One hundred elephant garlic scrapes have been stolen from the fields of Drummond House in Baltray, Co Louth.

What are elephant garlic scrapes, I hear you ask?

They are the 6ft tall stalk of the elephant garlic plant that produce an edible flower Michelin-starred chefs go nuts for. The garlicky flowers are used to adorn dishes in the best restaurants in Ireland and abroad. Around €700 worth of the Drummond House crop was stolen in the dead of night from beside the house.

But for all their cleverness, the thieves have left themselves with a pretty unsaleable haul. They stole the scrapes before flowering and after the stem turned woody, making them neither edible nor decorative.