Are you enjoying the bounty of spring vegetables and fruits? Are you rhapsodizing poetical as you cavort around the farmers’ market, gazing affectionately on new asparagus, young beans, tender strawberries and brilliant, jewel-like radishes? Have you found your way yet to the shrine of green garlic? You must search until you have achieved the bliss that comes with spring and young garlic.
There are some notable folk who do not enjoy garlic, and keep it off their menus and out of their kitchens, these poor sad, misguided creatures. The Queen, for one, cannot abide garlic. Which is why, perhaps, that at the grand state dinner at Buckingham Palace this week, this was the menu: steamed fillet of halibut with watercress mousse, asparagus spears and chervil sauce, followed by the meat course of Windsor lamb with herb stuffing, spring vegetables and a port sauce. There were no double cheeseburgers. There was no shrimp scampi. It looked as it it was delightfully bland mélange of locally raised meat and produce, without a trace amount of garlic.
Enjoy the tender, young green garlic while you can. It is deelightful. And it is not like the truculent garlic we depend on in the winter to get us through the long cold nights without Jon Snow. We need that strong, reassuring garlic in our spaghetti sauces and our beef bourguignons and garlic roasted pork chops with winter vegetables. We need heaps of garlic in the winter. But now, as we trip into summer, something lighter and more merry is in keeping. Something like the smell of onion grass when the lawn has just been mowed. Something ineffable, like the scent of warm tomatoes as you walk past the tomato patch, sneaking a peek at the burgeoning zinnias, whispering encouragement to the nascent sunflowers. We are not coping with the oppressing heat of summer just yet. Our dog still likes lying in a liquid puddle of buttery sunlight. We are enjoying the emergence of fireflies. Life is good.
I, for one, could live on this garlic bread. My apologies to Her Majesty. This is sheer genius. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inx8GlcdIOw
https://www.thekitchn.com/jump-into-spring-with-green-garlic-lets-try-something-new-218135
I expect that this recipe will send out plenty of scented warnings, so any errant Windor-Mountbattens who are wandering by my house will keep on their royal way: https://www.marthastewart.com/341743/pasta-with-three-kinds-of-garlic Thank you, Martha.
And in case you want to explore more garlic avenues all year long, here is a handy dandy garlic cheat sheet: https://food-hacks.wonderhowto.com/how-to/ultimate-garlic-cheat-sheet-which-type-garlic-goes-best-with-what-0156924/
“Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime…Please, treat your garlic with respect…Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screw top jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don’t deserve to eat garlic.”
― Anthony Bourdain
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