Gallic Tendency

Today

Last night I made a ratatouille for the meal I prepared for wine circle. I make these often and one of the secrets is plenty of garlic. Carmen was eating my ratatouille from the age of 7 months and loves it.

Garlic is now a staple of English larders and restaurants; garlic bread and garlic mushrooms are served in the most unimaginative of pubs. You can buy it in any supermarket fresh, in jars, "lazy" garlic already shredded, roasted and smoked.

In My Day

I don't remember having garlic at 4BH at all. Paul's mother used to talk about garlic as though it was at best a nasty culinary necessity, at worst too disgusting for words. She used to tell of the dashingly handsome "Monsieur" who taught them French at school. She talked swooningly about everything except his garlicky breath which made her swoon in a different way. (She never explained how close she had to get to be aware of this!)

In a way, it was a sort of xenophobia relating to France, as only the Gallic people ate garlic (apparently) and it just wasn't British to do this, like eating snails and frogs' legs.

One of Paul's Dad's culinary tricks was to rub the inside of a wooden salad bowl with garlic, before discarding the offending vegetable.

Daring people used to extol the virtues of garlic salt sprinkled onto Scotch eggs. This condiment, it seemed to me, managed to make your breath very garlicky, without actually tasting of garlic itself.

Garlic was also seen as a kind of medicine by the fruitloopery brigade: you rubbed it in your hair to make it grow, on your pillow to stop hayfever, ate garlic pills to prevent heart disease. All this meant that you went around stinking without ever having tasted the delicious bulb.

And, finally, a few strings of it will keep off the vampires. There's a town in America where garlic is planted at every road entering it to ensure the safety of the citizens.

So when did things change? The cuisine in England has been becoming more and more cosmopolitan during the past forty years and I think that we now have a wonderful range of meals from all over the world to enjoy. Garlic came along for the ride.


I enjoy it cooked in stews, risottos and Indian food, on its own, baked, whizzed with butter to make garlic bread. There is also black garlic with has been slowly oven dried until it;s sticky and caramelly and great with cheese. I sometimes pick garlic leaves in the Spring for a lovely addition to a salad.

There is a garlic farm on the Isle of Wight. There you can buy garlic beer and chocolate and I bought the largest garlic bulb I'd ever seen, which roasted a treat.

All I can say is, if the fruitloopers are right, I'm protected against just about everything, including vampires.