SpiceLines

“One of the singular characteristics of garlic is that it makes you wait.”

Stanley Crawford, A Garlic Testament, 1992

This afternoon, we pulled some garlic. It was ripped so untimely from the cool soil that we could nearly hear it shriek. It certainly wasn’t ready to come up: Though its green shoots were vigorous, the clove from which they sprang was immature, just a little fuller and fatter than when it was planted a few months ago. It hadn’t become a bulb, but already its smell was sharp and strong.

There are six types of garlic and many varieties, some of which have multiple aliases. Last fall, on a cool November afternoon, after clearing away the brown stems of the wine-dark Arabian Nights dahlias, we planted four of them in the herb garden:

Music, a popular, intensely flavored porcelain hardneck, good for baking;

Inchilium Red, an artichoke-type softneck which produces large bulbs with 12 to 20 mild-tasting cloves, recommended for salsa;

Morado Gigante, a Chilean turban-type with deep burgundy “wrappers”and a smooth flavor;

Guatemalan Purple Stripe, a nutty-tasting hardneck from the village of Aguacatan near Hueheutenango, a god-forsaken dusty Guatemalan outpost we actually visited many years ago.

As Stanley Crawford writes in his cult classic, A Garlic Testament, it takes seven to nine months for garlic to mature: “It follows that you ought not to grow garlic unless you are willing to let it make you as patient as it needs for its purposes….It has no other way but the long wash of time to extract the sulfur compounds from the soil and to distill them into its distinctive potion…”

The Music shoots that we pulled are the very earliest form of “green garlic”—immature garlic that hasn’t yet begun to form cloves. We could have sliced and stir fried them with baby bok choy, or mixed them into scrambled eggs, but we decided to be kind.

The little bulblet was tucked back into the soil, to sleep, perchance to dream of bigger things.

Editor’s note: Our seed garlic came from Cornerstone Garlic Farm outside of Greensboro, North Carolina. Natalie Foster and her husband Steve have a website with excellent photos and descriptions of the garlic they grow. Go to www.localharvest.org/listing.jsp?id=6792.

To read what may be the most poetic farming book ever written, see Stanley Crawford, A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm, University of New Mexico Press, 1992. Crawford is a novelist whose other books include Petroleum Man and Gascoyne.

When you bite down on a clove of raw garlic, a pleasurable hell breaks loose. First there’s the pungent scent that sears your nostrils, then your tongue catches fire, and if it’s a really hot clove, tears spring to your eyes. This is just the allium sativum's way of fending off squirrels, rats and other pests—that is, all of us who are addicted to the taste and smell of the “stinking rose.”

According to a study at the University of California at San Francisco and Lund University in Sweden, the simple act of crushing a clove starts a complex chemical reaction that fires up our pain neurons. In the August 23, 2005 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (“Pungent Products from garlic activate the sensory ion channel TRPA1”), scientists found that eating garlic releases thiosulfinate allicin, a sulfurous compound that opens a specific cellular ion channel. Once the gates have been breached, other ions pile on, sending pain messages to the spinal cord and the brain as they inflame mucus membranes in the mouth and nose. Other fiery foods—wasabi, mustard and chilies—use similar channels to excite pain receptors.

Why do we like the sting of garlic and other spicy foods? In On Food and Cooking (2nd edition), Harold McGee suggests that the experience may be akin to the exhilaration of riding a rollercoaster or plunging into Lake Michigan in January. Eating salsa made with raw garlic may send danger signals to the brain, but since we know it won’t really hurt us, we “can savor the vertigo, shock and pain for their own sakes.” Endorphins kick in, creating a pleasurable glow as the pain fades.

And according to a 2005 Scripps Research Institute study published in Current Biology ("The Pungency of Garlic: Activation of TRPA1 and TRPV1 in Response to Allicin"),food may even taste better when the mouth is irritated by garlic’s sulfurous compounds. One of the study’s authors, associate professor Ardem Patapoutian, told National Geographic News that “…the activation of…pain neurons causes hypersensitivity in the mouth, so that other sensory/taste stimuli are enjoyed at more intense levels.” That means, when you eat salsa with, say, a beef fajita, the garlic inflames the mouth, heightening the flavor of the grilled meat, ripe tomatoes and, indeed, all the other ingredients.

