GARLIC POPE SMALL BLESSINGS HEADLINE
By David W. Brown
By David W. Brown
I
f you live on the Gulf Coast, you know about the holy trinity: onions, bell pepper and celery. It is to Cajun and Creole cuisine what pasta is to Italy—the foundation, the alpha and omega. But if you look at most Cajun recipes, you’ll notice that a fourth ingredient is invariably called for: garlic. If the other three are the trinity, garlic is the pope. Gumbo? Add garlic. Jambalaya? Add garlic. Boiled crawfish? Hurl as many bulbs into the pot as you can carry home from Rouses, just toss them in with wild abandon. Boudin? Add garlic! (Honestly, garlic is the only ingredient you want to know is in boudin; just eat it and do not ask questions.) Where did this magical onion—garlic is an allium, from the same family as onions and chives—come from? What’s its story? Aren’t you a little curious about the pope’s life before it was flavoring dishes ex cathedra? Buckle up, because you are about to learn more about garlic than you ever wanted to know. THE GLOBETROT TER Garlic is native to Asia but can grow anywhere with a mild climate. When you think of garlic, you probably think of southern fare or Italian cuisine, but if you want to talk about a culinary tradition that really values its garlic, look no further than Chinese food. Indeed, depending on where you buy it, the garlic you are tossing like grenades into your crawfish boil probably came from China, which produces 70% of the garlic in the world—more than 21 million tons every year. Partially, it is because the Chinese have been doing it for a long time. Garlic was first cultivated there around 4,000 years ago, probably brought over from Mongolia. (It was being cultivated simultaneously in Mesopotamia. Garlic gets around.) It was prized in China for its perceived medicinal value and of course as a culinary delight. But everyone the world over loved the stuff. Archeologists even found it in King Tut’s tomb, and it appears in all manner of ancient text. It is hard to say when it was made pope, though, or who so elected it. Likewise, the holy trinity moniker has mysterious origins, though was likely a regionalism, Catholic culture being so strong in Louisiana. The moniker was undoubtedly made famous by Paul Prudhomme, who brought Cajun and Creole cooking to the world. A lazy man’s guide to this style of cuisine would advise: If
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