Garlic

Wednesday

Annie Gray

A history of the onion leaves one crying for more

From our UK edition

I am a big fan of Mark Kurlansky. His Cod is one of a handful of books I recommend to people keen to learn about the way in which certain foods have helped shape the world we live in. But while The Core of the Onion has its moments and is an enjoyable read, it’s a mark of how high Kurlansky has set the bar that it doesn’t quite hit the mark for me. For centuries, no writer has dared to tell the truth about caramelising onions The main problem is its brevity – a mere 240 pages. Given that the author is someone who can write more than 300 riveting pages on New York seen through its relationship with the oyster, it seems strange that a vegetable which is consumed globally and was domesticated at least 7,000 years ago doesn’t merit the same treatment.

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

French kissing with the French

From our UK edition

Every year Vernon celebrates the gathering in and pressing of his olive harvest by inviting friends to a ceremony at his house. This year there were seven of us. He poured about a third of a pint of the freshly pressed, very green oil on to a central white china plate. We each took a small piece of toast, rubbed it with a garlic clove and soaked it in the oil. Then we removed it from the oil and rubbed it against the pulp of a quartered tomato. Apparently it’s a Provençal peasant tradition. The new green oil catches the back of the throat and isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But it’s a vivid taste of nature.

Thursday

Melissa Kite

Why I’m thanking God, my immune system and garlic

From our UK edition

‘Contact a GP if you’re worried about symptoms four weeks after having Covid.’ That was the NHS quote on the end of a story about Piers Morgan, who was still feeling ill three weeks after getting the lurgy. Me too, Piers. It took the builder boyfriend almost as long to get over it, and his father. We make an interesting control group, don’t we? Piers Morgan and the builder boyfriend’s father are both double-jabbed. The builder boyfriend and I are not vaccinated. And yet here we all are, going through exactly the same thing as we try to get over Covid. Of course, the government wants to argue that the vaccinated escape hospitalisation. That’s their prerogative.

Saturday

Jane Stannus

All about the allium

‘A nickel will get you on the subway,’ the saying goes, ‘but garlic will get you a seat.’ Garlic’s always possessed a pungent reputation — according to the explorer Robert de la Salle, the area of modern-day Chicago was so full of Allium tricoccum, our native wild garlic, that the Algonquin called it Che-ka-kou, ‘place of the smelly onions’. But it was Lucky Leif Erikson who brought the first bulbs of Allium sativum, the kind of garlic you buy at the grocery store, to the settlements of Vinland in Newfoundland and along the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The Vikings didn’t remain chez nous, but garlic did, carving out a niche for itself as is its wont.

garlic