Is fresh garlic possible in Australia?

"Garlic can be strident and strong even harsh, and then gentle and nutty with a sweet mellow finish. Garlic is simply delicious and adds so much depth of flavour to most dishes."

Beverley Sutherland Smith

When we go to France we always buy some fresh garlic, like this shown here. It is so different from what you can get here. I'm pretty sure you can't get it here - not easily anyway.

On my shopping trip to Doncaster the other day I picked up a heavily reduced cookbook by Nigel Slater - Real Food into which I have been dipping every day. It has eight chapters - each one on a different favourite food. One of them was garlic and although I was enticed by the recipes I was also a bit peeved because he got all precious about what kind of garlic you could use. The above spring/summer garlic being the best.

"I peel back the waxy skin and pull out the slippery white cloves. Each one has its own thick skin, still wet and pliable. Tucked inside are the sweetest, juiciest nuggets of garlic. So firm and crisp I want to eat them like slices of new season's apple. This is the garlic I want for cutting in half and rubbing on thick, crisp toast or for slicing thinly and tucking between the silky folds of a roasted pepper, or for rubbing round the salad bowl. This is the garlic for scenting summer mayonnaise, for stuffing into a chicken as it roasts, for using with generosity. This is the sweet mild garlic of romance." Nigel Slater.

Now I do not disagree with this at all, but even in Europe it seems, the season for fresh garlic is short. Here in Australia it barely happens. Why? Well apparently we used to have a semi-thriving garlic growing industry and then in 1999 the market was suddenly flooded with cheap Chinese imports. It still is - Mexican too I see and recently Spanish. Yes there is Australian too, but it is not cheap and it is not fresh. I would pay the extra for fresh but not for the dry - although maybe I should because:

"Imported garlic is often bleached, irradiated, sprayed with maleic acid to stop it from sprouting, kept for months in cold storage and, finally, it is always treated with methyl bromide before being allowed on to our supermarket shelves." Penny Woodward

And actually I did know this about the Chinese garlic and I do try not to buy it. I do try to buy Australian, but sometimes there is nothing other than the imported stuff. I gather that the Australian industry is slowly recovering but even so most of the producers are small and cannot supply large enough quantities for the supermarket trade. I also noticed that actually they have their eye on the European market more than the home market - the aim being to supply the Europeans with summer fresh garlic in their winter.

And then Nigel Slater gets really superior:

"As the winter wears on I cook fewer and fewer dishes where garlic is the point of them. Its pungency can be unpleasant, its sweetness gone. ... You can still use the plumper cloves in a stew. Once they have become dry and beige and their smell rank, they are fit only for the bin."

For me garlic is essential. Interesting is it not how something becomes essential? As a child there was no garlic. Now it would be unthinkable not to have it. Like a smart phone. When, as a teenager, my mother and I made spaghetti bolognaise for the first time we did not know whether a clove was the whole bulb or one little bit. Fortunately we guessed right. For you can have too much garlic. One of my first memories of France was the smell of garlic and gauloise cigarettes in the French metro. And I also remember a time when it really was too much. My husband went to, I think, Vlado's restaurant in Melbourne, and had some sausage which he had not realised had been absolutely covered in raw garlic (always more pungent than cooked). When he came home I could smell him before he got to the bedroom. And when the children got into the car the next day they wondered what the 'funny smell' was and it lingered for days. So yes, you can definitely have too much. But you can also use a whole bulb or even more in certain dishes and it will just taste mellow.

Anyway I use it a lot. In almost everything. Maybe I use it too much. Mine is often sprouting and often past its best - even if I have bought Australian. They tell you not to keep it in the fridge (I don't) though I did see one person say you should, I keep it in a dark dry place like they say you should and before very long it is sprouting. Even the best that I could buy. So I use it unless it has completely gone off - some of the cloves do. Which superior Nigel Slater - and doubtless other food authorities would say I shouldn't. But what else can I do.

I suppose I could grow my own. I did once, but I vaguely remember that it didn't split into cloves - or maybe just two. So was very difficult to use. But I might give it another go. And I'll have a look in the Farmer's Market here in Eltham in Spring.

"People just think garlic is garlic, but there are many different varieties. Some mature earlier than others, all have a different flavour, some are strong and pungent, some are quite mild which even children can eat," Jane Sherborne- Higgins- Goulburn Garlic

In the meantime here is how to roast garlic and make some garlic purée. I won't copy it from my book because you can find basically the same thing online here.

And I shall probably be trying some other things from my new book too.

Oh and it's good for you too. Unless you have a fructose intolerance that is.