One never eats enough garlic! It's been used for thousands of years both as a flavoring and for medicinal purposes (Chinese scholars were praising garlic around 3000 B.C.!) Much of the original folklore surrounding garlic has been corroborated by scientific research and it is abundantly clear that garlic does indeed have much value both as a curative and preventative treatment for many illnesses and disorders.
For those who, like me, truly love garlic, click on my diary "The World of Garlic", posted here sometimes last year, for additional goodies and for the fabled recipe of Aioli, a must have!
The garlic clove contains two sets of nutrients: first we have the water soluble nutrients which include vitamins, enzymes, amino acids and natural sugars and secondly, when garlic is crushed, a compound called alliin comes into contact with an enzyme called alliinase. Alliinase then breaks down alliin into allicin which is responsible for garlic’s pungent odor. When buying garlic, first check where it's from (China is the world's biggest grower and floods the US with inferior produce) so buy locally as much as possible, secondly make sure it is still firm and hasn't sprouted. Store garlic in a cool, dark place and don't refrigerate or freeze it unless you have to (it's ok to store peeled cloves in jars topped with olive oil). Ok, let's get to the recipes.
And remember, don't skimp on the amount of garlic you're going to use, particularly with my soup recipe: a luscious potato, leek and garlic concoction enriched with Pearl Barley, a perfect dish for a cold evening. Hell, a perfect dish for anytime!
This makes enough soup for 10 to 12 persons (what you can't eat you can freeze, or give away to people who would appreciate its health benefits)
2 large leeks, chopped up, 4 pounds of fingerlings potatoes, or new potatoes, cut in quarters, 10 heads of garlic (that's right, no less than 10 or you're wimping out), peeled, 6 pints of vegetable stock, 250 grams (half a pound) of Pearl Barley and half a pint of sour cream. Salt & black pepper to taste. I sometimes make a different version and add 250 gram of smoked ham or pancetta slices, depending on what's available and use chicken stock instead of a vegetable one.
In a large pot drop a little olive oil and throw the leeks, cook and stir for a couple of minutes, add all the garlic, the well washed pearl barley, the potatoes and the stock (pearl barley works well in soups since it readily soaks up the flavors in the broth, and it's low in gluten). Add the salt and the cracked black peppercorns and bring to a slow boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat and cook for another hour. When done, add the sour cream (some would prefer double cream) and blend. Serve with crusty bread, or even better, inside scooped up crusty bread if you're able to find small individual loaves. There are three ways of blending soups: use a blender, a soup stick or do it the manual way with an old fashioned moulinette!
If you feel like a really sumptuous mashed potato dish here's my very favorite, liberally laced with pink garlic and flavored with truffle oil.
This works very well with any meat, fish or vegetable dish or on its own, I call it my Socialist Spud Extravaganza: try to procure yourself some pink garlic (found in good health food stores and some supermarkets). Compared to white garlic, pink garlic is much milder and therefore less likely to overpower the delicate truffle oil (BTW, you only need a few drops of the oil, one small bottle can last a whole year, not a bad buy at around $15). There are two versions of this dish, the simple one and the piped one. Use a good floury potato for this, like Russet or Pontiac.
For say 6 to 8 servings you'd need 3 pounds of potatoes, 2 whole heads of pink garlic, salt & pepper to taste. Peel and cut your potatoes. Place the potatoes and the garlic into a pot, cover with water and cook slowly (my great grandmother used to cook hers in milk, ever so slowly). When done (this is the simple way) add a little cream to it, not much, just enough to moisten the spuds, mash and add a few drops of truffle oil.
The complicated way (but it's so much fun!): beat half a pint of double cream till it sticks to your whisk, mash the potatoes, fold in the cream slowly, add the truffle oil, salt & pepper to taste and use a forcing bag with a large nozzle to pipe your mash into individual dishes (or a large one, up to you) and place under the grill for a minute or two till slightly brown.
