In Pursuit of Garlic (10 page)

But let’s be honest here. The smugglers aren’t the only ones who like Chinese garlic. North American grocery chains like it, too, even if most of their customers don’t. But who can blame them? Chinese garlic is cheap, plentiful, and always available. Of course it’s plentiful—China grows 75 percent of the world’s garlic.

THE PROBLEM for small growers—and few garlic-growing operations on this continent are big—is that they can’t guarantee a large supply of garlic year-round, which is what big chains want. They may not even be able to supply a large enough amount from August to December, when garlic is in season, having been harvested in late July or August and stored under the usual conditions until winter. That’s where a climate-controlled storage building would be valuable. But first, as Warren Ham says, growers—in Ontario especially, where most of Canada’s garlic is grown—have to get back to where they were in 2001 and produce enough garlic to satisfy the demands of the big chains.

One wonders why the big chains can’t buy small quantities of produce like garlic and tomatoes from local producers instead of bombarding us with imports in our bountiful harvest season. So I was heartened to see Galen Weston, executive chairman of Loblaw Companies Limited (which owns just over a thousand stores and franchises across Canada, including the namesake stores, No Frills, Superstore, Fortinos, Zehrs, and more), advertising the company’s initiative to buy local wherever possible. Would that include garlic? I wondered. How lovely if we could find some really good local bulbs in the grocery bins, maybe an ‘Ontario Giant,’ a Rocambole, or the popular ‘Music,’ a Porcelain brought to Ontario from Italy in the 1980s. So I called head office and asked to speak to the VP of produce procurement about his garlic plans and his take on the Chinese garlic situation. I didn’t get past the public relations department, which intervened and asked me to submit a list of questions. After a few days, I got the following reply: “Upon further review, we believe this is an industry related subject and feel you would be better suited following up with the Retail Council of Canada.”

China doesn’t even grow the many varieties now available in most of the rest of the world. “We have two kinds—softneck and hardneck,” says John Huang, North American representative for Pretty Garlic, one of the biggest importers of Asian garlic to this continent. “We don’t use the other classifications other countries do. Softneck is what we sell, in pure white and regular white, which has a bit of a purple stripe on the skin.”

As Don Christopher and others have said, there was a period when the supply of garlic dwindled in China and the price went up. In 2009 it nearly quadrupled, making garlic one of the country’s best assets that year. Why? As in any other country and with any agricultural product, prices are dependent on many influences—floods and frost, supply and demand, and, in China, even influenza epidemics. Yes, the flu: economists at Morgan Stanley, an international financial adviser, theorized the trigger for the price increase might have been the H1N1 virus and the faith the Chinese have in garlic’s ability to ward off disease. A story in the
China Daily
bolstered this argument: it reported that a high school in Hangzhou, a city in eastern China, had bought enough garlic for all its students to eat every day at lunch so that they would stay healthy. John Huang says garlic’s medicinal properties affected its price in the beginning, but the weak global economy was likely a stronger influence. The garlic market suffered along with other markets, and when farmers began to receive less for their garlic, they started to plant less—about 50 percent less, in fact. Garlic became a valuable commodity for investment and the price went up. Stories abound about people who bought garlic, stored it, and waited for the price to climb higher. One story claims a young man in his early twenties borrowed money provided to the banks by the government to keep the economy going, bought a load of garlic, flipped it when the price went up, and used the proceeds to buy a Toyota.

“It’s true: in 2009 and 2010 speculators were successful in controlling the market,” says John Huang. “They bought garlic, held it back, and forced prices higher as supplies became limited.”

But then the expected happened: farmers planted more garlic because the price looked good. “More garlic, lower prices,” John says. “The 2011 crop is 30 percent more than 2010’s. Prices are dropping, dropping, dropping.”

My next-door neighbor’s father-in-law grows vegetables in the Holland Marsh region north of Toronto, the vegetable basket of the province, and sells them at the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto. Let’s put that in the past tense—he used to grow them. In an over-the-fence conversation one day he tells my husband he’s switched from veggies to herbs. “I can’t compete with the price of Chinese imports,” he says.

