Phwoar, what a stinker!

A recipe for garlic puree and sauce

If my laptop were not a machine but a toga-wearing scribe to be dictated to, it would probably faint.

Last night, with a chilled glass of rosé to hand, I ate several cloves too many of confit-ted garlic. It was part of my project to summon spring early. I’ve had enough of this 2 year-long Covid winter. Delivery of the new season’s pink bulb, so mild you can almost eat its cloves like sweeties, are some long weeks off. Mine were from a bulb yanked off a braid now almost bare of garlic heads, flakes of its papery skin drifting daily to the kitchen floor.

They had been softened weeks ago, simmered in oil over the lowest possible heat in a small saucepan until the palest gold, then jar-stored in their oil in the fridge. I smeared some onto a toasted slice of sourdough, dopping on top here and there (this verb I made up has wide cooking applications) a soft comma of goat’s cheese mashed up with a little crème fraiche and flakes of chili pepper. Then I settled down to an episode of Succession. If only I could have exhaled dragon-fashion over that unremittingly ghastly family from whom absolutely nothing should be learned, the evening would have been perfect.

If you buy last season’s garlic most commonly in stock at the moment, test it for its resistance to a firm squeeze and be sure to cut the cloves lengthways in half to remove the greening germ, if there is one. It’s the shoot of the next garlic and and you can plant the whole clove to give you a new head. But should you include the germ in your cooking, your food will be bitter to the taste.

Not until June will new heads appear in farmers markets - from Provence, you may imagine, or elsewhere in Southern Europe where some types of garlic have protected status. The allium actually originated in Central Asia and Iran. But 76% of global supply comes, at 23 million tonnes, from China, as you’ve probably guessed, with India trailing far behind at just under 3 million. 

Now is the time to grow it yourself. In fact, most of the year is the time to grow it yourself - indoors, in a flowerpot 10cm/4ins apart, where the single cloves will swell contentedly into full heads. Outdoors, the last planting time is around September. But grown in some temperate corner of your dwelling I’ve never met any vegetable that can inform you what month it is. Garlic is simplicity itself to cultivate. You do not need green fingers. You only need to buy a good healthy bulb. Separate the cloves and bury them, pointy end up, about 2.5cm/1in deep, and wait for the green germ to emerge as a stalk. (You can eat that, too, finely chopped and sprinkled over fish, chicken or in an omelette.)

Photo Klaus Einwanger: The Bruno Cookbook, Martin Walker & Julia Watson.

It’s worth making an effort for garlic. It’s almost the perfect health food, used medicinally for 3000 years. Studies in different countries have found it effective in lowering cholesterol, reducing blood pressure, and as a natural anticoagulant helping prevent blood clots associated with peripheral arterial occlusive disease. It is also thought to have the power to stimulate white blood cells and other immune cells, with an ability to fight bacterial infections. Garlic extract injected into mice with Candida showed some success in tackling that fungal infection. Garlic may even have an application in battling cancer.

The Ancient Egyptians would have doubted none of these claims. The Ebers Papyrus, the Egyptian medical text from around 1550 BC, records applying it externally to tumours. Hippocrates advocated its use for internal medicine. In exceptionally rare cases, people claim to be allergic to it, although they may be engaged in a sultry affair. When garlic compounds are absorbed into the bloodstream, not only will they emerge through the lungs and affect the breath but also seep out through the pores, neither conducive to seduction.

Set aside any prejudice that garlic is no more than an utter stinker. Elizabeth David, the cookery writer who taught the British that eating could be pleasurable, contended that if you swallowed an unpeeled clove whole (an experience I can attest is akin to gulping down a horse tablet), anything flavoured with garlic that followed wouldn’t cause you to exude powerful fumes. The friends who assured me that this works may just be thoughtfully polite.

Perhaps more reliable is to cook garlic slowly following a blanching in a couple of changes of water, which reduces its anti-social aspect. When using it in cooking, its flavour can often disappear completely if added too soon. Generally, recipes advise its introduction at the very beginning so that it offers no more than a back note. They instruct melting it gently in butter or oil, being careful not to let it turn bitter with burning. But in some recipes - a tomato sauce, say, where you might want a more pronounced flavour - hold some back and add it five minutes before the end of cooking, then the garlic will come through. To get rid of the smell on your fingers after chopping a clove, rub them under running water around any small stainless steel kitchen utensil.

Here is a very mild puree that with the addition of 250ml/8 fl oz double/heavy cream stretches into a sauce. It’s adapted from Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson, regularly nominated as their favourite cookbook by British chefs, including, in that linked appreciation, Nigella Lawson. It goes wonderfully with barbecued chicken, steak or fish.

28 garlic cloves, peeled
600ml/1 pint light chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon redcurrant jelly
110g/4 oz butter, melted
juice of ½ lemon
salt and pepper

Bring the garlic cloves to a boil in enough cold water to cover. Reduce heat and poach for 2 minutes. Drain and repeat the process.

Cook the garlic in chicken stock till soft but not mushy, about 8-10 minutes. Drain and set aside and reduce stock by half in a rolling boil.

Put the garlic and 5 fl oz stock into a blender with remaining ingredients and whiz to a paste.

Serve warm as a sauce.