In Pursuit of Garlic (5 page)

Eat it. Love it. The odds are high that garlic will love you in return. Can you say that about thyme? About sage? About arugula? About your child?

CHESTER AARON,
The Great Garlic Book

FOR MANY years Anna’s sauce replaced my mother-in-law’s in its various Canadian-style versions as my new official pasta sauce. I adhered religiously to Anna’s method and never added green peppers, celery, or other exotica. And I never altered its secret ingredients: an
entire bulb
of garlic—when I could get my hands on the real thing, that is (I’d rescued the bottle of dried stuff Anna unceremoniously threw into the garbage can and used it till it was gone, then bought another one and another one)—and the grated Parmesan, melted right into the mixture. Sometimes, I confess, I was reduced to using the supermarket shaker can. Back in the mid-sixties, it was difficult to buy whole wedges of fresh Parmesan, but as new Canadians kept arriving to lay the bricks or pour the foundations of the new houses in Toronto’s burgeoning subdivisions or to open new restaurants, stores began to stock it. It was expensive—and it still is—but its full, nutty flavor and moist freshness is worth every penny.

As for garlic, it started to show up on some greengrocers’ shelves, but it didn’t look like the one Anna had brought to my kitchen. Hers had almost filled my palm, its shiny skin striped with purple. The all-white store-bought ones were piddlingly small and too often had green shoots in the center and rotten cloves that turned into gray powder inside their papery covering as soon as I tried to pull them off.

But after years of searching for good garlic, I got lucky.

Although we lived in a WASPy subdivision, my kids were bused to the local Catholic school with dozens of Italian and Portuguese children and were invited to lots of rec-room birthday parties. When I’d pick them up after the festivities, I was invariably invited to join the many celebrating aunts, uncles, and cousins for a glass of homemade wine and a slice or two of garlic-infused sausage. I had mixed feelings about these visits—much as I wanted to make friends with the parents of my children’s pals, it was like having a conversation with a dozen Annas at once. It was easier with the men because they had usually learned enough English to communicate, but their wives stayed at home with their large families or, like Anna, helped other people with their cleaning and had less opportunity to learn or speak English.

Nevertheless, I never turned down an invitation, partly out of politeness and partly because I was curious. One evening, after I’d drunk two tumblers of homemade wine and liberally helped myself from a platter heaped with rounds of sausage, shavings of cheese, piles of glossy black olives and marinated artichoke hearts—new to me—and after I’d enthusiastically exclaimed over the little folds of salty pink ham I ate so ravenously, the father of the house asked if I’d like to see the
cantina.

A SECOND kitchen in the basement! This was new to me, too, but I decided Anna must have had one as well—maybe all Italians did—for preserving and storing her tomatoes. There was a sink, a stove and big pots, a long counter, a utensil rack, and shelves and shelves of bottled tomatoes, pickles, fruits, and any number of vegetables. It was rather like the root cellar on my other grandma’s farm. Hanging from the rafters were several dark pink hams, which the birthday boy’s dad proudly told me he had prepared himself. “This is my prosciutto.”

“Wow!” I said. “I had no idea you could
make
ham! I get mine sliced at the supermarket.” Then I caught sight of a dozen or so hanging ropes of garlic.

“Did you grow all that?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yes.” Did he think I was a pampered Canadian idiot who’d drunk too much of his wine? I was feeling a bit like one. He took down a rope and showed me how the bulbs, some pure white and some striped purple, like Anna’s, were twisted together. “You just take the long stalks while they’re still soft and tie them up,” he said. Then he reached for a big knife and with his work-callused hands cut off a big bulb and handed it to me. “Will you take this for your
cucina?
You like the food so much, maybe you’d like to try it...”

He seemed anxious, as if he feared a gift of garlic was in bad taste, and I fell all over myself trying to tell him about Anna’s garlic and how I’d been trying to find some like it in the stores, with no luck. I burbled on, thanking him profusely and feeling more than a little foolish.

But he must not have thought too badly of me because every few weeks for several months he sent an unblemished globe of garlic to school with his son, Aldo, for my son to pass along to me. I treasured the garlic and used it carefully, saving most of it for Anna’s sauce.

· BARBECUE TIPS FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY ·

England’s upper class had at least one garlic lover in medieval times: Alexander Neckham, theologian, poet, grammarian, biblical scholar, gourmand, and accomplished cook, born in 1157, on the same night as Richard I. In fact, Alexander shared his mother’s milk with Richard, since his mother was Richard’s wet nurse. Because of his talents as a cook and a storyteller, Alexander was a popular host of dinner parties. He lived for several years in France and could offer cooking advice that would stand up among today’s backyard barbecue chefs.