In the United States, the garlic situation has changed slightly. Bill Christopher, Don’s son and a partner in the family company, says consumers and food distributors have become much more concerned about where their food is coming from and care more about buying local produce. “Food safety and traceability of food sources are important,” he says. “China’s smaller-than-usual crop enabled U.S. suppliers to retake some markets and explain the benefits of locally grown produce.”

But what’s next, now that China once again has a large crop to export?

“I think 2012 will be an interesting year,” he says.

Garlic is my salt and pepper.

MARGEE BERRY, first-prize winner, Great Garlic Cook-Off

I HAVE a special reason for being on time for Saturday’s Great Garlic Cook-Off: I’d entered a recipe in the contest months before and sometimes, in the moments before falling asleep, I’d fantasized about preparing the dish onstage and then modestly accepting a prize. Not necessarily first—second or third would do. Even being among the eight finalists would be grand.

My recipe didn’t even make the first cut. It’s a simple dish of steamed rapini sautéed in olive oil and chopped garlic (the rules require no less than 3 teaspoons, or 15 mL), served over soft garlic-and-basil polenta, and topped with a poached egg, with garlic-laced salsa fresca on the side. It’s one of my favorite breakfasts, one I came up with when I had some leftover rapini and polenta in the fridge, and I thought it was an easy but good-tasting recipe the judges might like. Once I see what the eight finalists—who’d been selected from hundreds of entries—are cooking up there on the stage, and what seasoned contest participants they are, I realize what I’d been up against. Their recipes are much more creative than mine. While the judges are tallying their results (and because I’d managed to wangle a media badge that allowed me on the Cook-Off Stage), I have a taste of Penny Malcolm’s Roasted Garlic, Blueberry, and Pear Cobbler with Garlic-Pecan Brickle Cream. “This is amazing,” I say as the flavors explode in my mouth. It’s sweet and savory, smooth and crunchy. And the subtle taste of garlic fits right in. Penny grins.

“I also entered a Brie pecan pie with garlic, but it didn’t make it to the finals, so don’t feel bad about yours,” she says. She’s come here from Americus, Georgia, to prepare her cobbler on stage. “This is the third time I’ve entered and the first time I made it to the finals. But unlike some of the other competitions I’ve been in, this one is pretty informal, so it’s easier.”

“The others?” I exclaim. “How many do you enter?”

“About twenty-four a year,” she says matter-of-factly.

“How many have you won?”

“Twelve. It can rule your life after a while.”

Penny’s amazing cobbler doesn’t win. Margee Berry’s Warm- Weather Watermelon Crabmeat-Kissed South Seas Soup takes first place. Margee’s no stranger to the Gilroy contest either. “I won third prize here about nine years ago, then second six years ago,” she says. She came from Trout Lake, Washington, the day before to shop for ingredients, as did the other contestants, who are expected to supply everything except the garlic. “Once you win you have to wait three years to enter again. But I figured I had a pattern going and this time I was sure to take first.”

Her cool soup has a contemporary combination of flavors perfect for a hot summer day. At first it’s sweet, then minty. The garlic appears and then backs off and you taste the ginger, the hot chilies and lemongrass. The flavors remain separate—just the way food is in Thailand.

Leslie Shearer’s Potentially Pretentious Pork Tenderloin with Garlic Five Ways takes second place. “You should have won first just for the name,” I say to her. Her big laugh fills the space between us. “It’s really poking a bit of fun at over-engineered restaurant food with complicated names,” she says. “I also figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a catchy name to make the judges take notice.”

They take notice—they smack their lips over Leslie’s pork. “That first taste of the garlic chip sealed it for me,” enthuses one. “Then the creamy goat cheese played off the pork and the tanginess and sweetness of the sauce.”

“The texture of the grit cakes was so sensual,” rhapsodizes another. “It’s the kind of food they ate in that movie
Tom Jones.
Fabulous treatment of garlic.”

The recipe contains four heads of roasted garlic and six cloves of sliced fried garlic, grits cooked in garlic-infused water, garlic powder, four cloves of minced garlic for roasting the pork, and... hmm, I guess that’s five ways. Also included: softened goat cheese, arugula tossed in the garlic-roasting oil, a reduction of balsamic vinegar and fig preserves, and the roasted pork, of course. “See what I mean?” says Leslie. “It’s definitely potentially pretentious.”