Here’s a classic salsa recipe for Pico de Gallo (literally “rooster’s beak”). Serve it with homemade tortilla chips, or on top of scrambled eggs, or with any grilled meat, chicken or fish--or just eat it by the spoonful.

Pico de Gallo (Tomato, Cilantro and Garlic Salsa)

Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients:

1 pound plum or other ripe tomatoes, chopped
4-5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped, or to taste
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
1 small bunch cilantro, leaves finely chopped
1 or more Serrano chilies, seeds removed and finely chopped
1 tablespoon canola oil
Salt to taste
Lime juice to taste

Method:

Combine the tomatoes, garlic, onion, cilantro, Serrano chilies and canola oil in a large bowl. Add salt and lime juice to taste. Allow the flavors to mingle for at least 30 minutes before serving. Taste the salsa once more before bringing it to the table, adding more of any ingredients if desired.

Editor’s Note: To read the original articles cited in this post, go to the websites for The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Current Biology. See also Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Scribner, 2004.

“In spite of being rejected, Sharifa has returned continuously to ask for Belqisa. It was not seen as rudeness; on the contrary, it indicated the seriousness of the proposal. Tradition says the mother of a suitor must wear out the soles of her shoes until they are as thin as garlic skin.”

Asne Sierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul, Little Brown, 2003

If only all garlic skins were as paper thin as the soles of Sharifa’s shoes. Unlike the garlic in Afghanistan, what we find here, at least in winter, are giant bulbs with hefty cloves in thick skins so impervious that the unwary cook could easily break a fingernail trying to peel them.

Here’s what to do instead: Remove the outer skins from the bulb and separate the cloves. Place a single clove on a cutting board and press down with the heel of your hand until you feel the skin split. If you are peeling a lot of garlic, you may prefer to place the flat side of your chef’s knife over the clove and again press down hard until the wrapper splits. Or simply smack the clove with flat side of the blade. Whichever method you choose, the garlic peels easily.

The indefatigable testers at Cook’s Illustrated recently tried out several gadgets for peeling garlic. The most alarming was the Chef’n Garlic Peeler, which, at least as pictured, resembles a device one might have encountered in a dungeon during the Spanish Inquisition; it was said to slash the clove “spewing out mutilated (but unpeeled) garlic.” Cook’s favors the E-Z Rol: you slip a clove into a rubber tube and roll on a hard surface; the clove slips out naked and the skin stays in the tube.

The E-Z Rol is a good choice for equipment-lovers with roomy kitchen drawers, or for squeamish cooks who don’t want their hands to smell like garlic. (We think that’s missing all the fun.) Still, we recently peeled 40 cloves in 10 minutes just by whacking the garlic with the side of a heavy knife—and didn’t have to store another gadget.

Editor’s note: For more information on garlic peelers, see Cook’s Illustrated, Number 79, April, 2006, “Equipment Corner,” Garth Clingingsmith, p. 32. Find the Zak Designs E-Z Rol Garlic Peeler ($7.99) and The Book Seller of Kabul at www.amazon.com. Wiilliams-Sonoma sells the E-Z Rol for $9.99 at its stores and on the web, www.williamssonoma.com.

Oh, my. Peeling forty cloves of garlic…does that distress you? I’m wandering the aisles at A Southern Season, our local gourmet everything store, where I get the distinct feeling that American cooks don’t want to touch the stinking rose. I find at least 14 peelers and presses, all of which are intended to keep our fingers ever from coming in contact with garlic’s sulphurous cloves.

It’s not hard to peel garlic. You can strip 40 cloves in 10 minutes or less simply by cracking the outer husk with the flat side of a chef’s knife or by pressing the cloves with the heel of your hand. I tend to do the latter, but then I love the pungent smell of garlic and don’t mind it clinging to my fingers. In this recipe raw cloves become sweet and nutty, a near miraculous transformation that requires four hours in a slow oven, giving you plenty of time to go out for coffee, plant some basil and call your brother in Singapore. (Hmmm, it’s three in the morning there. Better not.)