And now we come to the Garlic Ice-Cream! In my heady days in Sydney I concocted alternative sorbets and ice-creams to keep me interested and it looked good on my menus, stuff like tomato & basil sorbet, Lapsang Souchong & lychee sorbet, Roquefort ice-cream, bacon & cabbage ice-cream, and of course garlic ice-cream among other oddities. I even made a marijuana sorbet one night for a special wedding party and got the bride's mother a little under the weather...but that's another diary.
It's not complicated, think of making a vanilla ice-cream and you're half there. For a liter + of the stuff you'll need:
4 heads of pink garlic, peeled (heads, not cloves!); a knob of unsalted butter; 1 liter of cream; 1/2 a cup of sugar; 6 egg yolks. I make a puree of the garlic cloves by simply baking them in a sheet of foil, add the butter and wrap the whole thing up tightly, bake at 280 for 20 minutes or until soft. Mash the garlic finely and set aside. In a saucepan boil the cream. In a bowl, whisk in the 6 yolks and beat in the sugar, then add the garlic pureee, incorporate it nicely and add and the hot cream slowly.
Let it cool then either use an ice-cream churner or pour into a plastic container and place in the freezer if you don't have one, making sure you check every 10 minutes with a fork to stop crystals forming. Voila! It's done and you will get brownie points when you serve this to your guests.
Here is a (partial) list of what garlic does to you, so next time you're contemplating making a garlic soup or a sauce, don't be mean, use lots of it:
Alleviates allergies;
Aids general immunity;
Promotes good circulation;
Cleanses the digestive system;
Helps cure flatulence;
Protects against the forming of blood clots;
Protects the kidneys;
Prevents cancer-cell growth due to its sulfur compounds;
Reduces low blood sugar;
Act as an anti-viral and anti-bacterial agent;
Clear up boils, because of the anti-bacterial properties;
Help clear up asthma;
Acts against infections, including colds, coughs, respiratory problems, bronchial disorders and catarrh;
Kills internal parasites and is an excellent internal antiseptic, and that's for starters. It does much, much more.
Fun garlic facts: In ancient Egypt, 15 lbs. of garlic would purchase a healthy slave. Workers constructing the Great Pyramids of Giza lived mainly on garlic & onions.
There are 300 strains of garlic in the world.
California grows 500 million pounds of garlic on more than 27,000 acres.
In World War I, Garlic was used to control infections in wounds and in 1963 Russia sent out a call for garlic to help control a raging epidemic of flu.
Garlic was so highly regarded that it was even used as currency. Last but not least, garlic is also known for its aphrodisiacal properties, which have been extolled through the ages in literature, cooking recipes, and medical journals.
Researchers have known for some time that garlic--like its close relative, the onion--is a rich source of heart-protective compounds called thiosulfinates. These sulfur compounds, best known for causing eyes to water, may lower blood pressure and break up potentially harmful clusters of platelets in the bloodstream.
But, up to now, most researchers and nutritionists assumed that the best way to seize on garlic's cardiovascular benefits was to eat the small bulbs in their most unfettered form: in the raw.
Not so, discovered ARS plant geneticist Philipp Simon and his colleagues Pablo Cavagnaro, Alejandra Camargo and Claudio Galmarini, whose findings appear in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Simon works in the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wis. Cavagnaro, Camargo and Galmarini work at the INTA La Consulta in Argentina.
Since most people worldwide sauté or bake their garlic before eating it, the researchers wanted to know if cooking reduced garlic's blood-thinning effects. They also wanted to see what impact crushing the garlic before cooking had on its ability to bust up artery-clogging platelets.
After boiling, baking and microwaving both crushed and uncrushed cloves of garlic and evaluating them for their antiplatelet activity, the scientists learned that lightly cooked, crushed garlic provides most of the health benefits found in raw garlic. The only exception was microwaving, which stripped garlic almost entirely of its blood-thinning effects.
And a very interesting conversation about garlic health takes place here.