“A roast of pork is prepared diligently,” he wrote, “[if it is] frequently basted, and laid on the grid just as the hot coals cease to smoke. Let condiments be avoided other than pure salt or a simple garlic sauce. It does not hurt to sprinkle a cut-up capon with pepper. [It will] be quite tender turned on a long spit, but it needs a strong garlic sauce, diluted with wine or verjuice.”

· KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY ·

Garlic powder may not have the lively taste or health benefits of fresh garlic, but it can come in handy as a last-minute flavor fix in the kitchen. To maintain at least some of its goodness, commercially produced garlic powder is cut and dried at about 122°F (50°C) and no higher than 140°F (60°C), then crushed. It’s at least twice as concentrated as fresh garlic, and the taste is a little different because of the sulfur compounds released during the cutting and drying. But the potential for some allicin production remains, and most dried powders contain more of the benefits of fresh garlic than do the blanched or acidified whole cloves sold in packages. Naturally, quality varies among products. Garlic powder has a long shelf life and maintains its qualities for three years or more if it’s kept dry.

· ANNA’S SAUCE ·

Anna didn’t use measurements when she made her ambrosial sauce, but I developed rule-of-thumb instructions so that I could pass a recipe along to people who asked. Instead of tomato purée I often use canned plum tomatoes—a 28-ounce can plus a 19-ounce can—puréed in my food processor. The taste and texture of the sauce varies slightly every time you make it—it depends on the thickness of the purée and the sweetness of the tomatoes.

1 medium onion

1 whole bulb garlic

2 tbsp olive oil

two 25-ounce jars tomato purée, about 6 cups

1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
(use 1 tbsp or more to taste of dried basil if fresh is unavailable)

salt and pepper to taste

Peel and chop onion into small dice. Separate the garlic bulb into cloves, peel them, and chop finely. In a large saucepan, heat the oil and sauté onion until it begins to color—don’t brown. Add garlic and sauté just until it’s fragrant.

Add tomato purée and bring to a gentle boil. Turn heat down, cover saucepan with a lid, leaving it partly open, and simmer gently for about 45 minutes, no longer than an hour. Cooking time depends on the thickness of the bottled purée; because they have more liquid, canned tomatoes need about an hour to thicken slightly. Add Parmesan and stir till it melts. Turn off heat and add basil, salt, and pepper. Allow sauce to sit for a day before using it for pasta al pomodoro: boil a pasta of your choice to just short of al dente; drain and return to the pot with a little of the pasta water and a dash of olive oil and a knob of butter. Cook until mixture thickens a bit, then fold in some of the tomato sauce—don’t drown the pasta; the Italians never do! Garnish with lots of grated Parmesan and more chopped basil.

· NO GARLIC FOR FIDO ·

Epicurean cats and dogs may love garlic as much as humans, but don’t let them eat it. Even a bit of garlic in the leftover roast beef can cause hemolytic anemia in a small animal, destroying the red blood cells. The cells become rigid and rupture, then leak hemoglobin into the animal’s urine.

Planting garlic when the moon is below the horizon and gathering it when it is in conjunction prevents it from having an objectionable smell.

PLINY THE ELDER

Despite my vows
and my desire for fresh, juicy garlic, I didn’t try to grow my own. I was more involved with flowers than with vegetables, but deep down I was also intimidated by the idea of growing garlic. I knew nothing about it, and neither did my friends. I didn’t want to ask Anna (the language problem), and I felt awkward about asking Aldo’s dad. Then more white bulbs of garlic started appearing on grocery store shelves, and the urgency to grow it passed. My flower gardens expanded, and I had no space for garlic anyway.

But one day many years later, after Joe and I had parted and I had a new husband and a new house with flowers filling the front and back yards, my friend Judith came knocking on my door with a basket of huge, healthy cloves of garlic.

“You can plant what’s in this basket or you can eat it,” she said in her forthright way. “But since you have such a big garden now, I think it’s time you grew it.”

“But I don’t know how to grow garlic. And where will I plant all these?” I moaned, pointing to the dozens of pristine white cloves. They were fat little crescents like the sections of a mandarin orange, fairly bursting with energy, and I could feel them calling to me. What I really wanted to do was eat them. But Judith had thrown down the gauntlet. It was time for me—garlic lover, gardener, cook—to grow the stuff.

