Garlicious!

Let's start off this blog by already paying my dues to the title of this post. Because yes this post will be about homemade garlic, but the reality of the 'garlicious' title can only be claimed by the little wok place in the city of Eindhoven which doesn't exist anymore.

But they used to have this kind of sauce that was called 'garlicious' sauce and together with udon noodles and some shrimp this was like my first exposure to take away noodles that were way better than anything that existed in the `Dutch kitchen'. (because let's face it, there isn't really a Dutch kitchen, but that is a whole different kind of story haha)

Back on topic time!!

^{My precioussssss}

Just make some garlic people!

So what this one is about is I just want to showcase my garlic harvest from the garden and just make a statement for how damn easy this is to grow yourself, especially when you have some garlic that isn't really the winner of winners anymore.

Recycle, replant, have better luck next year and even more garlic than what you started on with.

Because what is the easiest to do is just see when you have some cloves that you had forgotten about that don't look all that fine anymore. You know the drill....

You are gone for a while, the garlic is still laying around in the fruit basket between the onions and the bananas (no combination, but for reason this is the reality for me) and when you return you can see that the cloves have started to sprout.

That all looks cute, but it is not that fly for the taste of you garlic as it is taking over the centre of the clove. Still, dice it and you will be fine but when you need whole cloves that isn't too nice anymore when the sprouting process has started.

The best thing to do then is to just pop the cloves 2 centimeters in the ground with the sprout sticking up, about 20 centimeters at minimum from each other and then forget about it for like 7-8 months

And when you think about that this is in autumn time and stuff won't grow in the winter, well that is even better. The garlic loves the Dutch winter and even thrived when it was snowing here.

Do nothing, just let the stems get bigger and bigger. Water every now and then, but heck...I didn't go outside in winter time, that all did it by itself.

As you can see here in the picture, this one was super healthy. A lot of leaves, standing up firmly and the color was a vibrant green.

Harvesting time!

So at a certain point the stems were starting to get a bit more yellow as June had started and they also started to tip over. The strength in the leaves had gone and you could see they were starting to change.

As a wise LLM told be after some ask for advice, is that the moment for harvesting is there when the lower four leaves have started to turn brown.

Harvesting is easy for these guys. Just pull the stem and dig in the ground at the same time and you would be surprised what gigantic bulbs were hiding there beneath the soil.

Not all of them were gigantic, I also had some smaller ones which are just cute to use in one dish.

In true Mediterranean spirit I decided to braid them together and let them rest for 2 weeks in a dark and cold place. (the reality is that here the Netherlands had 40 degrees Celsius last week so cold was more like a solid 35 humid degrees in the dark...I guess it didn't really matter :D)

Of course I did hang them somewhere because there was still sand on the outside skin which was moist and that also needed to dry out so you don't get the fungus in the wet spots.

2 weeks later they looked dry enough and then this was the end result.

As options you can do sweep out the old dirt and keep them on the stems, which makes them good for keeping them months after harvesting. But I will eat these in the upcoming days/weeks so I decided to clean them.

I cut off the stems and also peeled the first outside skin as there were a couple of layers also underneath it still. This was easier than removing all of the dirt honestly and they looked fantastic! Cut off the lower roots and presto!

So in the series of gardening with really doing nothing for months and getting something cool in return. Well, I can totally recommend you growing your own garlic! Disclaimer: you really need the months of waiting though....