Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Tuesday’s food holiday: “National Garlic Day”!

Allium sativum, commonly known as garlic, is a close relative to onion,  shallot,  leek,  chive. Garlic has been used throughout history for both culinary and medicinal purposes. The garlic plant's bulb is the most commonly used part of the plant. With the exception of the single clove types, the bulb is divided into numerous fleshy sections called cloves. The cloves are used for consumption (raw or cooked), or for medicinal purposes, and have a characteristic pungent, spicy flavor that mellows and sweetens considerably with cooking.
The sticky juice within the bulb cloves is used as an adhesive in mending  glass  and porcelain  in China. Dating back over 6,000 years, it is native to Central Asia, and has long been a staple in the Mediterranean region, as well as a frequent seasoning in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The irrational fear of garlic is alliumphobia (that vampires suffer from!).
Today China is still the largest producer of garlic, followed by India, South Korea, Russia and the US. Most of the garlic in the US is grown in Gilroy, California. Parsley is thought to prevent ‘garlic breath’.

(Sources: Wikipedia; photo credit: garlic, bellybytes.com; garlic being crushed using a garlic press, Wikipedia; Chinese garlic, kid-reborn.blogspot.com)

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