Garlic

Published at

May-July, or Aug if we’re lucky

Garlic needs to be stored in a cool dry place where they’ll keep for quite some time. The garlic will keep at least a month. The bulbs don’t rot the way onions do, but you do have to check them because they will eventually shrivel and turn into something good only for compost.

More garlic arriving than you can use fresh? (Is that possible?) You can dehydrate them – just peel the cloves and slice. Or chop up the garlic and store it covered with olive oil or any other oil you like. Just be sure you store that chopped garlic and oil in the refrigerator, and use it within a month or so.

I’ve frozen whole garlic cloves, and they work ok for cooked dishes. Just peel them, pop in a freezer bag, and you’re done.

What I like best to do is to roast garlic and store it, covered in oil, in a jar in the refrigerator. Just wrap the cloves of garlic with foil, bake at 350 for about a half hour (depending on the size of the bulbs) or until they’re soft to the touch. Cool, squeeze the garlic out of the skins into a jar, and cover with olive oil. They’ll keep for about 2 months, if you make sure you keep the oil topped up. Just spoon out a teaspoon or two when you want roasted garlic spread on a pizza or bruschetta, or to flavor a soup, sauce or stew.

(2023) Homemade Caesar Salad Dressing and Croutons

We’ve returned from a ten day road trip to the Madawaska Kanu Centre (MKC) in Ontario. In addition to a week full of daily paddling instruction, their kitchen kicks out homecooked meals three times a day. I grabbed some of their recipe cards from the gift store.

MKC puts their freshest produce forward by serving cut fresh veggies with a dip at every lunch and dinner. The recipe cards didn’t include my favorite dip from the week, but this Caesar salad dressing can be served with the sliced peppers, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes from this week’s box.

(2021) Garlic Confit Toast

For those who are wondering what to do with their bounty of garlic …. how about making garlic confit? Down below is a simple recipe from Bon Appetit ages ago. It calls for one head of garlic but they were thinking those big heads of grocery store garlic. I’d peel as much garlic as I thought I wouldn’t be using fresh and make the garlic confit. What you don’t use to make garlic toast will keep for weeks and be perfect for your other cooking. You can stop at the first step – just the garlic and butter – and it will be useful in a hundred ways.

(2021) Le Grand Aioli

This week’s box has me primed to cut those slender little crookneck squash (what happened to the zephyr squash of years past?) into long strips and dip them into the aioli made from the recipe below. Also all those cherry tomatoes, rounds of cucumber, strips of red pepper …. and maybe boiled eggs with those popular “jammy” yolks? Sometimes I’m tempted to use olive oil in aioli, but olive oil can be bitter (there’s lots of good info on the internet about that) so the suggestion for grapeseed oil or canola oil that came with this recipe when it was published in the Washington Post is good, but I’ll be using Oliver Farms sunflower seed oil instead.

This recipe calls for steady whisking, but I’m going to make mine in a food processor.

(2020) Aluma Farm’s Veggie Pickles

Love that the Aluma Farm recipe helps you understand how much brine to make, depending on how many pickles you’re putting up. Really helpful for those of us pickling on the fly.

(2017) Pasta with Kale Pesto

Adapted from a recipe in Saveur magazine. Have you tried making pesto with kale? Delicious. And no telling how long kale will still be coming in, so enjoy while you can. Blanching the kale keeps the pesto a bright green. Not entirely necessary, but a nice touch.

(2017) Garlic-Potato Deviled Eggs

Everyone needs one more deviled egg recipe. Right? This one’s from something called “Homestyle Family Favorites Annual Recipes 2008.” They use just a few of the egg yolks in order to reduce the cholesterol in the deviled eggs. If that’s not an issue in your family, then keep them all!

Dixie Winfrey’s Yellow Squash with Garlic Cream Sauce

Dixie Winfrey is the mom of Judith Winfrey of Love is Love Farm at Gaia Gardens and PeachDish. This recipe ran in Atlanta magazine. From Susan Puckett’s writeup: “A caterer, Dixie traveled to France and learned how to master velouté (a velvety “mother sauce” made with a butter-based roux) after having it served over squash blossoms. Back home, she tried the same sauce technique over the actual squash, which she simmered just enough to retain some of its crunch. Even her squash-phobic daughter approved. Now squash is a staple in both their kitchens during the summer months.”