John Thorne’s recipe for Poulet aux Quarantes Gousses d”Ail comes from the Winter 1990 issue of his newsletter, Simple Cooking. For upwards of 20 years, John has been the most original voice in American food writing: opinionated, wry, ruminative, with a brilliant grasp of the way a dish should be made—inspiration born, no doubt, of dogged days at the stove. I became an avid reader when he was holed up in a cabin in Maine, publishing elegantly written and meticulously researched pamphlets such as A Treatise on Onion Soup and Just Another Bowl of Texas Red. As you might suspect, he’s man of lusty appetites with a predilection for down home hearty food. You won’t find recipes for Roasted Monkfish with Pink Grapefruit, Pea Shoots, and Foie Gras in his pages--look for straightforward fare like Cheddarwurst and Potato Soup instead.

As for Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, John traces the peregrinations of this peasant dish through France and Spain to its likely origins in Catalonia—where he also discovers pistache de mouton, leg of mutton prepared with 50 cloves of garlic. He has sensibly tweaked traditional recipes, reducing the olive oil (stewing hens were once leaner), eliminating the flour and paste seal (aluminum foil works really well) and lowering the temperature to produce “very tender, juicy chicken, well-permeated with garlic essence.”

And if you are still dismayed by the notion of peeling so much garlic, he offers this elegant rationale:

“Finally, we are of two minds about peeling the cloves. It is more work for the cook to do this and less fun for the eater, but they are such appealing little morsels, sans chemise…and how else can you get a whole forkful of them? Like already shelled pistachio nuts, this may seem altogether too much of a good thing. But this is a matter of taste, even morals, rather than of technique.”

To serve four

Ingredients:

3-1/2 to 4 pound chicken, cut into serving pieces
Salt and pepper
40 cloves of garlic (about 4 heads)
1 to 2 tablespoons fruity olive oil
A bouquet garni of several sprigs of parsley and a branch of thyme
Chapons [crusts] of country bread, toasted in olive oil

Method:

Preheat oven to 200F. Season the pieces of chicken with salt and pepper. Examine the cloves of garlic. If they are fresh and firm—and if you care to—use them unpeeled. Otherwise, peel them carefully discarding any soft or moldy ones and cutting away any brown spots and assertive green sprouts. Choose a flameproof casserole with a well-fitting lid, just large enough to hold the chicken pieces comfortably. Heat the olive oil in it over medium-high heat and, when it is hot, quickly brown the chicken pieces on all sides. Do this in batches, removing each piece to a platter as soon as it is done. When all the pieces have been browned, put the garlic cloves into the hot oil and sauté these, stirring constantly, for two or three minutes, until they soften begin to brown a little at the edges.

Remove the casserole from the heat and return the chicken pieces, stirring so that they and the garlic cloves are well mixed. Work the bouquet garni down among them, cover the pot tightly with foil, and press on the lid. Cook for four hours. The chicken will be meltingly tender and suffused with the garlic. Serve with fried crusts of bread, which are to be spread with the soft garlic.

Editor’s Note: John is currently offering a set of available back issues of Simple Cooking for $172, a bargain for collectors and anyone who loves to read great food writing. New subscriptions and his most recent book, Home Body, can also be ordered from www.outlawcook.com.

Much of his writing has been collected in three earlier books, all of which are available from www.amazon.com: Simple Cooking; Serious Pig: An American Cook in Search of His Roots; and Pot on the Fire: Further Confessions of a Renegade Cook.

Curly scapes from Music garlic are just beginning to unfurl.
Sauteed, alone or in stir fries, they have a mild and delicate flavor.

It’s Memorial Day and blistering hot. A bad omen for the summer to come. While watering the tomato plants, I checked the garlic for winners and losers. Incillium and Morado Gigante appear to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory: Both began with handsome seed cloves that barely sprouted wispy greens before disappearing. Even the original cloves have vanished, prey perhaps to marauding squirrels or voles with a taste for the exotic.

But Music, a porcelain hardneck grown all over the U.S., and Guatemalan Purple Stripe, a good performer in Southern climes, have both produced vigorous greens and curly scapes. Garlic scapes are flower stalks that shoot rapidly upwards in May to mid June, depending on your climate. As they grow, the slender tips that sport immature flower buds become curly. At this point they should be plucked in order to boost the growth of the bulb down in the soil. If you leave them in place, the stalks will straighten and toughen, and the flower buds will swell until they become bulbils or miniature above ground bulbs.

