Resumo de The History Of Garlic

http://www.finetuning.com/articles/1167-the- history-of-garlic-natures-ancient-superfood.html
Abstract by: Kenneth R. Clark/600/10 July 200

Back in the 1930s, when the world and I were young, my father ran a
very successful café in Fort Collins, Colorado. In those dreary
depression days, the highest price on the menu was $1.10 for a full
roast prime rib dinner, and it was the best in town. Two genteel ladies
of the Victorian era were steady customers, and they never ceased to
badger the chef for identification of what they called his ?secret
ingredient.? One unfortunate day, he broke down and told them. The
ingredient in question was garlic. He never saw either one of them
again.
Today, such culinary bigotry ranges from rare to non-existent, but, as
Kirsten Lasinski points out in her exhaustive history of the pungent
herb, it was banned from the average American kitchen for nearly three
centuries. Even today, a trace of prejudice remains in a majority
of recipes ? even those exclusive to Mexican cuisine. In my personal
view, nine times out of ten, you?ll find the specified quantity of
garlic severely low-balled. How many savors can one clove, finely
minced or forced through a garlic press, lend to any dish? For my part,
I routinely triple what the recipe calls for.
But garlic has a history that far outdates the American kitchen, and
its uses go equally beyond adding zest to the flavor of dinner. As any
aficionado of garlic soup will tell you, garlic is one of the most
powerful catholicons in nature?s medicine cabinet.
MEDICINAL GARLIC
Garlic in the cultures of humanity goes back at least 4,000
years, and down through the millennia, its applications have gone well
beyond the confines of the dinner table. Garlic contains essential oils
and enzymes now known to kill most bacteria, including deadly
staphylococcus and salmonella, as well as several infective yeasts and
fungi. Egyptians lauded its curative benefits as early as 1500 B.C.,
citing more than 22 ailments said to be curable with garlic. Romans fed
it to their soldiers to increase stamina and, along with salt, used it
as currency with which to meet the military payroll. ancient Greeks
used it for everything from repelling scorpions to treating dog bites
and curing leprosy. Folks in the Middle Ages hung braided strings of
garlic across doors and windows to keep evil spirits out. Lasinski
notes that in Transylvania, Bram Stoker?s choice as the spooky home of
Count Dracula, garlic was known to repel the original blood-suckers,
mosquitoes. It follows, then, that literature and cinema would pick it
up as the ultimate shield against vampires.
GARLIC FESTIVALS
The proper little ladies, who abandoned their favorite restaurant so
many years ago because garlic was eaten only by the ?lower classes,?
would have to be virtual recluses to avoid it today. Hundreds of annual
garlic festivals now celebrate the culinary and medicinal benefits of
garlic all over the United States and Canada. Honolulu even has one,
and at the Pocono Garlic Festival in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, the
heart of one of the Northeast?s prime growing areas, members of a brass
band called the Garlic Troubadours, stuff themselves with raw garlic
every year, then ?oompah? up and down the square, spreading good cheer
and bad breath for one and all. Today, those ?Curiously Strong? mints
are available to offset garlic?s assault on the breath, and few now are
willing to give up one of God?s best condiments for fear of what the
neighbors might say. As for Lasinski, were she seeking a Master?s
degree in garlic, this information-packed on-line treatise well might
serve as her thesis.
http://www.finetuning.com/articles/1167-the- history-of-garlic-natures-ancient-superfood.html

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