Many years ago, when Big Boy was just a little tacker, Diana and I would sit by the pool and chat while our sons had their weekly swimming lessons. I’m very blessed, because my wise and generous friend now grows the best organic garlic I’ve ever tasted, and I get first dibs when her crops are ready for sale!
Last night, Di gave us some of her new season “wet” garlic to experiment with. Almost all garlic that we buy in stores is “dry” – the bulbs are hung and allowed to mature after harvesting, resulting in long lasting, papery heads with individually wrapped cloves.
By contrast, wet garlic is pulled from the soil before the cloves are fully formed, much milder in flavour, and similar in texture to a leek. The bulbs are usually still attached to their long green foliage (scapes).
Here it is sliced – you can see how the cloves will eventually form…
I turned the stems into garlic scape pesto by simply blitzing them in the food processor with olive oil, pine nuts and grated parmesan cheese.
Pete used the bulb and a small piece of scape to make sourdough garlic bread – the milder flavour meant he could really pile on the garlic without it becoming overpowering.
The bread was topped with gourmet mushrooms which had been panfried in butter, olive oil, sliced wet garlic and a dash of 40 year old port.
A wonderful meal, and somewhat surprisingly, we don’t all reek of garlic this morning. Many thanks, Di!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
oh, YUM. Love the photos, too, Celia.
Thanks, Barb! Haven’t chatted in ages, hope all is well on your side of the planet… :)
I’ve always tossed out the garlic I have at home if it starts sprouting…is there something else I should do with it?
Little Piece, I think once the dry garlic starts sprouting, the only thing to do with it then is to plant it!
How long did your friend’s take to grow, Celia? I grew some this year for the first time, took the best part of nine months, but it was brilliant, one bulb of garlic made about 24 new ones! We are still eating it after harvesting in May this year. I made Dan’s garlic bread in its honour. Needs a lot of garlic that recipe! Those mushrooms look absolutely divine by the way..!
Jo, I’m not sure – will ask Di and Ian and let you know. Did you know you can freeze the individual cloves of dry garlic? We break up all the bulbs and freeze them in double ziplock bags (to stop the smell from permeating through the whole freezer!). The cloves lose their crunchy texture, but they’re much easier to peel and perfectly fine for cooking, with no real loss of flavour or aroma. We’ve had them in the freezer for months now, which makes me really happy, because before that we were always throwing out mouldy cloves!
Dan’s garlic bread looks wicked, but uses so much garlic! How did it turn out? Was the garlic overwhelming, or quite mild after cooking?
Celia
Wet garlic – new words for my vocabulary! Thanks
Oz, I just know you could do some amazing things with this!
By the way, I have you and my friend Anna in Paris to thank for my current mushroom obsession! :) All those gorgeous photos on both your blogs has left me craving them!
celia, the photos and recipes are superb.
an answer for zeb. where are you growing the garlic, since they need a good cold winter?
the garlics were planted in april thru may. weeding is a killer, but with a little cow poo all green and wonderful. expect to harvest early december thru to january, the later plantings would seem to be also ready, just smaller.
Hi Ian, West of England, Bristol to be precise. We have a mild winter with the odd cold snap here. Too much rain is the issue for slow grown crops like garlic in our part of the world, that and our clay soil. There is a lot of garlic grown on the Isle of Wight, which is about as south as you get here, and has a mild winter. This farm grows nothing else I think….http://www.thegarlicfarm.co.uk/garlicgrow.aspx
We have a built raised bed, which is our mini vegetable patch, top at waist height for B with the bad back who likes to grow vegetables. We put our bit of home made compost in there too to feed our little patch it has very good drainage and is actually quite warm compared to our clay soil in the rest of the garden. I will email Celia some pics
Dan’s garlic bread not too strong at all, though it is an elaborate process. He took loads of photos and rewrote the method here http://www.danlepard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=924&highlight=garlic+bread. The blanching of the whole cloves before you cook the garlic seems to do the magic. Generally if you cook garlic whole it is less pungent than if you chop it. Ditto onions.
Garlic scapes are EVER so trendy right now in the States. Seems like last summer (AU winter) everyone was playing around with garlic scapes. You’re too hip!!
Ahh, how I wish that were true! Yesterday I said something, and Big Boy asked…”Mum, do you even know what ‘cool’ means?” :)
What I am, though, is a student of Dorie Greenspan’s….