Fortunately, scapes plucked while still curly are tender and delicate in flavor. If you see them at your local farmers market, buy as many as you can and run home to cook them. Ana Sortun, chef at Oleana in Cambridge, admires the "beauties of garlic as it goes through its stages. When the scapes appear, I love to sauté them like green beans. They have such a delicate flavor. They're also great in soups." You can also chop them raw into salads or use them in your favorite stir fry.

In his 1989 book, Fragrant Harbor Taste: The New Chinese Cooking of Hong Kong, Ken Hom has a savory recipe for Beef and Garlic Shoots in Oyster Sauce. It uses garlic “shoots” as well as chopped “fresh” garlic. Of the shoots, Hom says, “Harvested in early spring, they add a mild and delicate perfume to food that is highly prized among Hong Kong’s discerning diners…their green tops may also be used as a garnish or flavoring.” We've substituted scapes for the earlier shoots, since they too are mild in flavor.

As for fresh garlic, one might use young garlic pulled about the same time as the scapes are cut. Young garlic has a smallish bulb with partly formed cloves—a sort of halfway stage between green garlic, in which bulb is essentially one large, swollen, barely undifferentiated clove, and mature garlic in which the cloves are distinct and have reached their full size. Like the scapes, young garlic's flavor is delicate; when sauteed, the cloves become almost sweet.

Hom also calls for “young” ginger. Young stem ginger, he says, is “the newest spring growth.” The tender rhizomes are “knobby in shape and moist pink; they look naked.” If you cannot find young ginger in your market, substitute very fresh ginger that is not dried up or wrinkled. Peel it before slicing or chopping.

Garlic scapes add a mildly pungent flavor to beef stir fried with sliced
ginger and oyster sauce.

Beef and Garlic Shoots in Oyster Sauce
(adapted from Ken Hom, Fragrant Harbor Taste)

Ingredients:

1 pound sirloin steak, beef fillet or New York strip

For the marinade:

1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon rice wine
1 teaspoon sugar
1 egg white
2 teaspoons ginger juice (see note)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 cup peanut oil

4 cloves thinly sliced young garlic
6 to 12 garlic shoots (scapes) or whole scallions, cut into 3-inch pieces
6 slices young ginger, or peeled mature ginger, 1/4-inch thick
4 fresh or canned water chestnuts, peeled and sliced

For the sauce:

1/2 cup rich chicken stock, preferably homemade
1-1/2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
2 teaspoons rice wine
1 teaspoon cornstarch

Method:

1. Put the steak in the freezer for 20 minutes or until it is firm to the touch. Cut it, against the grain, into thin slices. Whisk together the marinade ingredients, add the meat and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Mix the sauce ingredients and set aside.
2. Heat a wok or large skillet until it is hot. Add the oil and when it is quite hot (when a sliver of meat dropped in the oil sizzles madly), quickly stir fry the beef for 2 to 3 minutes. Turn the contents of the wok into a strainer set over a large bowl. Allow to drain, reserving some of the oil.
3. Reheat the wok and add 1 tablespoon of the reserved oil. Add the garlic, garlic shoots and ginger, and stir fry for 1 minute. Add the water chestnuts and continue to stir fry for 30 seconds more. Add the sauce ingredients and bring the mixture to a boil. When the sauce has thickened, return the drained beef and mix well. Serve at once with steamed white rice.

Note: To make ginger juice, grate a 1 to 1-1/2 inch piece of peeled ginger into a bowl. You should have about 1 tablespoon. Wrap the ginger in a small piece of cheesecloth, or in the corner of a clean dishtowel, and squeeze it over a bowl. This will yield 2 teaspoons or more of ginger juice.

Whole heads of garlic, baked in a terra cotta cooker, become sweet and nutty-tasting.

If your farmer’s market is like ours, right now there are tempting baskets brimming with whole heads of fresh garlic. Just last week I came away with bulbs of Music, an easy to peel porcelain hard neck, and heads of purple striped Guatemalan, one of the best varieties for roasting. As much as I love garlic raw in salsas, salads and marinades, I adore the mellow, caramel flavor of garlic baked in the oven.

