Australian-grown garlic early this year
The most common variety is Chinese, produced in large volumes, harvested and coolstored, and which is much cheaper. The other imported variety is usually Spanish roja, a more robust, and dearer, flavoursome purple hardneck variety, which comes from Spain, Argentina or Mexico.
NSW garlic grower Patrice Newell has been growing another variety, purple softneck. Her first commercial crop of the softneck comes from one original bulb first planted six years ago. "We trial a lot of different garlic," she says. "We have eight at the moment. It looks like a good year."
Softneck is much hotter in flavour than hardneck and does not have the same sweetness when baked. "Our normal garlic is hardneck and it is regarded as more difficult to grow but is considered more complex in flavour," Patrice says. While most people chop garlic cloves finely, it can also be baked in heads or cloves as the caramelisation of the natural sugars make it sweet.
Source: Taste.com.au
