In Pursuit of Garlic (8 page)

· GARLIC’S WILD COUSINS ·

Garlic grows wild, too, and some varieties are native to North America.
Allium canadense,
also called meadow garlic or wild shallot, grows mainly on the eastern part of the continent, from New Brunswick to Florida and west as far as Texas. Indigenous people relied on it as food and also used its juice as an insect repellent. It has narrow, grassy leaves and a dome of pink or white star-shaped flowers; its bulb is just over an inch (3 centimeters) in diameter and is covered with a dense network of brown fibers.

A. tricoccum,
or “ramp,” grows in many parts of the continent and is so prized for the mild garlic flavor of its bulb and wide, short leaves that it’s an endangered species in the province of Quebec; in Maine, Rhode Island, and Tennessee, where annual festivals in its honor are common, it’s considered a plant of “special concern.” In the spring of 2011, more than 18,500 harvested plants on their way to various markets were seized by authorities in Quebec.

Allium vineale,
sometimes called crow garlic, was introduced to North America from Europe and has invaded meadows and farm fields in many places, including Ontario, where it’s listed as a weed. It has grasslike leaves and greenish-white, pink, or purplish flowers that grow in clusters. It’s edible, though apparently not as tasty as other garlics. Cattle don’t seem to mind its taste, however, and its flavor often affects dairy and beef products.

· BABIES LIKE GARLIC, TOO ·

Many breast-feeding mothers avoid eating garlic because they fear it will upset their babies, but a couple of studies by Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, and quoted by Eric Block in his book
Garlic and Other Alliums,
suggest that infants may be attracted to garlic. The studies, done in 1991 and 1993, indicated that babies “remained attached to the breast for longer periods of time, sucked more when the milk smelled like garlic, and ingested more milk as well.” The babies in the study who had not been exposed to garlic in their mothers’ milk spent more time breast-feeding after their mothers consumed garlic capsules.

· SPRING PLANTING OPTION ·

Even in Gilroy, California, the garlic capital of the world, garlic is planted in fall so that the seed cloves experience enough cool weather to produce good-sized bulbs. But gardeners like to experiment, and many try spring planting to see what happens. If you want to try, choose softneck cultivars in the Artichoke or Silverskin subgroups and prechill cloves for three weeks at 45 to 50°F (7 to 10°C) to break dormancy. Plant in February or early March.

In the southern United States or other warm-winter areas, spring planting of prechilled bulbs is sometimes the only option. It also can work where winters are so frigid that cloves tend to freeze in the ground: prepare holes before freeze-up and plant cloves during an early spring thaw, covering with purchased potting soil. Spring-planted garlic generally produces smaller bulbs.

· GARLIC, THE BUG KILLER OF THE FUTURE? ·

Now that we’re aware of the dangers of using poisonous chemicals to kill garden pests, garlic may come into its own as a nature-friendly pesticide. For centuries garlic, onions, and leeks have protected themselves by releasing sulfur compounds into the air or the soil—or into the mouths of insects that bite them. Our ancestors knew this and used garlic as an insecticide and companion plant, and contemporary tests of oils and extracts of alliums against nematodes, beetles, mites, ticks, and more have produced impressive results. Garlic oil has also been shown to be toxic to larvae of the mosquito, which spreads malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus, yellow fever, encephalitis, and other diseases.

· HOMEMADE BUG DETERRENT ·

To deter whiteflies, aphids, beetles, and mosquitoes, try this garlic spray. Be sure to completely cover the plant, including the undersides of the leaves.

4 ounces garlic extract

a few drops dish soap or insecticidal soap

1 quart water

Blend together and strain through cheesecloth. Dilute ten times and spray on plants, including undersides of leaves.

No garlic extract? Blend a whole bulb of garlic with 2 cups of water, allow to sit for a day, and strain. Add a few drops of dish soap and dilute with 1 gallon of water.

