Bad pun, good garlic

[Jenise]

A friend just rolled back into town after spending the winter terrorizing Bill Spencer down Yuma way, and one of the treasures she brought back was garlic bulbs from Trader Joe's. Perfectly round with thick skins, about an inch and a half in diameter and appearing to be a variety of red garlic, this amazing little bulb was a single clove. TJ's markets them under the name, "The Emporer Has No Cloves". She gave me one to try.

If I had been forced to bet on it, I'd have guessed it would be an extremely mild garlic. After all, in garlic big usually does mean mild, but NOOOOOO! Now I only know from the braid of fresh garlic I buy every fall from Joe's Garden and hang in my pantry to use until summer makes fresh garlic available again, but this is pretty potent stuff, both sharp and hot. A section about the size of an average, medium clove of white garlic put about twice the amount of garlic flavor into my salad as expected, and ditto an artichoke-olive tapenade the next day.

Only thing that bothered me about it was that it seemed rather old and dry--woodier--compared to the Joe's garlic I use day in and day out, and which is 8 months old. Perhaps another bulb would have been better, it's hard to say on the basis of one, but One Big Bulb is nonetheless an interesting development in the world of garlic.

Jenise, it sounds like Elephant Garlic, which I'm usually not a fan of, based on what you said about this particular one--that it's woodier and dryer than "regular" garlic. I was always under the impression that Elephant Garlic was milder, however. Anyone else have any experience with these large garlic cloves?

[Jenise]

Carrie, no, this isn't elephant garlic at all. You're right about how mild Elephant garlic is--it's a big bulb made of several large cloves. This is a golf ball sized bulb that is one single round clove--peel off the outer layer of skin and it's all there.

Hmmmm.
I'll have to look for it at TJs to see for myself. Interesting....

[Jenise]

Update:

After writing about the garlic, I decided to nibble on the artichoke-olive tapenade leftovers as my lunch today. On the first bite, there was what I decided was a piece of stem. But then the next bites contained it too, and I realized it was the garlic. The woodiness I reported was in the way it handled--very hard to crush with fork tines--not in the mouthfeel. I didn't notice anything like it last night, the dish was smooth. But today, it's filled with fiber splinters. What about refrigerating it overnight did that, I can't say, but it could be nothing else but the garlic--it's not in the olives, and the artichokes were canned.