GARLIC: THERE'S NEVER JUST A LITTLE, BUT THERE'S NEVER TOO MUCH

We've all heard the folklore about garlic keeping away vampires.

Of course, this pungent member of the lily family often has the same effect on others. In fact, maybe that's the basis of the garlic diet you don't really lose weight, but people stand so far away from you that you look smaller.

Even the Queen of England recently revealed that she has something of an antipathy toward garlic when her staff advised the Italians, of all people, not to put it in the food served at a state banquet held in her honor in Rome last week.

It's too bad so many people are still standoffish about garlic, because, as Lloyd John Harris, author of the "Official Garlic Lovers Handbook," notes, garlic may be "the most important flavoring discovery that humans have ever made." Alliophobes notwithstanding, an increasing number of Americans agree. As Forbes Magazine points out, annual garlic consumption in the United States remained level at around half a pound per person until 1970, when the whiff of an emerging garlic revolution began to be detected. Since then, American garlic consumption has risen fivefold to over three pounds per person per year and, according to Business Week, is increasing at a faster rate of consumption than any other vegetable. Today in the U.S., garlic is a $200 million crop.

What more and more of us are now discovering has been known by others for centuries: Though there's no such thing as a little garlic, there's also no such thing as too much. Thus, with the possible exception of England, Japan, and Scandinavia, garlic is a mainstay of most of the world's cuisines. As food writer Barbara Kafka observes, "China, Vietnam, India, and all the Mediterranean countries use prodigious amounts of garlic in their food."

And they've been doing it for a long time. According to The Garlic Store, an on-line source of the product, by 1500 B.C. garlic was "old hat," having been adopted by virtually every civilization in Europe, Asia and North Africa. Indeed, as Alexandra H. Hicks, a food and herb consultant who presented a paper on the subject at an Oxford Symposium in 1985, points out, garlic has been grown since the beginning of recorded history.

No one is quite certain just where garlic originated, but many think it is indigenous to the Kirgiz desert of southern Siberia, which makes sense since the plant, like tulips and daffodils, does better after experiencing cold winter weather. Over the ensuing centuries it has been used to flavor food, as a cure for everything from acne to hemorrhoids, worshipped as a god, and condemned as an agent of the devil. (A Muslim legend has it that when Satan left the Garden of Eden, garlic sprang up in his footsteps.)

According to Hicks, the Mesopotamians were ardent users of garlic and their 4,000-year-old recipes list it frequently as an ingredient. Likewise, the Egyptians thought enough of garlic that they took oaths upon it. Bulbs of it were found in King Tut's tomb, and it played a role in the mummification process. The builders of the pyramids were fed garlic. No wonder the Bible records that the children of Israel longed for it among other Egyptian foods as they wandered in the desert.

Similarly, the Chinese have known about garlic since at least 2000 B.C. and used it to enhance the appeal of sacrificial lambs offered to their gods. And even though there is evidence that the Ancient Greeks forbade garlic eaters to enter the temple of Cybele, they clearly saw garlic's virtues. Hippocrates, for example, prescribed garlic for a range of disorders, and Greek warriors and athletes ate it to increase their strength. Aristophanes has several references to it in his plays, and according to Homer it helped Ulysses escape the porcine spell of Circe.

In medieval times garlic continued to play a role. Chaucer, for example, mentions it in "Canterbury Tales." In fact, the plant's name comes from the Old English gar (meaning "spear") and leac (meaning "leek"). Though garlic continued to be popular during the Elizabethan Age (Shakespeare, for instance, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," has Bottom warn that eating it is inimical to sweet breath), its use in recipes started to decline in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Victorians were positively disdainful of it because of its odor.

But these days, as noted food historian Waverley Root remarks, "Garlic has been the vehicle in the United States of a self-reversing snobbery." As in Victorian times, you used to be looked down upon if you ate garlic, "a food fit only for ditchdiggers," he says. But now, he claims, you are looked down upon if you don't eat it. The U.S. is now even home to garlic festivals reminiscent of the celebrations of ancient times. The oldest of these is in Gilroy, Calif., where most of the domestic crop is grown.

