Eating from your yard tip~what better time to eat garlic than when most folks are wearing masks and social distancing.
Garlic has long been celebrated for its many medicinal and culinary attributes!
Garlic was one of the ingredients in the legendary thieves vinegar. The story goes that during the black plague four thieves robbed those stricken by the plague, but mysteriously never got ill. When they were finally caught the judge made a deal with them that if they shared their secret they would be killed by a less horrible means.
Garlic is one of the most forgiving crops. Grab some garlic bulbs at your local farmers market. Separate the cloves from the bulb and plant the individual cloves in the ground around August, the next summer cut off the scapes and cook them up, then when the leaves start to get brown dig the lovely garlic bulbs. Hang them up with the stem attached.
While raw chopped or chewed up garlic has more medicinal properties, cooked garlic is a little piece of heaven.
In non~pandemic years we host Garlic Nosh where our friends gather to share lovely garlic creations. The crowd’s favorite is Sharon 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 Judy Easley Shutts took it one step further with the garlic cloves and caramel dipped in chocolate then sprinkled with sea salt.
Here is the deal: when you cook garlic it becomes sweet. A whole garlic bulb baked long enough becomes a heavenly buttery spread for bread.
Alison Krohn and Pamela Cuttlers made amazing pickled garlic cloves. Oh and last year Pam Cutler made the most amazing black garlic by putting garlic on a bed of pine needles in a slow cooker on low for like three weeks. Then she also made some into black garlic power.
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!
If you are looking at a glorious glut of tomatoes, garlic, onions and worried they will rot before you can eat it all, just chop them up and bake them in the oven until they cook down into a smooth sauce. When it cools throw it in the freezer to store the flavors of summer to enjoy when you pull it out of the freezer during a January blizzard.
How do you eat garlic?
- Jill Kuhel