“Okay, you can eat half of them,” Judith conceded, taking a closer look at all the cottagey flowers jammed together in my garden. My philosophy is that planting close keeps the weeds out—or at least out of sight under the tightly spaced perennials—but Judith is a landscape designer and she knows an overplanted garden when she sees one. A little cloud passed over her face. “It’s going to be hard to find space for even half a dozen cloves here,” she said. “But we’re going to make this work even if these aren’t optimum conditions. Garlic is so tough they’ll likely come up like gangbusters next year.”

Judith is a positive person. I knew she was rethinking her decision to give me the garlic left over from her fall planting—a robust variety called ‘Fish Lake #3,’ which she’d ordered from Ted Maczka, an eccentric octogenarian grower in Ontario known as the Fish Lake Garlic Man (he’d sent the garlic to her in several waxed milk cartons)—but with her let’s-deal-with-it attitude, she surveyed my garden and found its good points. “You’ve got lots of sun here, which is good—they like sun—and though your soil is pretty sandy, you’ve added lots of compost and it’s looking okay. Garlic isn’t choosy, but it
does
prefer something a bit richer and loamier.”

Her eagle eye found about a dozen spots with
praaw-ba-bly
enough space to allow the cloves to grow into bulbs. She waved her hand toward the spots, which weren’t much wider than the coffee mug I was holding, between low-growing perennials like thyme and Carpathian bellflower (
Campanula carpatica
).

“These garlic guys have skinny leaves, and they need all the sun they can get,” Judith said. “They need as little competition as possible, please.” She raised her eyebrow. “Might you consider... aah, thinning out a couple of plants to make more room? Some of them are real spreaders.”

I’d already thought of that and was ready to make a little space for my new visitors, especially if it meant lovely garlic to eat next year. Visions of Anna’s and Aldo’s dad’s luscious garlic had started to dance in my head.

But on second thought, I couldn’t dig up huge swaths of plants from my new front-yard garden to create optimum conditions for garlic, and in its present state my garden certainly didn’t offer such conditions, as Judith had made clear. Still, she was right—it was time I grew some garlic. I’d been cooking with it for decades with little understanding of where it came from or how it was cultivated, even though I grew a few other vegetables, like tomatoes and beans and lettuces and herbs. I started them from seed in my basement and grew them in big pots on my driveway and my front steps, as well as in corners of my garden. I’d found places for them, hadn’t I? I was also unhappy with the garlic generally sold in supermarkets—those small dried-up bulbs from China—and used garlic powder as a last resort.

Judith grew garlic successfully in her small city garden, so why couldn’t I?

I BIT the bullet and pulled out a few filler annuals that weren’t going to live much longer anyway, since it was late October. I also dug out some self-seeded lady’s mantle and rampant gaura. I plunged a sharp trowel into the soil and excavated little holes for the garlic cloves. (“Pointed end up, please,” Judith sang out. “Otherwise you’ll have bent stems next year—I mean the garlic will...” She laughed.) It was worth getting rid of a few overgrown plants to try something new. Anyway, my garden needed a different look, which a few garlic plants might provide. And sometimes the best things you do are unplanned, even thrust upon you by others. Goodness knows I loved garlic’s cousins, the ornamental alliums, which I grew in clumps and as single exclamation points among the flowers. And wow, if this experiment worked...

I have had a whole field of garlic planted... so that when you come we may be able to have many of your favorite dishes.

In a letter from BEATRICE D’ESTE, the Duchess of Milan, to her sister Isabella, the Marchioness of Mantua, 1491

JUDITH AND I managed to squeeze in about two dozen cloves that day. (I ate the rest, but not that day and not all in one day. They were delicious.) After we finished planting we sat on the steps and celebrated with a glass of wine while Judith assured me that garlic was actually one of the easiest of plants to grow as long as you met most of its needs—which is true of all plants, when it comes down to it.

“In many ways garlic is like a tulip,” she said. “You plant it in fall and it grows some roots and then lies underground for a cool sleep and wakes up when spring comes. The only difference is you don’t dig up the tulips and eat them—well, there are more differences than that, but the principle is the same.” She went on with more tips about growing, harvesting, and storing garlic. It sounded simple, and as we sipped and looked at the setting sun, I grew more and more confident that I’d have a lovely crop of garlic just like Judith’s next summer. But Judith was thinking about what I needed to do to harvest at least
some
garlic.

“If you want to fertilize them, they like a little nitrogen,” she said, going over a mental checklist. “I use blood meal mixed with the soil when I plant them.” She advised me to dig them up when half the leaves had yellowed, and to make sure I stored them in a cool place.

“I guess I should keep what we don’t eat right away in the fridge,” I offered.

“Heavens no!” said Judith, looking horrified. “Put them in the fridge and they’ll think it’s winter again and start the growing process all over. They’ll sprout! Keep them cool, not cold.”