The air of Provence is impregnated with the aroma of garlic, which makes it very healthful to breathe.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

For a couple
of years I haunted nearby garlic fairs, sitting on hard benches in tents to hear lectures on the history, folklore, and medicinal value of garlic, jotting down growing and harvesting advice, watching cooking and braiding demonstrations, lunching on garlic sausage and garlic burgers, and sampling exotica like garlic fudge. I brought home jars of pickled garlic and garlic chutney and luscious garlic cultivars to eat and plant.

But I wanted more. The local fairs I was going to were all starting to look the same. I wanted to go to some really big ones, like the monster three-day bash held in Gilroy, California, at the end of July. I wanted to see what other countries’ festivals had to offer. And I wanted to find a certain pink garlic I’d been reading about, Ail Rose de Lautrec, reputedly a gently pleasing variety with amazing storage qualities and satiny pink skin.

To add to the allure of its taste, Lautrec pink garlic has a romantic past. It first appeared in the French village in the mid-Pyrenees in the Middle Ages, when a mysterious traveler who didn’t have enough francs to pay for his lodging offered the innkeeper a few bulbs of a lovely rose-pink garlic instead. The innkeeper planted it, and news of the garlic’s superior taste and keeping qualities spread, though for hundreds of years it was grown only in small quantities in the kitchen gardens of the village. Today it’s grown around the village under the strictest of regulations, using selected growers who have to follow the rules or else, and the village holds a garlic fair the first Friday of every August to celebrate it. But no one at any of the garlic fairs I attended had ever heard of it. I’d have to go to France to find it, and as a garlic-growing convert I was prepared to make the sacrifice.

So during a lull in the conversation at a family dinner one night, I announced to the group at large that I’d be going to the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California at the end of July and the Fête de l’Ail Rose in France in early August, and that the no-expenses-paid position of traveling companion for both these occasions was up for grabs.

There was a short pause and then my daughter, Suzy, put up her hand.

“I’ll take Gilroy,” she said. “It sounds like a blast.”

I kept the bidding open, but no one else volunteered that evening. After only a minimum of arm-twisting, Chris later agreed to accompany me to France. Two trips to destinations thousands of miles apart in the space of ten days—it was an ambitious project, I realized. But it didn’t take me long to realize I was doing more than gathering facts about garlic. I was learning how universal is the passion for this ancient vegetable and how differently people celebrate it.

There is no such thing as a little garlic.

ARTHUR BAER

“DO I smell garlic? Or am I imagining things just because we’re in Gilroy?” asks Suzy, rolling down the car window and sniffing the air. We’ve just come off Highway 101 and are cruising into town, heading for our bed-and-breakfast before taking in the first day of the Gilroy Garlic Festival, the biggest one in the world.

“You’re not imagining it—I smell it too,” I say, drawing a deep, delicious breath. The mouthwatering aroma is all around us, as if some chef in the sky is cooking up a giant casserole of chicken with forty thousand cloves of garlic. But where is it coming from?

Gilroy’s streets are lined with pretty, low-slung houses with lush-looking gardens, but as far as I can see there isn’t a garlic plant in any of them. There’s plenty in the fields outside town, regiments of them growing in endless rows, but garlic plants with their feet still in the earth don’t give off a brain-blowing aroma like this. It seems a fitting introduction to a weekend of garlic overload.

Gilroy is an old town, incorporated in 1870, and now a pleasant, middle-class city half an hour inland from the Pacific Ocean and about a ninety-minute drive south of San Francisco. It has a well-dressed, conservative American look that seems at odds with the pervasive perfume of garlic, and right now it’s almost deserted.

