garlic harvest

Garlic varieties: Silverwhite, Polish Hardneck, Mechti, Red Toch

I harvested most of our garlic crop today. Polish Hardneck is the definite winner in terms of size and quality. We were a little late in harvesting the Mechti...a lot of the encasing skin disintegrated, so those bulbs will not store well.

garlic rose relish

 
Whenever talk turns to garlic, as it often does, the Stinking Rose garlic-focused restaurant in San Francisco inevitably gets mentioned. When it does I tell the story of how my table finished off a whole jar of the "Garlic Rose Relish" that sits on every table, got it refilled and had some more. It is delicious. But then we all felt sick and had to go track down some ginger ale to soothe our aching stomachs.

I remember talking to the owner about the recipe. He said they use parsley (as opposed to basil) because it is cheap. It's all about the garlic anyway.

You can add some purslane for a boost of omega-3's if you're into that sort of thing. As I said, it's all about the garlic anyway.

Ingredients:

1 bunch	Chopped Parsley
1/4 c.	Chopped Garlic
2 T.	Vinegar
1 t.	Salt
	Olive oil to cover

plus basil, purslane, etc.

1.   Mix parsley, garlic, vinegar and salt.
2.   Add oil to cover ingredients, stir.
3.   Cover and store in refrigerator.

Recipe from The Stinking Rose.

This stuff is good on anything.

garlic broth

I know that garlic presses can be controversial but I happen to like using them most of the time. However, there's often a lot of flavor left in the peel after pressing. I sometimes save onion peels in the freezer to make vegetable broth, but since we go through a lot of garlic, I thought about making a "mostly garlic broth." After boiling the peels in water for a bit, I strained out the skins, added some salt, and had a delicious broth that warmed me up while I went on a recent hike.