Creamy Lettuce and Garlic Soup

Sometimes you want something to do with lettuce besides eat it in a salad. This recipes is from seriouseats.com. You can serve this soup chilled or hot. It goes together in minutes.

Choy and Garlic Skillet

Not sure which of the choys was in the box, but they all cook pretty similarly. This recipe comes from the “Flat Belly Diet! Cookbook” from Prevention magazine.

Pickled Garlic 2

Place garlic cloves in a medium bowl, first cutting the large cloves in half. Mix in the red bell pepper. In a large saucepan over medium high heat, place the distilled white vinegar, white sugar, and spices. Bring to a boil. Boil 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and pepper....

Chicken Fricassee with Garlic

Here’s a variation on the chicken-and-garlic theme, this one using an onion and some white wine. It was published in the New York Times.

40 Cloves and a Chicken

More onions, more garlic. I have to confess I’m puzzled when I hear that folks can’t figure out what to do with all the alliums that have been coming our way. They’re so essential to most everything I cook that I’m just pleased to see them in the box. But apparently that’s not the case for everybody. So here are a few more ideas for them, and a couple of other things.

This is one quick way to use up a lot of garlic, and it’s absolutely delicious. This particular version is adapted from a recipe in “Good Eats: The Early Years” by Alton Brown.

Pickled Garlic

What can you do with pickled garlic? Use it as an antipasto or chop it into pasta salads. The pickling brine can be used in your next vinaigrette.

Do-It-Yourself Garlic Powder

The big bulb of garlic in my box this week led me to marvel about the quantity of garlic we’ve received this year. In my house, this is a very good thing. Easy for me to go through all that garlic. No problem.

But I was thinking as I unpacked my box that others might not have the same experience. I remember last year when folks were saying, “What do I do with all these onions?” It was not a problem I had ever thought existed!

So, when I ran across this recipe for do-it-yourself garlic powder, I thought maybe I should share. It comes from seriouseats.com. Also works for onions. Their note:

This process also works for onions, and I took the opportunity to do a tray of each simultaneously without damaging the flavor of either. Out of one 13-ounce white onion (chopped fine), I was able to produce 1/2 cup of dried flakes, which reduced to 3 tablespoons of onion powder. It’s ultimately a small amount, but it has a delicate, sweet taste—like a fried onion ring—which is quite attractive.

Roasted Garlic and Smoky Greens Soup

Adapted from a recipe chow.com. You can dress up this soup with a poached egg for a very elegant dinner. Another option for using up some of that garlic! And if you don’t have smoked paprika in your pantry, buy some!

Stir-fry Sauce

One of the things I do to make a quick stir-fry even quicker is to keep a jar of stir-fry sauce in the refrigerator. You could buy a jar, but why? When you’re ready for dinner, heat up some vegetable oil, sauté your vegetables (this week you could use bok choy, beet greens, thinly sliced beets, onions, garlic and/or squash) and when it’s just about done, add just enough of this sauce to coat everything lightly. The cornstarch will thicken quickly and your stir-fry is done. I love that I don’t have to haul out the ginger and the garlic and the soy sauce and whatever every time I want to make a quick meal. This sauce will keep in the refrigerator for 2 weeks. Vary the proportions to suit the taste of your household.

Garlic Scape Pesto

If you’re wondering how to use the wonderful late spring surprise of garlic scapes in today’s box, you’ll find that these long curling stalks are soft and juicy, and just right for adding garlic flavor without overwhelming a dish. Cut them into thin slices and add them to anything that could use a little garlic but without the drama. Chop them up and add them to eggs or stir them while you’re cooking rice or bulgur. Add chopped scapes to cream cheese, stir in a little sour cream, and you’ve got the CSA version of French onion dip.

If you want a recipe, here’s one for Garlic Scape Pesto from the Washington Post.