Garlic is not a very sociable ingredient. If you’ve been feasting on garlic, not just vampires but anyone in your vicinity will run. It’s the sulphur-containing compounds like allicin that garlic has that make your breath or even sweat and skin smell for hours.
Unless you live in southern Europe or the Middle East, where everyone eats garlic all the time so nobody cares, you’d better not eat any of the dishes below before an important social occasion or (what I think is the worst) travelling on public transport.
But garlic makes savoury food taste delicious, be it raw or cooked, sliced or crushed. And my favourite home remedy for cold involves a whole head of garlic crushed and steeped in lots of honey and lemon juice. Interestingly, that concoction doesn’t make you stinky!
Garlic is cooked unpeeled here, with lemon slices and sprigs of thyme, to flavour new potatoes gently poached in oil. And those cloves popped out of their skins are arguably the nicest element of the dish.
Garlic and lemon new potatoes
RECIPE
Clams steamed with white wine and garlic are ready to toss with spaghetti or linguini, or to become a start for a delicious clam chowder. I love them on their own, with crusty baguette to mop up the buttery garlic sauce.
Mushrooms with garlic are a classic pairing, and garlic mushrooms are a great side dish or served as tapas. Sautéed in a skillet, cooked in clarified butter, these mushrooms are divine with crusty bread as a starter or for lunch.
Avocado, red kidney beans, crunchy seed and nut topping, but it’s the crispy garlic that’s the star of the show. The garlic is balancing on the edge of slightly burnt, slightly bitter, definitely crisp and super flavoursome.
Avocado and red bean salad
RECIPE
Homemade garlic bread is irresistible and this one is made from scratch, dough, baguette and all. With lightly cheesy garlic butter, which you’ll wish you’d made double the amount of, spread over the slices of tear-and-share loaf, it’s bliss coming out of the oven.
Runner beans are rather unloved, considered stringy and tough. But with lots of garlic, butter and Parmesan they become unexpectedly delicious. The best way to cook runner beans is to blanch them for 5 minutes, until just tender, then toss in garlicky butter and Parmesan.
Chicken pieces marinated in heavily garlicked buttermilk, then coated in spiced flour and fried. That’s homemade KFC replica, only better – not least thanks to garlic.
There’s garlic, and there’s wild garlic! Wild garlic aka bear’s garlic or ramsons turns up in April in woody, wet, marshy lands in the shape of wonderfully pungent leaves. It’s great in salads but also delicious with creamy leeks.
Shell-on prawns with their two best mates: garlic and chilli, and just a bit of lemon tagging along. A gorgeous dish to eat with your fingers, with chunks of bread to mop up all the garlic bits.
Spicy prawns with garlic and lemon
RECIPE
Spinach doesn’t need much seasoning when simply cooked with butter, but it does need a lot of garlic. Fresh or frozen, without garlic it tastes really bland.