When I heard the weather report yesterday, I decided to dig my garlic; the several days of sun that were predicted would be ideal for beginning to dry the crop out in the field. I grow a 25 foot row of this essential ingredient, which provides me with enough garlic for this year's planting (one garlic clove planted in fall will form a bulb next summer) and for eating until the new crop is ready. After it dries for a few days in the sun, I hang the garlic up in bunches (the stiff necks can't be braided) in the mud room; the garlic smell wafting in the garden air is transferred to the mud room. You have to love garlic for this! In a few weeks I will clean up the bulbs, cut off the roots and long stalks, and rehang bunches in the mud room. They will finally be stored in a cold bedroom throughout the winter.
I grow two or three different kinds of garlic, but don't know their names. One has a white outer covering, and enormous cloves, the other pink, with smaller cloves. They all look close to bursting out of their tight wrappings, their rounded volumes full of hidden culinary pleasure.
What a fabulous harvest Altoon! Im very impressed --- and years supply is indeed a good thing!
ReplyDeleteAfter a ridiculously busy time I now have time for important things again ... and visiting the blogosphere! Loved those magificent blue eggs you found and the blue/green paintings were stunning!
best,
Sophie
hi Sophie, thanks for visiting, and I'm glad you liked the painting. The garlic harvest is a terrific thing, along with all the other good vegetables coming from the garden right now, an embarrassment of riches.
ReplyDeleteGood morning, Altoon.
ReplyDeleteGarlic: Yes!
We dug our garlic in the same days you did yours, together with our grandson -- dug and washed and washed and washed -- and it/they (garlic and juicy stems)are drying out now in pretty, neat rows on a large spread of cardboard on the garage floor: a year's supply and a small treasure.
One of the things we occasionally do with our garlic is to rasp a large clove of it on the inch or two of small ceramic points at the center of a specially made little dish we brought back from Paris. Those points effectively -- marvelously -- cream the garlic, which blends nicely with the splash of olive oil we add to it, and that sits in the little reservoir that encircles the rasps. From there to the wad of bread we dip into the garlic-oil mixture, at any dinner....
Has any American ceramicist caught on to this construction, I wonder.
Jules
hmm, Jules, your beautiful little gadget is wonderful. I've now begun to finely grate my garlic using a Microplane, much easier to use than a garlic press. The fresh garlic, with its moisture, becomes very creamy using this handy tool.
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