this sauce in the chermoula direction by adding preserved lemon (1/4 to 1/2 lemon, rinsed), lemon juice instead of vinegar, and a little heat and other spicingng or herbs as you like; it's good to chop the herbs etc very finely, almost muddled, and a mezzaluna works well for this. These salsas verdes are very flexible and can shift around depending on what's available.

The cooking worked perfectly in the broiler. There was too high a proportion of oil in the dressing for us. Loved the olives.

Green garlic is available year-round if you just ahead. Plant garlic cloves in a pot of potting soil, water, place in sun, wait about 8 weeks, and harvest. If your garlic begins to sprout, don't discard it; plant it instead. There's no reason to pay an exorbitant price for something many people throw away. Do the same thing with pearl onions that sprout, and use them as scallions.

What is the purpose of dirtying a separate baking sheet in Step 2? Is there a reason you shouldn't perform Step 2 in the pan you use for broiling in Step 3?

I added some toasted pine nuts -great addition

Drizzled a couple tbsp of oil on asparagus spears, seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic power (could have used fresh, but didn’t want it to burn). Baked in the oven @375 for about 12 minutes or so (grill isn’t set up right now). Combined all finely chopped herbs (without oil) and topped the hot asparagus with feta, olives and herbs. It was a weeknight and I didn’t want to break out the food processor. The flavors here are absolutely top notch, with or without tweaks. Winner.

This is so delicious. I made it for an appetizer for a friend's dinner party when I didn't have time to go to the store. I used conventional fresh garlic, 3 cloves, dried parsley (yeah, I know, but my fridge was running on empty). I took it to my friend's and I have never seen an appetizer go as fast with oohs and aaahs, and scraping even of the remaining flavored oil after the asparagus was consumed. One of the fastest appetizers you'll ever make.

Not sure why water is called for in the chimichurri recipe; I used only 1/8 cup and still found the mixture too watery, even before adding any vinegar.

Used large asparagus spears with the lower ends peeled and they cooked beautifully under the broiler, just took a little more time and some turning. (Usually I pan-grill asparagus, but I liked that this method allowed me to cook much more at a time.)

One more thing: worth splurging on goat milk feta!

Scapes are the bud/flower part of the plant when it is older and much more developed. Green garlic is usually, though not always, pulled while it is still one shoot, rather than bulbous.

This is amazing. Roasted under broiler.
I excluded the water as written in another reviewers note. Glad I did. Next time I'd lighten up on the oil.
Also, with this amount of sauce you can use 2 lbs of asparagus.
Added pine nuts, and chopped the Kalamata olives.
Put extra feta on the table.
Didn't have green garlic. Used regular, and it was great.

Extremely good, hot or cold the next day, with or without the feta and olives. I threw some of the green garlic in the grill pan with the asparagus, so it has both cooked and raw. But why would you put water in the dressing when it's going on asparagus, already a watery veg? I did not and did not miss it.

Made this with green beans, curly leaf parsley, and regular garlic-- will make it again and again. Even in the fifteen or so minutes it took to prep and cook the rest of the meal, the flavors of the chimichurri really came together; they married and mellowed (in the case of the garlic) beautifully. DON'T be afraid to stir in extra herbs (fresh thyme made it into mine). DO make extra-- you will want to spoon it over everything on your plate.

As I couldn't find green garlic here in Berlin (Germany), I used fresh bear's (or wild) garlic ("Bärlauch"), which is also in season at the moment. Added some spring onion, too, to recreate what I thought might be the taste of green garlic – actually, never had it before. The sauce came out nicely, but I should have gone easy on the salt, as the olives (Kalamata) and feta (Bulgarian) already contain a lot oif it.