Cafe Liz

March 30, 201112 Comments

Sweet pickled garlic

Liz Steinberg

Did you know garlic has a season? Well, you do if you frequent the country’s markets, where massive stalks of purple-green garlic are out in all their glory. ‘Tis the season for garlic, the time to stock up for an entire year.

China is the world’s largest garlic producer, with 77% of global production, and you can get Chinese garlic year round. The heads are small and white, invariably the same size, and come in neat stacks of four inside little mesh bags. Garlic is not supposed to be clean and white, people. When it’s fresh it’s covered in a lovely purple peel, which dries to an earthy brown.

So we flock to the shook for the crates and crates of baladi garlic — the Arabic adjective slapped on anything that’s local, loved and maybe even unique to the region. We look for the largest bulbs, since they shrink as they dry. Vendors hang fat, unelegant braids outside their stands — nothing like the tidy, compact plaits you’ll find in Italy, for instance. Here, the garlic stems are thick and heavy, but let’s make this clear — when you’re paying 5 shekels a kilo for garlic, the leaves will be removed only after the garlic is weighed. If you don’t want the weight of the leaves included in the price, you’ll be paying 20 shekels a kilo, not 5.

I now have 40 garlic stalks piled on my kitchen floor, warding off vampires and hopefully enough to last me a year. Most of it will be trimmed and kept in the fridge — last year I had some fungus issues with garlic that was left hanging from the wall — but a few of the heads are being pickled. My pickled garlic is mild, sweet and snackable. If you’ve ever had the desire to eat an entire head of garlic in one sitting, this is the way to go.

For about a cup of garlic cloves:

• 100 grams garlic (2 heads)
• 2 tablespoons wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup water

Prep: 10 minutes Total: 4 days

Peel the garlic. If you’re using fresh garlic, the cloves will be covered in several layers of thick skins. You can choose to leave them intact, in which case the layers will give your pickled garlic the texture of pickled onions.

Mix the marinade — the water, the vinegar, the sugar and the salt. Add the garlic cloves and bring to a boil for 15 seconds. This will leave you with garlic that’s a little spicy and a little crunchy. If you boil it longer, say, a minute, it will be less sharp and more soft.

Cool and refrigerate for 3-4 days. The garlic mellows out with time and absorbs more of the vinegar.

Serve as nibble food, like olives.

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More on: garlic, Parve, pickling, Vegan, wine vinegar

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12 Comments »

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1. This so brings back memories of when I lived on kibbutz in the early 80s. When garlic came into season the kibbutz would buy up a bunch — a 500 kilo bunch. Everyone would be drafted into garlic duty. We had to peel the cloves individually and then process it all together into garlic mush. It would then be stored in giant ice-cube trays in the freezer so we could have “fresh” garlic throughout the year. you can imagine how peeling so much garlic by hand can make you cry, and we would always be rushing into the large, walk-in freezers to stop the tears.

   To this day, whenever I am peeling huge amounts of garlic or onions (or both together) and the tears start to flow, I open the freezer door and stick my face in there, and that (temporarily) stops the tears. And each time, I always remember garlic season on kibbutz.

   Comment by Miriyummy — March 30, 2011 #

2. Miriyummy, that is such a fabulous story! You certainly have me beat with your 500 kilos of garlic! I don’t think mine comes out to more than 15.

   I hope the smell of garlic brings back happy memories for you.

   Comment by Liz — March 30, 2011 #

3. So that is where the garlic I saw in your bag yesterday in the shuq ended in;D I really should go and get my fresh garlic too…Mmm,pickled garlic sounds nice!

   Comment by Yael — March 31, 2011 #

4. This sounds very good. How long do you think the pickled garlic keeps?

   Also, how do you keep the fresh garlic in the refrigerator? Doesn’t that amount take up a lot of room?

   I’m glad you put the link to your garlic greens paste. It sounds delicious. I seem to remember buying a green “garlic salad” at the shuk years ago and I wondered how they made it.

   Comment by Faye Levy — April 1, 2011 #

5. Loved this post, Liz. I’m going to pickle some of my garlic by your recipe this week. I was also intrigued by your garlic scapes pesto. Scapes also make a very good garlic soup. If it weren’t so close to Pesach, with freezer space predictably going to shrink away, I’d say it’d be worth blanching and freezing the scapes to throw into soups and stews all through the year.

   Comment by Mimi — April 3, 2011 #

6. Faye, I don’t know exactly how long the garlic keeps, but I’ve kept other pickled things for way longer than I probably should admit, to no adverse effects. The garlic does take up a lot of room in my fridge, but I have a large fridge. It’s full of all sorts of things that don’t need to be refrigerated but that bugs would get to otherwise.

   I wonder if the “garlic salad” you bought at the shook is actually made from garlic greens. There’s no clear consensus as to what to do with them, and I think many people probably just throw them away. They’re very tough and fibrous. I would love to find some local, traditional way to use them.

   Comment by Liz — April 3, 2011 #

7. Mimi, I actually ground up a bunch of them in my blender in order to preserve them. I think it killed my food processor!

   How exactly do you use them? Do they have a nice texture after you’ve blanched and frozen them? I am still trying to find ways to get around the tough fibers.

   Comment by Liz — April 3, 2011 #

8. Liz, I don’t know if there’s any way to get around the toughness of garlic scapes. I only clean them and put them in soup or stew, without chopping up because they’ll never soften up like leeks. I regard them as a flavor ingredient, like bay leaves or black Chinese mushrooms.

   Comment by Mimi — April 4, 2011 #

9. I have never tried this before. Do you separate the cloves or leave the head intact? Do you bring the marinade to almost a boil and then put the garlic in for 15 seconds or do you put it all in cold for as long as it takes to come to a boil and then only let it boil for 15 seconds?
   Thanks for the clarification.

   Comment by Dorie — April 13, 2011 #

10. Hi Dorie, I separate the cloves, and bring the liquid to a boil with the cloves in it.

    Comment by Liz — April 14, 2011 #

11. Wonderfull recipe…delicious even on top of a cheese spread. tnx…♥♥

    Comment by EFRAT — April 20, 2011 #

12. Thanks Efrat, and great idea!

    Comment by Liz — April 25, 2011 #

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