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Garlic: The Mighty Bulb

by Natasha Edwards

Book Description
Garlic shines in the kitchen and the medicine cabinet.

"How can something so healthy taste so good?" asks Natasha Edwards. The answer is in 'GARLIC: The Mighty Bulb' in which Edwards tutors cooks, gardeners and natural healers in the language of "the stinking rose".  Garlic is a beautifully illustrated and comprehensive guide to growing, preserving, cooking and healing with garlic.

Edwards knows a thing or two about garlic. Her family has been growing the pungent bulb on the Isle of Wight for over 30 years. The award-winning Garlic Farm is the UK's largest specialist garlic grower, producing an annual harvest of more than two and a half million bulbs and attracting more than 25,000 garlic lovers to its annual garlic festival. Visitors flock to the farm's cafe to experience garlic's delicious dominance in the kitchen.

For over 6000 years, the extraordinary Allium sativum has been prized for its value in cooking and healing and it has been used in the following ways:

• Grecian and Roman warriors and Olympian athletes ate garlic to give them strength, endurance and courage.
• The Chinese have been using garlic as a health-inducing herb more than two millennia.
• The 5 000-year-old practice of Ayurvedic medicine values garlic as a healer of countless conditions.
• In the Middle Ages, some lucky souls credited garlic with preventing the plague.

Were these beliefs sound? The antiseptic, antioxidant, antibiotic and antifungal properties of garlic have been scientifically proven Even the World Health Organization recommends one clove of raw garlic a day for good health (Edwards recommends two)

Garlic can benefit many health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and poor circulation, heavy metal toxicity, infections, skin problems and stomach upsets Some believe it can improve virility, cancer, and coughs, colds and viruses

While garlic is an excellent source of potassium, iron, calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, selenium, germanium and antioxidants, its most extraordinary power is a sulfur substance called allicin, created by a chemical reaction that occurs when garlic is chopped, crushed or bitten into. Since allicin dissipates when garlic is cooked, raw is the way to go.

'Garlic' includes easy recipes for home remedies, such as garlic oil or garlic inhalant.

In the kitchen, garlic brings an exciting range of flavors and textures to food depending on how it is prepared and cooked. Edwards give tips on buying, storing, preparing and cooking garlic and follows them with 52 recipes that are easy to make and decidedly garlicky delicious. There are dishes for all occasions, from casual to celebratory.

The growing guide in 'Garlic' explains when to plant, how to prepare the ground and tend the crop. pests and diseases, removing scapes, harvesting, and storage, and making garlic strings and grappes.

About the author:
Natasha Edwards has spent her entire surrounded by garlic. Growing it, cooking it, eating it. She is truly garlic's world ambassador. There is no one better qualified to share the secrets of "the mighty bulb."
Natasha Edwards grew up on a world-renowned garlic farm on the Isle of Wight (thegarlicfarm.co.uk). She draws on her own knowledge and experience of cooking, eating and using garlic as a remedy. She is the co-author of The Garlic Farm Cookbook