Garlic with a purpose

WHEN it comes to garlic, not all varieties are created equal. It all depends on your intentions.

Letetia Ware in her drying shed.

USUALLY when I write a seasonal story about food it is about the harvest, but this week I’m talking about garlic because it is planting time - and I’m making a pitch for us not to be so monogamously attached to the Tasmanian purple cultivar.

Garlic grower and researcher Letetia Ware says garlic has been treated like lemons - not labelled by variety in shops - whereas it should be treated more like the potato, which we select according to the way we intend to cook it - the best mashing potato is no good for a salad.

Tasmanian purple has become the garlic from local growers. And for some reason shopkeepers nearly always label it as organic - even when the grower had made no such claim.

(Very frustrating for the growers who actually have gone to the expense and bother of organic certification.) A much more reliable classification is which of six groups of garlic available in Australia, a garlic belongs to.

Tasmanian purple belongs to the turban group. It is the first to be harvested, in late November/early December, and, says Letetia, great for using raw in dressings or dips and in stir-fries.

“But it does not have the strength of character to hold up in slow-cooked food or roasting,” says Letetia.

And the turban group of garlics also has a very short dormancy and will start shooting in April or May.

A garlic belonging to the creole group however is not harvested until January and will keep nearly 12 months.

Letitia says creoles are her favourite garlics (she grows Spanish roja and edenrose cultivars among other creoles). “It is slightly sweet, has a hot but rich flavour that you would tend not to eat raw because it is so strong,” she says.

“But the nutty complex flavours will really last through long, slow cooking or roasting.”

Creoles are not such an attractive looking bulbs as the striated Tasmanian purple, but under the white outer wrapping are magenta-covered cloves.

Creole garlics like a cold winter and a dry hot summer, and so can be marginal in southern Tasmania, but a poor season will just mean the cloves will be smaller.

The artichoke group of garlics is the highest-yielding, and therefore very popular with large-scale producers. The bulbs mostly have a white skin.

Letetia says many people find the cultivars in this group robust and aggressive.

“But if you are doing Italian cooking that uses lots of tomatoes and meaty flavours you need that robust garlic to really stand out, whereas French cooking is more subtle with its flavours.”

She says if you used an artichoke garlic in a French dish ”it would just slam you in the forehead, it’s not subtle enough at all”.

A better choice would be the silverskin group, which is harvested in February and lasts until October or November.

”It has a very subtle, sweet, medium-intensity flavour,” she says.

At the recent Koonya Garlic Festival, Letetia and the author of Garlic, Penny Woodward, made a plea for people to ask for garlic cultivars other than Tasmanian purple – whether as home gardeners or retail customers.

”Retailers won’t stock anything unless they know it is in demand,” said Letetia. “If people ask for creole garlic, they will go back to the wholesalers and ask for creole.”

To purchase garlic for planting (or eating) see Letetia Ware’s business tasmaniangourmet garlic.com.au; in the North tasmaniannaturalgarlicandtomatoes.com.au and there is also brymworthfarm.com.au/ourfarm.

See australiangarlic.net.au for information on garlic groups and pennywoodward.com.au/garlic for information on the book Garlic.

A FEAST ON THE ROAD

Lyndey Milan and spice expert Ian “Herbie” Hemphill have taken to the road for a culinary road tour called Lyndey & Herbie’s Moveable Feast, screening at the rather awkward time of 2.30pm on Saturdays on 7TWO.

The final episode on April 25 sees them in Tasmania, where they cook potato gnocchi with nettles with Rodney Dunn at The Agrarian Kitchen, visit Nick Haddow at Bruny Island Cheese, Roger Scales at Woodbridge Smokehouse and Chris Read at Diemen Pepper.