Garlic: as good as 10 mothers

Far from being a food to fear, garlic is the first line of defence against blandness, writes ELAINE REEVES

Koonya Garlic Festival. (Front L-R) Angus Stewart of N. S. W, Tino Carnevale.

WHEN I first began cooking, rubbing a salad bowl with a clove of cut garlic was, I felt, the height of sophistication.

Eating out (which, in the very early days in my home town, always elicited a question from the waiter as to what the special occasion was) we might order garlic bread or garlic prawns, and again, felt very “with it”.

Garlic was a novelty, it was foreign and use of it bestowed worldliness on the cook, but one did one want to overdo it.

“Foreignness” has not always been something to be desired. Isabella Beeton, in her 1861 book, said the smell of garlic “is generally considered offensive” and its taste “the most acrimonious of the whole of the alliaceous tribe”.

And you gather that the fact that “in Italy, it is much used, and the French consider it an essential in many made dishes” is in no way a recommendation.

In the US too, garlic “a convenient emblem for the ethnic and the unfamiliar … would come to represent a whole range of undesirable nationalities”, wrote Michelle Humes in the New York Times in 2009 under the heading: The Way We Ate: Fear of Garlic.

She wrote that from the 1880s to the 1930s, garlic became “the go-to metaphor for immigrant neighbourhoods. Its sulphurous tang was almost beside the point; the bulb smelled of foreign incursion”.

In his 1946 book Off the Beeton Track, Peter Pirbright in England begged readers to give garlic a go “please try it, just for once — not masses of garlic, just a tiny bit, half a clove, well crushed”.

He also (I read in Culinary Pleasures by Nicola Humble) suggested rubbing the salad bowl with garlic, a practice Elizabeth David scoffs at in Summer Cooking in 1955, while railing at “the grotesque prudishness and archness with which garlic is treated in this country”.

She went on start a food revolution in which garlic speared the way. The Times article says its own fear of garlic began to wane from 1957, when Craig Claiborne began his 29 years on the food pages.

“Under his leadership, garlic would no longer languish at the bottom of ingredient lists in lone, ‘optional’ cloves; it now appeared in quantities of two, three, even forty.” (James Beard’s 40-clove chicken braise appeared in 1962.)

Screenshot from the 1980 documentary film Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers.

In 1979, the Gilroy Garlic Festival started in California and a year later, the doco Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers, directed by Les Blank was released.

The title comes from a saying: Garlic is as good as 10 mothers — for keeping the girls away.

The San Francisco Chronicle called the doco “a joyous, nose-tweaking, ear-tingling, mouth-watering tribute to a Life Force”.

It included footage of the Gilroy festival and garlic feasts being prepared by Alice Waters at Chez Panisse. It was said to promote “garlic as the first line of defence against blandness”.

In 2004, the film was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. 

The Gilroy Garlic Festival is 41 this year. Our own Koonya Garlic Festival has its sixth outing on Saturday.

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FUN AND FINE FARE AT FESTIVAL

THE Koonya Garlic Festival is a great day in the country, shopping for food and garden supplies, tasting garlicky goodies (such as a new black garlic beer) as well as the garlic-free (such as McHenry’s gin).

Along with the very serious Garlic Growers Competition are great music, and activities for kids.

Cooks can see Rodney Dunn from The Agrarian Kitchen do lamb ribs with garlic and thyme. Ajoy Josh, owner of Nilgiri’s Indian restaurant in Sydney, will do paneer with garlic and chilli. Sarah Glover, author of Wild Adventure Cookbook, will do smoked garlic tapenade and a green garlic tzatziki dip, and regular Paul Foreman will cook goat kofta and pao de queijo.

Sophie Thomson from Gardening Australia flies in to join former presenter and now Koonya local Angus Stewart and our own Tino Carnevale.

Talks include Richard Weston on the double-smoked garlic he creates on Weston Farm, Annette Reed for Tasmanian Natural Garlic and Tomatoes and soil expert Letetia Ware. Most of the garden and cookery demonstrators/speakers will join in the Koonya Garlic Festival Q&A. It’s at and around the Koonya Hall on the Tasman Peninsula this Saturday from 10.30am.

koonyagarlicfestival.com