Man’s world

In which our Southern gentleman, in his own inimitable and understated way, attempts to score a point but quickly realises that he’s out of his league.

Joe Bennett grows his own garlic, and learns an important lesson.

Retentive readers will recall Madame Litotes, local cook and mistress of the ironic understatement. Well, there is also a Monsieur Litotes.

Some months ago, when winter held this port within its icy fingers, I bumped into Monsieur Litotes at the pub and we talked of this and that, and he happened to mention that the Litotes household had a surplus of garlic and would I care for some? It was, he said, fat French garlic, purple-skinned and bulging.

Presuming it to have been a gift from one of his wife’s many culinary admirers, I said I’d be delighted and next day he came round with a brace of bulbs. And they were as advertised, splendid things, engorged and purple, bulging like the breasts on a young Arnold

Schwarzenegger.

So bulging, indeed, that after Monsieur Litotes had left, it struck me that here was garlic deserving more than to be merely eaten.

Here was garlic that deserved to reproduce.

Now, I haven’t been absorbing this prestigious magazine for years to no effect. It was the work of a moment to fetch a pot of potting mix, even there in the dead of winter with numb fingers and watering eyes, and to separate one of the bulbs into what we cognoscenti refer to as cloves, to insert those cloves pointy end up, to set the pot in the yard and then to pour a recuperative hot toddy and sit down to wait for a couple of seasons.

That wait came to an end this week when I went to cook my celebrated hunk de meat à la garlic, found myself garlicless, was about to drive to the supermarket and remembered my pot. The sprouted cloves had wilted. I delved with fingers and withdrew a bulb. It wasn’t a Schwarzenegger pectoral but it was recognisably garlic and the flesh was freshly creamy and as I diced a clove it struck me that here was garlic deserving more than to be merely eaten. He was garlic that deserved to be boasted about.

And boasted about, moreover, under the guise of being generous and reciprocal.

So the following morning I delved once more in my pot, pulled up three of my modest bulbs, rinsed off the dirt – taking care to leave enough to underline their homegrown nature – and betook me to Chateau Litotes, whistling as I went.

“Monsieur Litotes,” I said as he opened the door, “last winter you were kind enough to give me garlic. Now I return the gift with both thanks and interest,” and I tumbled into his palm the three bulbs. They seemed to have shrunk a little en route, but still, I stood back to await his praise and admiration.

“Oh,” he said, gratifyingly lost for words, “I see. Um, well, thank you. Perhaps you’d care to follow me,” and he led me round the back of the house to a sort of potting area with a wooden wall and a workbench beneath it. On the wall, a line of nails. Suspended from the nails four skeins of freshly dug garlic, each consisting of a dozen or so bulbs plaited together by their tops. On the bench beneath the plaits a pile, no, a heap, no, a tumulus of further bulbs awaiting plaiting. Each bulb a monster. This was a Schwarzenegger pectoral convention.

“Been a fair crop this year,” he said. “Still, these three will come in handy. Thank you so much.”

You don’t live 40 years with Madame Litotes without some of it rubbing off.