Was there ever a crop so commonly used and yet so underappreciated as garlic? It’s a challenge to find a savory recipe that doesn’t include this unassuming little allium. We may eventually tire of tomatoes in the summer or long for fresh lettuce in January, but garlic is a year-round staple, a necessity that knows no season. It has been used as both food and medicine for thousands of years. No kitchen can be considered fully stocked without it, from Virginia to Itay to China. Omit it from your favorite recipe and risk something unbalanced and bland!
Our unsung hero is a descendant of the lily and a cousin to the onion, sharing the same sulfur compounds that make it both pungent and flavorful. It has two distinct subtypes, the hard neck Ophios garlics and the soft neck Sativum. Ophios garlics are the ancestor variety, and Sativums have been created through centuries of cultivation and artificial selection. The hard neck types have a woody central stalk, fewer cloves, and fewer layers of papery skin. Soft neck garlic varieties are better for storage, and have a milder flavor. Within the five varietal garlic groups recognized by botanists, there are hundreds of different cultivars. So far this season, we’ve sent you fresh spring garlic (the special soft neck Inchelium Red variety) and garlic scapes, which are the immature stem of the hard neck garlic.
Farmer Collin tells us that harvest time is when all but 5 or so of the leaves on the garlic stem are bent over, appearing lifeless. This is just enough time for the bulbs to plump and mature without bursting through the papery outer skin that allows us to dry and cure them. Hard neck garlic can be hung to dry; in past years, it has covered entire interior walls of our barn like strangely textured wallpaper. This season, we have it carefully laid out on wooden pallets under powerful fans to combat the Virginian humidity. Our hard neck varieties are Italian Red, German Red, and “Uncle Hank's".
Though they have fewer cloves and a shorter shelf-life in storage, hard neck garlics endear themselves to chefs and home cooks alike with their complex, almost spicy flavor. These are the garlics that bring mouth-watering dimension to meats, sauces, and vinaigrettes. Swiss chard may be the most beautiful, kohlrabi the most unusual, but the dusty little cream-colored garlic bulb is the vegetable MVP. A
Quick Video Tutorial for Peeling Garlic:
https://pinchofyum.com/how-to-peel-garlic
Eat well, be well, and season your food generously!
Ashley, Collin, John, Rory, Nate, James, Lex, Alexandra, Julia, Michelle, the smiling black dogs, the clucking hens, the growing piglets, and the drying garlic