When you bake or roast garlic, a near miraculous transformation occurs. The sulphuric compounds that give raw allium its pungency are muted, lulled to sleep, as it were, by the vapors of slow, steady heat. The hard cloves become soft and squishy, and the natural sugars are coaxed out of hiding. After an hour or so, the garlic can be squeezed right out of its papery husk, and its flavor is sweet and nutty, only faintly reminiscent of the raw clove’s searing bite.

One of the best ways to roast garlic is in a domed terra cotta cooker, such as the large Garlic Baker made by Fox Run Craftsmen. The glazed base is 7 inches in diameter, which means that you can roast five or more bulbs of garlic at a time. The lid has a garlic bulb as a handle and a tiny hole for steam. To prepare the garlic, I rub off some of its outer leaves, slice about one-quarter inch off the tops and drizzle with a little olive oil. Sometimes I sprinkle the cloves with salt and pepper and add a sprig of thyme or rosemary from the garden.

Roasted garlic is so luscious that you will probably find yourself standing up in the kitchen, squeezing one nutty-tasting clove after another into your mouth. (This is a good reason to bake four or five heads at once.) It is delicious served as an accompaniment to grilled meats and vegetables or on roughly torn pieces of warm baguette that have been dipped into olive oil. Or whisk a couple of tablespoons into a vinaigrette for salads. The same vinaigrette can be spooned over grilled salmon or mixed with lentils.

The Fox Run Garlic Baker (or similar terra cotta cookers) can be found at kitchenware stores. On the web, order it from www.cookscorner.com for $7.99. (Enter “garlic baker” in the search box.)

Recipe: Whole Roasted Garlic

Ingredients:

4 to 5 whole garlic bulbs
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh or dried thyme or rosemary

A terra cotta garlic baker (or small glass baking dish and aluminum foil to cover)

Method:

1. Using your thumbs, gently rub off several layers of the papery outer leaves covering each head of garlic. Slice about 1/4-inch off the top of each head, and prick the tops of the cloves with the tines of a fork.
2. Place the heads of garlic on the base of the terra cotta baker (or in the baking dish) and drizzle the tops with a little olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste and with fresh or dried herbs, if desired. Cover with the lid of the baker. (If using a baking dish, cover tightly with aluminum foil.)
3. If using a terracotta baker, follow the manufacturer’s instructions: Place the covered baker in a cold oven. Turn the oven temperature to 300 degrees. Bake for one hour or until the cloves have softened. Remove the top, and bake for 20 minutes more, or until the heads of garlic are very slightly browned.
(If using a baking dish, bake at 300 degrees for one hour, or until the garlic has softened. Remove the aluminum foil and continue baking until the garlic has browned slightly.)
4. Serve each person one head of roasted garlic while it is still warm: Squeeze the garlic onto grilled meats or vegetables, or onto chunks of torn baguette dipped in olive oil.
5. If making a vinaigrette, squeeze the cloves out of their papery husks while still warm and mash to a paste in a mortar and pestle. Set aside until ready to use.

Roasted cloves from four heads of garlic will yield half a cup of garlic paste.

Once you’ve roasted a few heads of garlic, smash the softened cloves into a paste using a mortar and pestle, and then whisk the paste into a white balsamic vinaigrette. (One head of roasted garlic will yield a tablespoon or more of garlic paste.) Drizzle this luscious dressing over grilled salmon, cold roasted lamb or a salad of boiled new potatoes, and you have catapulted the mundane into the sublime.

Although I usually think of earthy-tasting Le Puy lentils, grown in the volcanic soil of the Auvergne in France, as a perfect fall or winter dish, these tiny, dark green legumes are delicious in summer when served at room temperature with a roasted garlic vinaigrette brightened with fresh basil and mint. You can use the same vinaigrette in cold weather: Just omit the herbs and add thick, smoky bacon to the mix.

Serves 4 as a side dish:

Ingredients for the vinaigrette:

1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons roasted garlic paste
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil

Ingredients for the lentils:

1 cup Le Puy or French green lentils (see note)
1-1/2 tablespoons fresh spicy globe basil (or other basil), finely chopped
1-1/2 tablespoons fresh mint, finely chopped

Method for the vinaigrette:

In a bowl, combine the vinegar, salt and pepper. Whisk in the roasted garlic paste and set aside for 10 to 15 minutes. Whisk in the olive oil.

