9.5.10

upgrade.



Over the last X number of years, I've been forced to slowly come to grips with the fact that Amsterdam is not one of the culinary epicenters of Europe. Even London, a city not historically known for being a food town, seems leagues ahead in terms of gastronomic availability, sophistication, interest, etc.

But. One thing I cannot get used to here, one thing I will not get used to...

...is the crappy garlic. It's never been good, but mainstream garlic in Amsterdam actually seems to be getting worse. Based on what's available in Albert Heijn and Dirk van den Broek, the only explanation is that most local people here just don't have any idea what garlic is supposed to taste like.

Most of the time, what I've ended up buying is not even close to being fresh, by the time you take it out of the shopping bag, it's already smelling like something long-lost you've accidentally discovered at the bottom of your vegetable drawer/cupboard/etc.

Two slightly more reliable options are 1) to buy from a toko or a Turkish market, but this quality seems to go up and down as well. Or 2) if you buy bio/eko, you usually get something a little better than the standard but still not awesome. And still it's not always better.



Thus, a bit of good news: some kind of relief seems to have arrived, however temporarily, in the form of what I believe are maybe young garlic bulbs?

It's true, I know nothing about garlic other than what it's supposed to taste and smell like, so I could be totally wrong about what this is. But Dirk van den Broek has them these days, and once you get them home and into your Whodge, you can smell the difference immediately. There's no whiff of musty, moldy, shriveled, boring age when you crack these things open.

The bulbs aren't split into individual cloves, so you just cut the bulb into clove-sized pieces and get on down the road.


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10 comments:

Klary Koopmans said...

you're not the only one with garlic issues:
http://www.annemieke.net/RozeMarijn/de-knoflookkwestie-ii/

Klary Koopmans said...

btw I think what you have there is Chinese garlic, which is not necessarily young garlic.

MEM said...

It does indeed come from China...my reasoning was that 1) it looks like bulbs of young garlic around the Google, and 2) when you open it, you can see that it wants to separate into cloves, but they're not fully formed.

I could be making all this up, I admit it.

Patrick said...

This is garlic that's mature, but planted late. A friend of mine in Denmark did a post about this:

http://toads.wordpress.com/2007/08/05/when-to-plant-your-garlic/

Harvest season in the northern hemisphere is July/August, so if you just bought this now it's almost a year old or was grown in the southern hemisphere.

I live in the Jordaan, near the Westerstraat. Are you nearby? 06-40109417 or weblogd@patnsteph.net

I have some fresh young garlic I just harvested from my 'volkstuin' (community garden) yesterday in my fridge. If you want to stop by, I'll give you some. Otherwise in a week or two I'll probably have more, or in September dried bulbs.

Here are some pictures and posts about some of the garlic varieties I grow:

http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/category/garlic/

Starting around page 5 are pictures of the garlic bulbs themselves. At the moment I'm growing about 60 different varieties, 1000 bulbs in total. Last year I had almost 100 varieties.

MEM said...

It's obviously time for me to learn something about garlic if I'm going to be shooting my mouth off about it...

thanks for the great comment and garlic offer...i'm out the door at the moment, are you going to the underground market this weekend? maybe we could chat about it then...

Patrick said...

I think so, but I'm not sure yet. I'm also not sure what time. I may go with some friends, and I don't know what time they want to go yet either...

Maybe I'll see you there...

Ivo said...

Dude I am with you. I buy most of my stuff at Ten Katemarkt, but lately they just have a tasteless crappy kind of Chinese garlic

MEM said...

Ivoski! Where the hell have you been? This reminds me that we've never been in the kitchen together...we should remedy that situation...

Anonymous said...

absolutely...I am around this summer

Ivo said...

absolutely. Ia m around this summer. I realize that comment was made anonymously but it was me.