Heirloom Garlic

I'm writing today about some heirloom garlic that I picked up at the Flagstaff farmers market a week ago.

I've never bought this before although I've seen it. This time I decided to pick up 2.
Of course I have lost the piece of paper with the farmers information on it, so I will just have to say that they are grown in Arizona. I think lots of other shoppers decided to as well because many were carrying these funny stalks around. The mrs thought I was nuts, but as one that buys market oddities, I had to get some.

Heirloom garlic leaning against the car.

These things are over 4 feet tall. Of course after we got a bite to eat after the market, the car smelled very strongly of garlic.

This is some serious garlic!

Of course I have lost the piece of paper with the farmers information on it, so I will just have to say that they are grown in Arizona.

They told me that most all of it is edible and they were handing out tastes of the small flower buds which I have come to find out are called bulbils. These ones appear smaller than the bulbils that I found via Google. Supposedly they can be planted and will grow a better strain of garlic than just by planting the garlic cloves. I will have to try and plant some when the weather here starts to cool down a bit.

These garlic bulbils have a nice garlic flavor and I have been adding them to several things since I have a whole bunch of them. I also put a large bunch in the freezer as well.










I cut off the bottoms about 18 inches above the bulbs so that they could dry and be ready to use like regular garlic in a few weeks. Here they are hanging in the kitchen.




I also saved several sections of the slender middle stalk but I think that this is rather woody and might just be a flavoring agent for something in the future.







I had tried putting some chopped stalk with some carrot tops, green onion and cilantro in a food processor. The taste was ok but there was some that just didn't seem to get chopped up. Oh well, I'm just trying out this as best as I can figure out.

Here is a pic of some roasted chicken with
large pieces of grilled pattypan squash with the garlic enhanced chimichurri like sauce. I also
sprinkled a few bulbils around the chicken.
Tasty if you could look past having to dig
out the woody pieces. Fail.








Here is something that turned out well.

I had slowly roasted these Corno di Toro peppers and then mixed some chived goat cheese with minced cilantro, serrano pepper and some bulbils. Then I stuffed the peppers and grilled them just a bit to melt the cheese inside.

This one was a winner except that I didn't make enough.

Don't worry, I won't make that mistake next time.