Each year we host Garlic Nosh to celebrate the glorious garlic harvest! The reigning champion is Sharon T. Ohmberger’s gluten free chocolate chip cookies! On the same sweet note Jenny Carver created some fabulous garlic ice cream. Slacker Dave dipped garlic cloves in chocolate and I think it was Judy Easley Shutts who took it one step further with the garlic cloves and carmel dipped in chocolate then sprinkled with sea salt. Here is the deal: when you cook garlic it becomes sweet. A whole garlic clove baked long enough becomes a heavenly buttery spread for bread. It is difficult for me to think of many things that are not made more lovely with garlic. It is a staple in cooking pasta dishes, pesto, baba ghanoush, hummus, East Indian dishes, tomato or olive bruschetta and roasted beast. From my college days in Chicago my boyfriend’s favorite pizza was topped with a multitude of garlic cloves~few things better! Alison Krohn and Pamela Cuttlers make amazing pickled garlic cloves. Garlic is one of the most forgiving crops. Plant the cloves in the Fall, the next Summer cut off the scapes and cook them up, then dig the lovely garlic bulbs when the stem starts to get brown (It is oppressively hot on the great plaines so I leave it longer than you should waiting for a reprieve from the heat to harvest them) then hang them up with the stem attached. My mean grandma ate garlic for its medicinal properties every day until she died at 97. While raw garlic has more medicinal properties, cooked garlic is a little piece of heaven. How do you eat garlic?