Method for the lentils:

1. Rinse the lentils in cold running water. In a medium saucepan, combine the lentils with 3 cups of water and bring them to boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the lentils are just tender. Do not let them get mushy. Drain and set aside to cool
2. Put the lentils in a mixing bowl. Spoon in about half the vinaigrette and mix well. Allow the flavors to mingle for 10 minutes, then taste and adjust the seasonings to your liking—add more salt, pepper or vinaigrette, as you please. Just before serving, stir in the chopped basil and mint.

Note: Authentic Le Puy lentils, grown in the Auvergne region of France, are available at some gourmet food shops. More commonly you will find French green lentils which are small and tasty, but lack the robust, almost peppery flavor of the real thing. On the web, order Sabarot Le Puy Green Lentils from www.amazon.com.

Garlic soup, ladled over toasted croutons and garnished with basil flowers
and leaves, has a sweetly robust flavor. For extra bite, add a hot red chile.

This is a very simple garlic soup. Don’t be afraid to use lots of garlic: Four or five heads is not too much. When the cloves are stewed in olive oil and then simmered in rich chicken stock, they lose their fiery bite and become sweet and nutty-tasting.

In late spring, the soup is wonderful made with young garlic freshly pulled from the soil. Each immature head has only a few cloves at that stage, and the flavor they add to the soup is very subtle—sweet and mild, with a faint garlicky aroma. Right now, as we head into Indian summer, half the growers at our farmer’s market are offering mature, just-cured garlic—the flavor is deeper and stronger, with a pronounced pungency. When shopping, look for plump, unblemished heads of garlic that are firm to the touch.

Like a lot of soups, this one is especially good if you make it ahead of time so that the flavors fully infuse the stock. Naturally it is also better if you use homemade chicken broth. This is important because garlic and chicken stock are the two main ingredients in the soup. Whenever I have whole chickens cut into pieces, I freeze the backs, and, when I’ve accumulated five or six, I make a few quarts of stock, usually perfumed with a few cloves of garlic, some peppercorns and a sprig of parsley. I freeze the stock in pint-sized containers: This is money in the bank--a rainy day fund for making soup or any recipe that calls for chicken stock.

The method for making the soup is found in Alice Water’s Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. I’ve added a sprinkling of fresh herbs for garnish: purple basil flowers, a few leaves of anise-flavored Thai basil, and a smattering of chopped garlic chives. Also known as Chinese chives, these have long, flat, pungently flavored leaves that are delicious in soups and stir fries. (Right now all three are blooming vigorously after tropical storm Ernesto gave my late summer garden a much needed soaking.) A twist of freshly ground black pepper, a smidgen of grated Parmesan and a couple of toasted croutons brushed with olive oil are all you need to complete the dish.

But like my friend Susana Trilling, I also like to add a small dried red chile for a touch of spice. Her version of Mexican garlic soup, which appears in Seasons of My Heart: A Culinary Journey Through Oaxaca, Mexico, also includes fresh squash blossoms and heart-shaped, anise-flavored hierba santa leaves. Neither is in ready supply where I live, but adding a Mexican chile de arbol or a small dried red Asian chile is a great idea. Susana also likes to serve the soup with freshly poached eggs, which makes a truly satisfying meal. (If you’d like to read our interview with Susana Trilling, please go here.)

Garlic Soup

(Adapted from Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook by Alice Waters (Random House, 1982) and from Seasons of My Heart (Ballantine Books, 1999) by Susana Trilling)

To serve 4:

Ingredients for the soup:

3 to 4 plump heads of garlic
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
6 cups rich chicken stock,
Salt and pepper to taste
1 dried chile de arbol or imported Thai red chile (optional) (see note)
4 eggs (optional)

Ingredients for the croutons:

8 slices peasant bread or one small whioe wheat baguette
Reserved olive oil
1 cut clove garlic

Ingredients for the garnish:

4 sprigs purple basil flowers
4 small sprigs Thai basil leaves, or any other basil
4 garlic chives, minced
Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Method:

