Garlic Obsession

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Recipe:

• Roasted Garlic 
  

Our obsession as gardeners and knowledge seekers continually draws us to totally immerse ourselves in a plant genus. This time, it’s a culinary favorite we can’t live without: garlic (Allium sativum). We found ourselves so enthralled with the history, lore and growing information of this alluring, time-tested herb that we began growing different species and cultivars. We hope you’ll find the information from our garlic expedition a satisfying, inspiring adjunct to gardening with garlic.

Variety, the Spice of Life

In pursuit of information about garlic, we found many informative websites and books (please see our Bookshelf for some). We purchased a variety of different garlics from Bob Anderson of Gourmet Garlic Gardens, asking him for a range of mild to hot, both soft-neck and hard-neck types. Our plans were to grow them in two different regions — Susan in her home garden in Brookeville, Maryland, and Tina Marie in the Kitchen Garden at the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View, Arkansas.

We began our in-depth study of our newly acquired alliums with enthusiasm, thrilled by their exotic names, such as ‘Shantung Purple Turban’, ‘Burgundy Creole’, ‘Spanish Roja’ and ‘Siberian Marbled’, which conjured up cuisines from around the globe.  First, we examined the vast differences in appearance and color of the bulbs, from creamy white to yellow tan, pink, rose and purple striped. Cloves per head ranged from five to 15.

We decided to do a tasting as described by Chester Aaron in his book Garlic is Life (Ten Speed Press, 1996). So we prepared 10 plates, one for each variety of garlic. On each plate we had a roasted clove of that particular variety, bread that we rubbed bruschetta-style with a raw piece of that variety, and a raw clove to taste. We arranged them in order of the mildest to the most pungent, according to the grower’s description. We made a form to record details of each type of garlic, starting with appearance, aroma and taste of the cloves roasted, rubbed on bread and raw.

Shades, Sizes and Flavors, Oh My!

The purple-veined ‘Persian Star’ had 12 medium-sized cloves with a sweet, mild smell. The roasted clove had a slightly grainy texture in the mouth with a mildly sweet, starchy taste. The bruschetta was the mildest we tasted, actually rather delicate, and the raw clove had no burn, with a sweet light flavor of garlic and a raw vegetable crunch. This is a garlic for the meek — a very mild-mannered allium indeed.

On the other end of the spectrum, we found eight tan cloves with purple blotches in a bulb of ‘Vekak’. The aroma was robust with a strong garlic odor. The roasted clove tasted earthy, bitter and root like, reminiscent of a turnip with some heat. The bruschetta had a good, hot, tangy flavor. ‘Vekak’ was the tenth garlic we tasted, and it was really hot! This garlic was wasabi horseradish kind of hot, tonsil-burning, with lingering heat. It made Tina’s eyes water, and Susan broke a sweat across the bridge of her nose. Truly, the tastes in our garlic array ranged from mild to wild.

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