“Maybe everyone’s at the festival,” Suzy says. We follow a few people with folding chairs and sun hats to Christmas Hill Park, where the three-day festival has just got started. Gilroy boldly advertises itself as the garlic capital of the world, though this isn’t technically true; Gilroy Foods (the source of that tantalizing smell, it turns out) may be the biggest processor of garlic in the world—pickled, minced, roasted, granulated, powdered, and more—but the United States ranks only sixth in the production of fresh garlic, behind China, India, South Korea, Egypt, and Russia. Still, garlic is the city’s lifeblood, and the festival has put Gilroy (population 52,027 at last count) on the map. It’s been run with good old American know-how since 1979, with mainly volunteer help—a thousand people the first year and about four thousand each year since—and almost everyone in town has volunteered at some point. The first year the organizing committee hoped to attract five thousand people, and three times that many showed up. They ran out of food and had to send out for shrimp and calamari, butter and bread to feed the hordes. (They had plenty of garlic.)

NO ONE expected such success—least of all the mayor at the time. Before the first festival the organizing committee enthusiastically approached him to ask for city sponsorship, and he said no, a garlic festival was a bizarre idea and the city wouldn’t
think
of supporting it. So the committee went ahead on its own. The mayor refused to attend the festival. Every year since then about a hundred thousand people—twice the population of Gilroy—have shown up the last weekend in July to eat, drink, dance, and celebrate garlic.

By the time Suzy and I get to the parking lot, a carnival atmosphere has appeared from nowhere. We hear the noise: a brass band here, a thrumming bass over there, people shouting, laughter. We see the peaks of tents and towering red flames shooting into the air. Within minutes we’re caught up in the throng—seniors, moms and dads with kids in strollers, couples holding hands, teenagers running and pushing their way to one of the bands playing on three open-air stages. The crowds sweep us along to Gourmet Alley, the food stalls and cooking area that are the heart of the festival.

And they say Friday, today, is the festival’s least busy day.

This time we see as well as smell lots of garlic, bowls of it chopped and waiting to be stirred into the huge pans and cauldrons sitting over open flames on long gas barbecue racks. The crowd pushes up against the metal barrier to watch the Pyro Chefs, two festival regulars, put on their show. With theatrical flourish they shake giant pans filled with hundreds of shrimp and calamari. Flames lick the sides of the pans, moving higher and higher. There’s a hush—the crowd knows what’s coming—the chefs tip the pans ever so slightly, and
whoosh!
Bright orange flames leap into the air and billow dangerously near the tented roof.
“Woooo,”
gasps the crowd, pulling back from the barrier. This is showbiz.

“Wow,” says Suzy. “Now I know why those guys are wearing dark glasses—they’d have no eyelashes without them.”

What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

THE BARBECUES were lit a couple of hours earlier in a ceremony befitting the Olympics. From a giant flaming garlic bulb in the center of the park, a bamboo garden torch was lit by the festival president and passed to various important dignitaries, then to Miss Gilroy Garlic Festival, who carried it to Mr. Garlic, a beautifully whiskered gentleman wearing the kind of getup even the most loving grandfather wouldn’t be caught dead in on Halloween: a pouffy white garlic-shaped dress that bared his hairy white shoulders and legs, and a wide-brimmed garlic-laden straw hat. Mr. Garlic held the torch aloft for all to see as he proudly carried it to Gourmet Alley and ceremoniously lit the barbecues, to much applause.

The smell of garlic and onions, browning steak, and roasting peppers is making Suzy and me crazy, so we join the lineup for a combination plate, which seems like a good way to sample the variety Gourmet Alley offers. Our plastic plates are piled high, and not with mere samples. Mine holds a fat garlic sausage with grilled sweet peppers on a bun, a big ladle of small shrimp swimming in sauce, some chicken stir-fry, a big hunk of oozing garlic bread. Suzy’s has a generous helping of calamari, a pile of pasta con pesto, half a pepper-steak sandwich, and the garlic bread. We eat perched uncomfortably on a bale of hay vacated by a couple of women who’ve just cleaned their plates; they wave us over when they see us holding our plates aloft and peering around hopefully.

As Grandma used to say, our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. It’s too much food and too much garlic, even for garlic lovers, and except for the delicious, juicy sausage, the food is a tad overcooked—a problem with mass production, I know. But like those garlic-eating ancient Roman soldiers, we’re well fortified for the afternoon’s foray. We walk out onto the grounds, ready for whatever awaits us.

