It really stinks - the joys of garlic
A recipe for slow-braised lamb shanks with garlic and wine
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You know you’re in France as soon as you set foot in the Paris Metro. It’s not just the idiosyncratic door opener more suited in design as the lock on a public loo, but the miasma of garlic that hangs in the air.
Like vampires, certain of the British live in fear of garlic. For them, it’s the tangible embodiment of their distrust of the French. It could have made a telling symbol for the side of a Brexit bus.
Until 1950, garlic’s pungent flavour instilled fear and loathing in the hearts of most British diners, who had not come across it in Blighty and had only ever gone abroad to fight. In that year, Elizabeth David’s exhilarating A Book of Mediterranean Food erupted onto the colourless eating desert of post-war Britain (rationing didn’t end until 1954), to seduce readers with recipes that played fast and furious with this member of the allium onion family (along with other fearful exotica that would have been banded together by the Colonel Blimps of Middle England as ‘foreign muck’).
It’s odd it took us so long to discover the flavouring. Garlic has been known since the time of the ancient Egyptians. In a rather high-handed tone, ancient Romans described it as “much used for food among the poor.” Believed since the time of the Talmud to be an aphrodisiac, it is not uncommon among rabbis to encourage procreation by advocating ‘eating garlic on Sabbath eve’, a euphemistic expression to spur Friday night copulation, with those who obey being praised, also euphamistically, as ‘garlic eaters’.
Whether it is an aphrodisiac (in my experience if only one partner has eaten it, it is definitely not), it is believed to have medicinal properties. Studies have confirmed it contains high levels of vitamins, and a large number of nutrients from calcium to iron and phosphorus necessary to the functioning of our immune system. It’s believed to reduce blood pressure and consequently cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and heart attack. There are even studies that suggest it can assist in controlling the development of Alzheimer’s and dementia, though these have their sceptics.
In my Moscow years, I was assured that a cold could be drawn out by the judicious rubbing on the chest and the soles of feet of a mixture of goose fat and garlic. Like the Paris Metro, the Moscow Metro reeked of garlic (and, in winter, of heavy damp coats hung to dry close to a paraffin stove).
Native to central Asia with at least 120 cultivars, garlic grows wild all over the place. Walk through a wood in Scotland in late spring and the scent of wild garlic hangs in the air. Its leaves make a good pesto, eliminating the need for the clove of garlic and the basil, essential base of the original Genovese recipe to which are added pine nuts or walnuts, olive oil and Pecorino Romano. Once the firework sparkles of wild garlic’s white flowers appear, it’s a signal that the best picking time for its leaves has passed.
In France, three types of garlic have been awarded protected AOC status. (And you thought garlic was garlic?) Not just the familiar Ail Rose de Lautrec, that rose-pink garlic commonly found in spring in markets well beyond the borders of France, but the Ail Blanc de Lomagne from Gascony, and Ail de la Drôme. These are garlics to be most simply experienced by making Florentine ‘fettunta’. Rub a cut clove (leave its peel on for grip) over a thick slice of toasted sourbread before drizzling over a glug of good olive oil, a sprinkle of sea salt and a grind of black pepper. Add a diced tomato, ripe from the sun, and you have bruschetta (pronounced ‘broosketta’, please, never ‘brooshetta’).
Garlic’s stink and sharp taste only occur when a clove is broken by chopping or crushing, triggering the breakdown in its cells of various sulfur-containing compounds. If you come across those large plastic containers of ready-peeled cloves in Asian supermarkets (from China, once again the world’s largest producer of something), one way to use them is to ‘confit’ them. Set them in a small saucepan and cover them with vegetable oil to rise 1 cm/1/2 inch above them and simmer them over the lowest possible heat until they soften and begin to turn a pale gold.
This method produces deliciously caramelised cloves. Let them cool and store them not quite indefinitely in a jar in the fridge for adding to roast chicken or meat, using the flavoured oil for basting. Or squish them over a slice of toast. Or serve them to hearty (brave?) gourmets in a bowl with toothpicks, to spear with aperitifs. But they should probably avoid the Metro the morning after.
This lamb shanks recipe, a celebration of garlic which frees you from the kitchen while it cooks on its own, is as good in summer as it is in cold weather. The long cooking mellows the garlic.
4 lamb shanks, trimmed of fat
2 tablespoons duck fat
1 large shallot, peeled and thinly sliced
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
5 heads of garlic, broken into separate cloves, unpeeled
40cl/1¾ cups Monbazillac or other sweet white wine
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Preheat oven 180C/350F.
Put all the ingredients except for the last two in a large mixing bowl and leave to marinate overnight.
Remove the meat and pat dry with paper towels. Melt the duck fat in a sauté pan over medium heat till hot but not smoking. Brown the lamb shanks then remove to a plate. Lower the heat under the pan and gently sauté the shallot. Once softened, scrape it into a lidded casserole, and add the thyme, the bay leaf and the lamb shanks. Surround them with the garlic cloves and pour over the Monbazillac. Season with salt and pepper.
Take a large sheet of greaseproof paper, crumple it and run it under cold water. Spread it to cover the meat in the casserole then replace the lid and put in the oven to bake for 2 hours.
Remove the shanks and set them on a warm serving dish to rest. Skim off any fat and strain the liquid into a gras-maigre (a jug with two spouts that separates fat from jus)
reserving the garlic and onion slices. Distribute them around the meat. Then pour the fat-free jus from the gras-maigre over the meat and serve with a crisp green salad.