Suzy shows up waving a foot-long grilled and garlicky, beautifully buttery cob of corn.

“This is so delicious,” she calls. “Let’s go eat!”

And so we share more garlic-laden foods: barbecued pork on a bun, a large steamed artichoke filled with shrimp and crab Louis, and Cajun crawdads. What’s a festival without lots of food? Then we sample some local wine in the big and busy Rotary International tent and totter back to our bed-and-breakfast for a nap.

I wouldn’t go to Baskin-Robbins for it.

Overheard in the lineup for garlic ice cream

THE FIRST place I head Sunday morning is the lineup for garlic ice cream. There are about a dozen people waiting, and I have my little cone in my hand in no time. I lick. First it tasted like plain vanilla, then I get garlic on the back of my tongue, and it expands as the ice cream melts down my throat. Do I sound like a wine columnist? But when it comes down to it, it’s ice cream with a hint of garlic. I expect there’s no market for it beyond the festival.

I spend the rest of the day at the Garlic Showdown, where four professional chefs compete for a $5,000 prize, creating dishes on the spot with garlic and a mystery ingredient to be revealed when the contest begins. Very
Iron Chef.
The emcee is Fabio Viviani, successful West Coast restaurateur, cookbook author, and
Top Chef
’s Season 5 Fan Favorite (and winner of $10,000 for the distinction). He falls into his role right away, striding the stage like Mick Jagger, cracking jokes, promoting products, and engaging in crowd-pleasing hijinks while keeping track of the chefs’ progress for the audience.

This year’s special ingredient is mushrooms, and each chef is given a box of several varieties. They have an hour to prepare and present two dishes—after all, they are professionals—and most of them outdo themselves and come up with several. Ryan Scott, the defending champion, wins again. He owns Ryan Scott 2 Go catering in San Francisco, and even at his tender age (he’s in his mid-thirties) he’d been head chef at a couple of well-known Bay Area restaurants before opening his business. His winning recipe is in three parts: Perplexed Portobello Steak with Mushroom Purée and Mushroom Crudo.
P
alliterations seem to be in the air this weekend. “I named it that because the mushrooms are seared like a steak, so I figured they weren’t sure of their identities,” jokes Ryan. The mushrooms were plated on the garlic-mushroom purée and topped with mushroom jus from the pan and then mushroom crudo.

It’s well after two on the last day of the festival, and after watching the preparation of such elegant food and being denied even a mouthful, Suzy and I are ravenous. A Ryan Scott 2 Go booth is conveniently located directly across the field, and we hotfoot it over there with half the audience. We line up for sweet and succulent pulled pork and crisp coleslaw on a bun, but the garlic sweet-potato fries are sold out. It’s probably a good thing. By the time we’ve finished the pork we need to do a brisk round of the grounds and some final shopping to shake it down.

“Did you have a good time?” says the man at the media tent as we’re leaving.

“It was fabulous. I’m overwhelmed,” I say. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“I didn’t think I could have so much fun at a garlic festival,” says Suzy. “And for three whole days.”

And we both mean every mouthwatering word of it.

A day without garlic is a day without sunshine.

Sign outside a greengrocer in Lautrec, France

ON THE first day of our visit to Lautrec, Chris and I spot the pink garlic as soon as we walk past a little food shop on the narrow and cobblestoned Rue du Mercadial, just inside the village gate. Tightly tied bunches of perfectly round and uniformly plump garlic bulbs nestle together in a bin, glistening in a slanted ray of sunlight like pink satin. They look polished. I study them for a few moments before picking up a bunch, almost afraid to break the spell. I’ve come a long way to find this garlic.

I want to rip off the skin right away to see if the cloves inside are pink, but I resist the urge. The one-pound (450-gram) bunches, called
manouilles,
of nine identical bulbs sell for seven euros in village shops and at Lautrec’s Friday morning market. In the nearby city of Castres they’re nine or ten euros, and at Fauchon in Paris, twenty euros. In London they cost even more. It’s expensive garlic, and it’s important to Lautrec. Around the village more land is devoted to growing sunflowers than to garlic, but they don’t bring in as many euros as pink garlic. Pink garlic is grown on about 20 percent of the land but represents about 80 percent of the local agricultural economy.