Moreover, contemporary researchers, like the ancients, are beginning to think that eating lots of garlic is the secret to good health -- though it's hard to keep it a secret if you do. Recent studies indicate that garlic can lower blood pressure and cholesterol and discourage cancer. It's value as an antiseptic was noted as long ago as the 19th century by Louis Pasteur. The French contend it is an aphrodisiac.

Though botanists claim there are over 450 strains of garlic, as Sharon Tyler Herbst points out in the Food Lover's Companion, there are three types generally available in this country: American garlic, which is white-skinned and strongly flavored; Mexican and Italian garlic, which are somewhat milder and have mauve-colored skins; and elephant garlic, which can grow as large as a small grapefruit. Technically it really isn't garlic and its flavor is the mildest of the three varieties. Though garlic comes in other forms (for example, granulated, flaked, powdered, pureed or pre-minced), fresh garlic is your best bet because the ingredients added to the convenience products to prevent oxidation tend to dilute garlic's distinctive taste.

When using fresh garlic, keep in mind two complementary rules proclaimed by Harris. First, when preparing garlic for cooking, the more you do to it, the more it will do to you. In other words, the more you break down garlic's cell walls, the sharper the taste. Thus, a garlic press produces a more biting flavor than does chopping with a knife. Moreover, a press, unless it has unusually large holes, will reduce garlic to a fibrous liquid. Mashing the garlic clove with the side of a knife is usually the better option.

Conversely, when cooking garlic, the more you do to it, the less it will do to you. In other words, the longer you cook garlic, the milder it becomes. Thus, roasting garlic for an hour or so softens the cloves and renders them mild enough to eat on their own or smear on bread. Similarly, the famous recipe for chicken with 40 cloves of garlic is surprisingly tame because prolonged cooking subdues the garlic.

Clearly the least of garlic's value is as a vampire repellent. Poor Count Dracula doesn't know what he is missing.

Roasted Garlic

At our house we like to do this with elephant garlic, but any variety of garlic will become soft, sweet and nutty when baked or roasted. Roasted garlic makes a great appetizer spread over thick slices of French bread, but it can also be used in soups and sauces, salad dressings and on baked or in mashed potatoes.

Ingredients:

whole heads of garlic

olive oil

Directions:

Rub papery outer layers from garlic and separate cloves slightly, leaving skins attached. Place garlic on aluminum foil and drizzle with olive oil. Wrap with foil and bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour or so until soft.

Aioli

Aioli, from the French word for garlic, ail, is garlic mayonnaise, a specialty of Provence in southern France, where they say garlic is the poor man's spice. Supposedly it was invented by the Emperor Nero. It's a wonderful accompaniment to fresh vegetables, fish, poultry or cold meat. We love to use it, as they do in Europe, as a dip for French fries. This recipe is adapted from one by food historian Betty Fussell, who observes, "Aioli spells Provence the way sunflowers spell Van Gogh."

Ingredients:

4 large garlic cloves

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 egg yolk

3/4 cup olive oil

lemon juice

Directions:

Peel and mash the garlic and put in a blender with rest of ingredients except oil and lemon juice. Blend a few seconds and while machine is running slowly add oil in a steady stream until mixture thickens. Add lemon juice to taste.

Sauteed Spinach with Garlic, Lemon, and Oil

This is one of my favorite dishes and a foolproof way to test the authenticity of any Italian restaurant. It can be a course of its own or an accompaniment to roasted meat. Mounded on garlic-rubbed toast, it becomes fettunta, the Florentine version of brushcetta or what might be called the ultimate in garlic bread. This recipe is adapted from one of the best Italian cookbooks around, Patricia Wells' Trattoria.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons coarse salt

2 pounds fresh spinach

4 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Wash, stem, and dry spinach and plunge into large pot of boiling water for 2-3 minutes, just until wilted. Drain and rinse with cold water. Coarsely chop spinach and drain again, squeezing out excess liquid. Halve garlic cloves and cook in oil over moderate heat for 2-3 minutes until golden. Remove and discard. Add spinach and cook, tossing gently, until warmed through, 2-3 minutes. Season with lemon juice and salt and pepper.

Listen to A Harte Appetite every Saturday at 11:59 a.m. following "Whad'ya Know" on KRCU, 90.9 on your FM dial. Write A Harte Appetite, c/o The Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semovm.semo.edu.

Tom Harte is a professor at Southeast Missouri State University and writes a food column every other week for the Southeast Missourian.