“How can I use this?”
I get that question a lot. I’m forever trying to encourage people to cook with different parts of a fruit or vegetable – or try it at a stage of maturity they aren’t accustomed to.
Our direct-to-eater vegetable boxes are curated from whatever is best on the farm that day, and there have been some dubious looking things. The kind of thing your eccentric, elderly Auntie might grow in her backyard and that no one has ever dared to eat. Things like cranberry hibiscus, mizuna of all different coloured stalks and fresh nuts (who has ever eaten a fresh pin-striped peanut or a just-fallen pecan before? It’s a total revelation.) To me they’re as refreshingly foreign as a subtitled film.
But the thing that stumps many cooks most of all is the green garlic. Long, fat, fragrant reeds of green allium are the delight of mid winter here.
Commercially, there are two types of garlic usually grown: hardneck and softneck varieties. Within these subgroups, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cultivars.
The sturdier hardneck varieties are grown in areas with longer winters. They have more commercial appeal, as they are often easier to process and the cloves are larger and uniform, the peel slightly thicker – however they do not store well for as long as softnecks.
The other difference, when the garlic is green, is that hardnecks form a fleshy, tubular scape, which when mature bursts open to reveal bulbils that can be separated and replanted – this gives the hardneck variety a slight advantage, in being more prolific to propagate.
The scapes are a little different too in taste, milder than the rounded shoots that taper into flat leaves from a softneck green garlic. Generally both are harvested while the bulb has not fully formed to be woody.
Lately elephant garlic has also become more widely available seasonally – these have pretty squiggly scapes. They’re commonly sold as garlic, however it is actually a closer relative to the leek. A leek in garlic’s peel!
We’ve been harvesting elephant garlic for a few weeks now, and using it in place of garlic, as we’ve run out of our last season’s cured cloves – perfectly timed.
But I’ve found that the tastiest green garlic comes from the softneck leaves, they’re more forgiving and have less chance of being woody, even when they are very mature.
If you are growing garlic this season, you can thin the crop out by pulling out the stalks that are too close together – this will allow the heads remaining in the soil to grow even larger, plus you get to have green garlic for dinner. Win, win.
If your garlic is already well spaced out, and you don’t want to sacrifice a whole bulb, then harvest just above the soil level and leave the bulb in the soil to keep growing. No need for a fatal harvest, come back in a couple of months and your garlic will be fully formed. Also win win.
And, if you’ve left some garlic cloves in the back of your pantry for a little too long, and they’ve started to sprout – the good news is, you’re growing green garlic too. Plant them now and within a few weeks you’ll have green garlic of your own. The biggest win.
Once you’re ready to harvest, be mindful not to cook your green garlic for too long. Where you would use a garlic clove, you can substitute that desired flavour with green garlic, but not at the beginning of a cooking process. With green garlic, you add it near the end and use it almost like a soft herb – much like a spring onion.
For instance, if I were making a stir fry with minced cured garlic, I would normally put it into a smoking wok at the beginning, after the oil, then add the protein or vegetables. With green garlic, it would go in after the protein is almost at the point of being cooked completely. Think soft herb, not woody aromat.
Likewise, with pasta dishes, you can use green garlic in a sofrito, but only if you are cooking it briefly – not for long braises or high heat dishes. It will blacken to an appealing crispness.
The reason for this? It requires only a lick of heat to wilt the greens, approaching the Maillard reaction much faster than a cured garlic clove.
Last weekend we were given a delicious pumpkin from our neighbours, fruit and vegetable growers the Picones, and we gave it the green garlic treatment.
Slow roasted pumpkin, fried halloumi, green garlic and rocket warm salad
These ingredients are mere suggestions, tried and tested by me but by all means feel free to substitute with whatever you have at home.
You can break down, cook and freeze wedges of pumpkin in the freezer. If you don’t have one frozen and ready for reheating, start this recipe early in the day.
½ -¼ Japanese pumpkin
2 stems green garlic
2-4 eschallots
Halloumi
Rocket
½ an organic unwaxed lemon, zested
Extra virgin olive oil – I like Alto Robust blend or Novello
Chardonnay or white wine vinegar
Black pepper
Grey sea salt
Cut pumpkin into large thick wedges. Do not take the seeds out – roasting pumpkins with seeds in is a lot easier to process and also makes them sweeter. Stuff a medium eschallot into the seed cavity, splash liberally with good quality extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle and rub evenly with grey salt.
Wrap en papillote with baking paper. Bake for 2-3 hours (this will depend how thick you’ve cut the pumpkin) at 170°C until the pumpkin is meltingly tender. Open up the baking paper, change the oven setting to turn on the overhead grill and caramelise the surface for another 15-20 minutes or until it has an even colouring. Rotate if your oven is not evenly distributing heat.
If you’ve roasted the whole pumpkin, portion it out and freeze what you are not eating within the week. Take out the eschallots and deseed the pumpkin easily by scooping out with a spoon.
Keep aside the wedge or wedges you’ll be serving with the salad – how much is entirely up to you. My family loves roasted pumpkin and can easily put away half a pumpkin for four people but this is extreme. Keep the roasted eschallots aside.
When you are ready to assemble the salad, slice one to two green garlic stems in 2cm pieces and set aside. Slice one packet of halloumi thinly – my favourite is the Cypriot brand Aphrodite, handmade from goat and ewe’s milk, given to me by my friend the cheese master, Will Studd (you can also get it at Woolworths).
Fry the sliced halloumi on medium heat with a generous glug or two of extra virgin olive oil, flipping at around the three minutes mark or when it is gloriously brown. Scatter in the green garlic around the pan and fry that off with the halloumi for another two to three minutes.
In a separate bowl, toss four to five handfuls of cleaned rocket with the zested half lemon, its juice, two splashes of chardonnay or white wine vinegar, 1tsp grey salt, two glugs of extra virgin olive oil and a couple of turns of freshly ground black pepper.
To assemble the salad, lay the pumpkin on your serving dish alternating with halved or quartered eschallot, the fried halloumi and green garlic from the pan and top with the freshly dressed rocket. If you feel like extra crunch add some toasted walnuts.
Serve with on its own or as part of a larger meal.