The grounds are anthills of activity, tents and booths as far as my squinting eyes can see. People from almost every community between San Francisco and San Diego are here, plus more from Denver and Detroit, Orlando and Austin, and Liverpool, England, and Toronto, Canada, buying T-shirts, posters, garlic graters, leather handbags, cookbooks, historic framed photos of old America, jewelry and wineglasses etched with “Gilroy Garlic Festival 2010.” The food vendors set up around the periphery sell more garlic-laden dishes: beef teriyaki, blackened shrimp with rice, BBQ ribs, Cajun crawdads, and garlic-fried green tomatoes. We needn’t worry where to find a bite to eat over the next couple of days.

Suzy heads for the big Garlic Mercantile tent for a look at its wares, and I move through the crowds and in and out of booths selling sterling silver toe rings, nifty aprons with appliqués of cupcakes on the bib, leather sandals, pottery and more pottery, gemstones, bath products, woodcrafts, and decorative pieces in blown glass, and past the beer tent, the rain room (a tent whose walls somehow emit a fine, cooling mist of water), and a rock-climbing wall.

But where’s the garlic?

In the nick of time the Garlic Information Center appears. A nice young woman behind the counter tells me there are no talks or seminars but there is a garlic-braiding class and a garlic-topping contest. Unfortunately, I’ve just missed both for the day. However, if I’d like one, I could have a free garlic-growing kit...

“Or,” she points across the field, “you could head on over to the Christopher Ranch booth. They have lots of garlic for sale.”

At the booth I ask what varieties they have, and does one of them happen to be a French pink garlic? “Never heard of pink garlic,” says the young man. “I’ve seen purple-skinned and purple-striped, even brownish garlic, but not pink. This nice big white one here is the only one we have. It’s what we grow at Christopher Ranch.” He points to a bin of pearly white bulbs with many cloves bulging under their glistening, pristine skin. Every year Christopher Ranch, the largest grower of garlic in North America and the pride of Gilroy, donates hundreds of pounds of the Artichoke cultivar ‘California Early’ to be cooked at Gourmet Alley and in the festival’s demonstrations and competitions. It’s being sold as single bulbs, in bags, or in braids. ‘California Early’ and ‘California Late,’ which isn’t ready for market yet, are the mainstay of the California garlic industry, with ‘Early’ most often used for processing. I buy two huge bulbs for a start.

The afternoon wears on. The sun beats down, and suddenly I’m depleted, my throat dry. Where is Suzy? Samples of garlic ice cream, courtesy of Gilroy Foods, are available at a small booth not too far from the crowded beer garden, but the lineup snakes halfway across the field. Maybe tomorrow. My feet hurt. I wander more, find a big booth selling plastic cups of creamy frozen lemonade, buy one, and sink gratefully onto another straw bale in a cooling grove of redwood trees. This bale is offered by a young man who jumps to his feet as I draw near and says, “Ma’am? Sit here.” Man, was I looking that bad? I can’t swallow the frozen lemonade and have to let it melt in my mouth and slide down my throat.

Fate intervenes with a sign. I glance up and see it straight ahead of me: “Cook-Off Stage.” I know in an instant that is where I should be.

And that’s where I happily spend the rest of the weekend.

After you eat a lot of garlic you just kind of feel like you are floating, you feel ultra-confident, you feel capable of going out and whipping your weight in wildcats.

MICHAEL GOODWIN, food and film writer, in
Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers

THE COOK-OFF Stage is where it’s happening, for this festival is really all about food, food with lots of garlic. All around me a happy throng of food lovers watch the chopping and sautéing taking place on the vast stage in event after event. My eyes are glued to the goings-on too. A handful of luxe-looking cooking stations with ovens, gas cooktops, and sinks with hot water are set up for the chefs, professional and amateur, who are taking part. A table on one side of the stage, where the judges taste and exclaim—usually into a microphone—is nicely set with good china.