So garlic is popular in France and China and places in between. Was it imported to and from some of these places, or does it just have a really large range as a native species?
Is it so common in cooking for purely gastronomic reasons, or does it have important nutritive value (not that the gastronomic reasons aren’t enough)?
How long does garlic last just sitting on the shelf? I have a pretty old bud sitting over my kitchen sink. I just pressed a clove, and it looked and smelled just fine, but before I got to that there were a couple of cloves that seemed kind of … bruised? Well, they had brown regions on them. I threw those out but I wonder if I’m eating nasty old garlic that will do [insert bad thing here] to me.
I heard that garlic breath isn’t a breath problem per se, rather, that your whole body smells like garlic from skin oils. I also heard that you’d absorb enough garlic through your skin to smart smelling like it all over, without eating any. Any truth to these assertions?
What’s the best way to get garlic on pasta? I usually press a clove, put in some heated olive oil, and pour it over the top. The problem is, the oil doesn’t really mix well with any red sauce, so it only “looks right” when it’s on plain pasta with some parmesan. Can you just put pressed garlic in the red sauce, or is it going to overcook?
According to Encyclopedia Americana, garlic is probably native to central Asia.
It has a long history as a medicinal herb. It is supposed to alleviate the symptoms of insect bites if applied topically. Recently, medical studies indicate that eating garlic may protect against heart disease and cancer and strengthen the immune system. See http://www.mayohealth.org/mayo/9802/htm/garlic.htm
My fresh garlic tends to go moldy after several months on my kitchen shelf. Garlic powder probably lasts just about forever.
If your interested, two of the most potent of the many chemicals which contribute to the smell of garlic are allyl thiol and allyl disulphide. Very simple molecules, but rather difficult to work with in the lab. At least you get a seat to yourself on the bus afterwards…
If you want garlic flavor IN the pasta you can always just make it that way. I guess I have to assume you are using store bought pasta. Ok, you can cheat a couple of ways.
When boiling the pasta you can add garlic powder to the water. You can do this with just about anything actually, boiling noodles in chicken broth for example.
The other way you can cheat is to put more than a couple cloves through a press and then toss them with the completed pasta.
Ever tried buying minced garlic in the jar??
It’s an aussie thing…don’t know how popular that sort of thing is around the world!!
I find that if you have a sauce with your pasta, cooking the garlic with the base of the sauce gets the flavour very evenly spread through the whole dish. Alternatively, garlic powder as has already been suggested, or garlic butter for that matter! once the pasta’s cooked, chuck a bit of the butter in, mix it around a bit and bingo…pat’s your aunty!!
otherwise…if you’re just worried about getting a seat on the bus by yourself…<ANDROID>…a garlic sandwhich works everytime for my grandfather!! : )
I really wouldn’t recommend substituting garlic powder for fresh garlic. They have very different flavors. The taste of garlic changes quite markedly with cooking. If you want the sharp taste of raw or lightly cooked garlic, then just stir it into your heated red sauce at the last minute. If you want the mellower taste of cooked garlic, then simmer minced or sliced (very thin) garlic in the sauce for a while. You can also roast it in the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes. Just put the cloves (with the “paper” still on) into a small baking dish and bake until soft. This is great stuff. You can squish it out of the cloves directly onto bread or stir it into a sauce. It has a much milder, sweeter flavor than raw garlic.
Until recently (a few years ago), we could only get tiny, mucho expensive jars, so I never bothered. We started buying it as soon as we saw the giant jars (I think they’re almost a pound of garlic). I love it - I never liked pressed garlic, I always chopped mine. Now I only buy whole cloves when I need roasted garlic or somesuch.
Has anyone else had hot pickled garlic? MMMMMM MMMMMM GOOD!!
There’s a Greek/Arabian market down the street from us a piece where we can get pickled garlic in a fairly large jar - not hot/spicy as redtail says, but damn tasty just the same. The Russians say it’s good for keeping colds away; I ate a clove a day during most of the winter, but for some reason stopped and caught a whopper of a cold. But damn, I love the stuff! Will have to look for the hot pickled garlic next time I go to Aphrodite… mouth watering
Have to agree there, boiled garlic cloves lose almost all of their flavor. My mom used to cook a dish where garlic cloves (a pound or two) were used in place of potatoes, and after they were boiled they where a lot like a mashed potato texure wise and taste wise they were creamy and mild.
A. I highly don’t recommend jarred garlic. It loses all the pungency of fresh garlic and takes on a kind of processed, plasticky taste. I’ve had it ruin more than one pizza in an unfamiliar pizza joint. I’m sure it has its uses, masked heavily enough in something like chili, but it is by no means interchangeable with fresh garlic. On the other hand, there are little refrigerated toothpaste tubes of chopped fresh garlic in some grocery stores that will just about do in a pinch.
I’ve had mixed results with the bottled stuff. For quite a while, I have to agree, the flavor was just…off. But i recently got a bottle from Trader Joe’s, and man, it’s almost as good as the stuff straight out of the clove.
Anyone here ever go to The Stinking Rose here in San Francisco? It’s an all-garlic restaurant. I’m not to fond of “gimmick” restaurants, but this one is worth a visit. The food ain’t bad, but it ain’t great either, except for the Bagna Caulda, roasted garlic in olive oil with fresh bread. Yum!