ROASTED GARLIC AND WALNUT DIP, WITH TOMATO AND GARLIC RELISH
Terry Salmond, executive chef at Kitchener’s Charcoal Steakhouse, shares a tasty garlic treat.
For the dip:
2 heads garlic, split and roasted 500 ml (2 cups) toasted walnuts Juice from half a lemon 60 ml (1/4 cup) olive oil 2 ml (1/2 teaspoon) sea salt 5 ml (1 teaspoon) honey
Purée the roasted garlic, toasted walnuts, lemon juice and olive oil until very smooth. Season with a little salt and honey.
For the relish:
4 cloves fresh garlic 125 ml (1/2 cup) olive oil 1 large tomato diced 15 ml (1 tablespoon) chopped chives or garlic shoots Pinch of salt 15 ml (1 tablespoon) ground ramps or garlic scapes
Thinly slice the cloves of garlic and toast gently in the oil over medium heat until golden. Add tomato and chives and season with a little salt. While still warm, stir in the ground scapes and set aside.
To serve: This dip goes well topped with crumbled feta or torn-up mint from the garden. Spoon a generous helping of the walnut mixture into a shallow bowl or along a narrow plate and create an indent. Carefully spoon tomato relish into the indent and top with your favourite cheese or fresh herbs.
Serve with naan bread or chips for dipping.
quantity of bulbs on a consistent basis, especially between March and August.
Still, with both chefs and home cooks embracing the local food movement, the demand for local garlic is doing wonders for Ontario growers.
Garlic growers were hit hard two decades ago when cheap Chinese imports flooded the market. Ontario acreage allotted to garlic plummeted by 90 per cent. But by 2016 the industry’s farm gate value rebounded to $4.8 million with 750 acres harvested, statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs indicate.
Maryrose Ivanco, co-owner of Bailey’s Local Foods, an online farmers market based in Waterloo, says Bailey’s sells garlic in its many forms all year long.
In spring, there’s green garlic, the shoots of the garlic plants which look similar to scallions but with a garlic flavour.
In June, scapes, the curly flower stalks, are great pickled, grilled, dehydrated or used in pesto. Farmers remove the scapes to direct more energy to the bulbs growing beneath the soil surface.
Then there’s the fresh, uncured garlic bulbs. Ivanco advises using less than what a recipe calls for when using fresh cloves because they are more pungent than the cured bulbs.
And, finally, there are the bulbs that have been cured for a few weeks and will last in storage until the following spring.
“It’s the circle of life,” says Ivanco. “Local garlic allows you to experience more than just the bulb.”
Dan Hemstock, a director of the Ontario Garlic Growers Association, estimates that within 100 kilometres of Kitchener-Waterloo, there are about 125 garlic growers. Of these, he estimates that three or four grow more than 50 acres, five grow between five and 10 acres, 30 grow between one and five acres and the remaining two-thirds grow under half an acre. The majority of growers sell through farm stands, farmers markets, or through weekly subscription boxes.
Hemstock is the farm and production manager at August’s Harvest, which has about 50 acres near Stratford. It is owned by Warren Ham, who is also co-founder of the Stratford Kiwanis Garlic Festival, slated for Sept. 9 and 10.
Most of August’s Harvest garlic is sold to grocery stores either in bulk 30-pound boxes or in packages of two or three bulbs. August’s Harvest also sells green garlic, scapes, dehydrated flakes, jars of
garlic purée and seed garlic for other growers.
Growing garlic is tricky business, Hemstock says. It is labour intensive, requires specialized equipment and is weatherdependent.
At August’s Harvest, workers plant several varieties of garlic in the fall between mid-September and late November. Green garlic and scapes are both harvested by hand the following spring and summer. Specialized equipment from Spain is used to harvest the bulbs between early July and early August.
After harvest, the bulbs are sorted by hand. Bulbs that do not make the grade for retail because they are cracked or damaged are separated from the others. The smaller ones are turned into dehydrated flakes or puréed garlic. The largest ones are kept to seed the next crop since the biggest cloves will produce the biggest bulbs.
Garlic for retail sale is cured in bins in a drying room set to 90 F. After a few weeks, when the bulbs are cured, brushes remove any remaining soil as well as the outer layers of skin on the bulb. The stems and roots are removed manually and then the bulbs are sorted into one of eight sizes ready for sale.
“One of our biggest challenges is having enough labour at peak times of the year,” explains Hemstock. “There are very short windows of opportunity and if the weather doesn’t co-operate these windows become event shorter. Planting multiple varieties helps spread the workload out as they tend to mature at slightly different times and this helps spread our harvest out over a longer period of time.”
These days, it’s hard to imagine a time when Canada’s elite sneered at garlic. However, at the turn of the 20th century, those of British descent, who were the majority at the time, did not eat garlic and looked down their noses at non-British immigrants, many of whom enjoyed garlic in their food. Eating garlic was seen as a class marker, similar to your accent or the clothes you wore, explains Peter McClusky, author of “Ontario Garlic: The Story from Farm to Festival.”
This is the crux of the scene in the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when mean old Mr. Potter dismisses those getting loans through George Bailey’s Building and Loan by calling them “a bunch of garlic-eaters.”
McClusky, who founded the Toronto Garlic Festival and is vice-president of the Ontario Garlic Growers Association, speculates garlic became known as the poor man’s spice because it can be grown in a wide range of climates, unlike more finicky spices such as cinnamon. Native to Central Asia, there is archeological evidence garlic was eaten as early as 10,000 years ago and was widely traded along the camel routes to the Mediterranean and North Africa, eventually spreading to China.
As Canada became more multicultural, McClusky says garlic “jumped the fence, so to speak” from the backyards of the Italians, Ukrainians and French immigrants. “Garlic spread from kitchen to kitchen as we interacted with one another. We opened our eyes and our palates to the range of cuisines and we came to appreciate garlic.”