1. Separate and peel the garlic cloves. (An easy way to peel them is to smack them with the flat side of a chef’s knife to loosen the papery husks.) There should be at least 1 cup of peeled cloves, but 1-1/2 cups is even better.
2. In a large, heavy saucepan, gently stew the garlic cloves in 1 cup of olive over a very low flame for about 20 minutes, or until they are very soft. Do not let the cloves brown or they will become bitter.
3. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and reserve. Add the chicken stock (and the chile, if you are using it), cover and simmer for 40 minutes. Remove the chile. Taste, and add salt and pepper as desired.
4. Remove from the heat and let the soup cool to room temperature. If serving the next day, refrigerate over night.
5. Make the croutons by cutting 8 slices from a whole wheat baguette, or by cutting 2-inch x3-inch pieces from 8 slices of peasant bread. Toast them on a baking sheet in a 400 degree oven for 8 minutes, then remove and turn them over. Brush the tops with the reserved olive oil and return to the oven for another 8 minutes. They should be lightly browned and very crunchy. Rub the tops with a cut clove of garlic.
6. To serve: Reheat the soup. Put two toasted croutons in the bottom of each bowl. When the soup is very hot, poach the eggs in the soup if you are using them: Crack each egg individually on a flat plate and carefully slip them into the broth. When they are ready, spoon one poached egg into each bowl. Ladle the soup over the croutons and poached eggs. Sprinkle basil flowers and leaves, garlic chives and grated parmesan over all and serve at once.

Note: Chile de arbol and two types of dried red Asian chilies--Sanaam and Tien Tsin--may be ordered from www.penzeys.com. Most Asian markets also carry packaged red chiles.

This garlic clove turned blue-green when pickled with onion (and green
cherry tomatoes.) Though poisonous-looking, it is safe to eat. The hue
comes from chlorophyll-like chemicals in the onion and garlic.

Last summer, when I pickled a few pints of green cherry tomatoes, the cloves of garlic tucked in the jars turned a lurid blue-green—the sort of weirdly beautiful shade that copper turns when exposed to weather. I was so alarmed that I emailed Rick Field of Rick’s Picks, who had given me the recipe. ‘Is it poisonous?” I asked. “Will I die if I eat it?” “Don’t worry,” said Rick “That happens all the time. It’s perfectly safe to eat.”

In today’s New York Times (“The Curious Cook: When Science Sniffs Around the Kitchen,” Wednesday, December 6, 2006, pp. D1 and D11), Harold McGee writes about his own experience with another bizarre color change. “…I was really rattled the first time I pureed raw garlic, onion and ginger together in the blender to make chicken in yoghurt from Madhur Jaffrey’s “Invitation to Indian Cooking.’ When I fried the puree, the entire mass turned turquoise blue.”

McGee notes that in northern China, aged fresh garlic is left in vinegar for a week to make an “intentionally intensely green” Laba garlic pickle traditionally served with New Year’s dumplings. According to chemists at the China Agricultural University in Beijing, aged garlic is saturated with a chemical that turns garlic green when released by the acetic acid in the vinegar. “The pigment itself turns out to be a close chemical relative of chlorophyll, which gives all green leaves their color,” he writes.

The color change in garlic and garlic-onion blends is created, McGee says, by the “same handful of sulfur compounds and enzymes that give the allium family its unique pungent flavors. Under the right conditions, these chemicals react with each other and with common amino acids to make pyrroles, clusters of carbon-nitrogen rings.” Essentially, these rings absorb different wavelengths of light and may appear green or blue, depending on their structure. To eliminate the blue hue of an onion-garlic blend, simply raise the heat in the pan—it will turn, according to Ms. Jaffrey, “a more acceptable pinkish-brown...”

Harold McGee is the author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, a superb reference book which includes a excellent analysis of the flavor components in spices and herbs. His website is www.curiouscook.com. Today’s article is the first in a series of columns on the science of cooking, also called “The Curious Cook,” which McGee will write for The Times.

Signs of spring: fresh soft shell crab and green garlic from the Farmer's Market.

Yes, spring is here. The herb and vegetable garden is ready for ex-pat transplants: Black Russian tomatoes, French tarragon, Mexican poblano chiles.

And sometimes, a purely local meal comes together in a most unusual fashion.