I figured I’d worry about that next year. “Now, what else?” Judith pondered. I topped up her glass. “Mmmm, yes—here’s something important. In about mid-June you should cut off the scapes—the tall flower stems—so that the energy goes into bulb production. But damn, I love those scapes—they’re the coolest things since TV. They’re so entertaining as they weave around, curling and then straightening like magic. So I leave them on, and I don’t find it affects my bulbs that much.”

She turned to me with a wry grin. “Well, all this is according to me,” she said and then drained her glass. “For the expert stuff, you might want to read up on raising garlic. Right now it’s time for me to go.”

“One more thing,” she said as she backed out of the driveway. “Don’t forget to lay on a mulch of some chopped leaves once the ground has frozen. You want to keep those little cloves warm and safe.”

At that moment, even though my garlic cloves were safely tucked into their beds, I felt a twinge of nervous anticipation. I was a garlic virgin, left to nurture Judith’s gifts on my own and unsure of how to go about it but filled with excitement about what was to come.

Oh, that miracle clove! Not only does garlic taste good, it cures baldness and tennis elbow, too.

LAURIE BURROWS GRAD, food writer

OVER THE winter I completely forgot about those little cloves snuggled under the ground. I’m sure they didn’t care. After all, they had a strong heritage of survival behind them, and they didn’t need support from me.

My memory wasn’t even jogged by the sight of garlic shoots peeking through the ground in spring. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, like too many gardeners who live to regret their laziness, I hadn’t taken the time to mark the spots where Judith and I had planted the garlic the previous October. Second, I mistook the garlic shoots for the drumstick allium (
A. sphaerocephalon
) bulbs I’d planted weeks before we put in the garlic (which also weren’t labeled, I might add). If I’d known what garlic looks like when it pokes its nose out of the ground, I would have recognized this as a bad sign.
A. sphaerocephalon
is a skinny ornamental with flowers like purple eggs at the end of long, wiry stems—dainty stems not at all like garlic’s more robust ones. I like them planted singly or in threes as accent points throughout the garden, and I’d put in a couple of dozen. It was a few weeks before it dawned on me there were too many of them showing in my garden.

Could some of these be the garlic Judith and I planted? Is this what garlic looks like?

I phoned Judith right away. “This doesn’t sound right,” she said. “The shoots should be thicker, sort of stubby looking, but they could be small because they’re so crowded. Never mind—give them some more room if you can, keep the ground weeded around them, give them a jolt of fertilizer, and you should harvest some small bulbs this summer.”

Judith, ever the optimist. My confidence faded—this wasn’t the gangbusters crop she had predicted. I didn’t even know which plants were garlic and which were ornamental alliums. Then I came across a single fat garlic shoot I’d overlooked in an out-of-the-way space by a pathway. He was a beautiful boy—for how could I think of him as anything other than a boy, with his thick stem thrusting so strongly out of the ground? He grew vigorously, with a rounded fleshy top of grassy green over a vertically veined base, and within a few days he was taller. Once he reached thumb height, his fleshy top grew into a stem that lengthened and leafed out in even spaces, sending flat blades to float out laterally from perfectly incised cuts on the stem. Now this was garlic! Each leaf was placed exactly halfway around the stem from the one below it. My boy was a marvel of balanced design.

Like many beautiful boys, however, his appearance was deceiving. I’d done my homework and had read up on garlic, as Judith suggested, and I knew that this stem was not a stem at all but a tube or sheath of leaves that originated from the real stem underground, which doesn’t look like any stem I’ve ever seen. It’s a flat plate, called the stem plate, from which thin white roots grow downward as it pushes the leaf sheath upward. The garlic cloves—each of which contains all the elements needed to grow a whole new plant the next year, assuming we don’t eat them—develop in a cluster around the leaf sheath on top of the stem plate, creating the bulb. When the bulb has been harvested and cured, the stem plate becomes the hard, scarred surface from which you snap off the cloves to use for dinner. I’d seen hundreds of garlic bulbs in my kitchen, and I never knew that hard base was actually the stem!

It was the leaves pushing up through the center of the sheath that accounted for my boy’s quick growth—the second leaf emerged hastily from inside the first one, then the third from inside the second, like chorus girls popping out of a cake, rising higher and higher. As Judith had said, the leaves are important, even precious. Because there are so few—sometimes fewer than a dozen—losing just one leaf can reduce the size of the bulb by as much as 13 percent. A plant can lose leaves by amputation or by shade—hence the need to grow garlic with space around it and to weed assiduously.