HUNGRY GERALD

Garlic, capers and anchovies. BSK uses this tasty trio in a variety of dishes. All savory. Last night, BSK put them to good use in a panful of crisp-skinned, golden brown chicken thighs highly flavored with the noble trio and enhanced with much lemon juice. BSK consulted Melissa Clark’s recipe for garlic and lemon chicken from The New York Times. BSK made some changes in ingredients and techniques. BSK added white wine. BSK also cooked the sauce in a separate pan before adding it to the browned chicken. Didn’t want the garlic to burn. Once more, BSK’s attention to details insures dining joy.

Garlic challenges HG’s atheism. Where did this indispensable member of the allium family come from? Is its origin celestial? Never mind. Garlic has been around for a long time. The Chinese were using garlic to enhance their cuisine as early as 2000 BC. Count Dracula doesn’t stand a chance of inducting HG into a cordon of vampires (It’s common knowledge that garlic and crucifixes chase away these guys who want to bite your neck). HG eats garlic incessantly, adding it to a variety of foods. Linguine with oil, garlic, anchovies and parsley is a favorite late night meal (It’s what Romans eat after a night of carousing). HG’s preferred snack is toasted baguette rubbed with crushed garlic, doused with Sicilian olive oil, dusted with cracked pepper and sea salt. Accompanied by a ripe, in season tomato and plenty of red wine. HG heaven. This week, HG is in charge of the evening meal since BSK is busily occupied creating a series of hand formed pots. With HG in charge, BSK will wind up smelling like an elegant garlic clove. Last night, HG used a New York Times recipe for garlic soup. Loads of garlic simmered in water with thyme and bay leaf. Enriched with three beaten eggs and frozen sweet peas. HG cooked Orechiette (pasta shaped like little ears) in a separate pot. Added it to the garlic soup. A very generous topping of grated Parmesan and ground black pepper. The bowls were lined with toasted, garlic-rubbed slices of baguette. More garlic croutons on the side. A great dish. And, healthy. Among garlic’s many health benefits is lowering blood pressure and shoring up the immune system.

July 2, 1963. Fifty two years ago in New York. HG/BSK wed in the Foley Square chambers of Judge George Postel. Wedding brunch at Longchamps on lower Broadway. Sweltering heat wave, but BSK glowed with chic loveliness at HG/BSK’s afternoon reception in the St. Regis Hotel’s elegant Library Room (Bucky Pizzarelli supplied sublime guitar melodies). Dinner that night (with BSK’s family) at Fleur de Lys, little French restaurant near HG/BSK’s 27 W. 67th Street apartment. HG indulged in a platter of heavily garlicked escargots. This caused BSK discomfort as HG secreted pungent waves of garlic in the non-air conditioned apartment. BSK pondered (and not for the last time) whether the marriage was an error. HG/BSK and the marriage survived the evening. Today, on blissful Prince Edward Island, the duo raised breakfast coffee cups and agreed that their long journey together has been very rewarding. Tonight’s anniversary dinner will be a platter of shucked oysters (with BSK’s invigorating shallot vinaigrette), linguine con vongole (loads of little neck clams). Lessons have been learned. Garlic will be handled judiciously. Pecan butter tarts with ice cream for dessert. HG’s wish: Many more years with the love of HG’s life, the lovely, generous, talented, compassionate, sensitive BSK, the best wife, lover, mother, grandmother and companion. And, happily, BSK can cook.

The United States is divided between people who love garlic and people who abhor garlic. Garlic lovers are warm hearted, intelligent, handsome. They are expert and ardent in the intimacies of the bedroom. People who hate garlic live in “gated communities,” vote Republican and believe that the Olive Garden is an ethnic restaurant. Suffice it to say that garlic-haters are not Casanovas. Anchovies are a more complex matter. HG knows many otherwise estimable people who don’t like anchovies. They don’t even like them in a Caesar Salad where they are a vital ingredient. BSK is an artist of the anchovy. She uses them in vegetable stir fries, sautes and stews where the anchovies dissolve imparting an umami flavor as they enhance the other ingredients. Anchovies are useful in larding a leg of lamb in the French provincial manner. HG likes them with roasted Piquillo peppers and a dash of olive oil. And, when HG wants some simple comfort HG makes a sauce of anchovies, garlic, Italian parsley and hot pepper flakes and pours it over some al dente linguini. Heavily salted anchovies are sold in crates in some Italian neighborhood groceries. They have to be soaked in water and rinsed. HG has never managed to get it right. Instead, HG buys high quality anchovy filets in jars rather than the tinned variety.

There’s fresh garlic, just pulled from the earth, at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. This is the way garlic should taste. Subtle, savory, vaguely sweet and with a higher water content which drowns out all burn or bitterness. For most of the year HG and BSK (like most of the world) make do with dry (mostly over the hill) garlic from the grocers. So now is the time for spaghetti with very good olive oil, sauteed fresh garlic, some hot pepper and chopped Italian parsley, And, time to sup on Spanish garlic soup accompanied by grilled bread rubbed with fresh garlic and ripe tomato. The Farmers Market also has delicious small turnips and lovely radishes. BSK likes to fill her metal barbecue basket with spears of zucchini. thick slices of sweet onion, red peppers, turnips, radishes — and a few head of fresh garlic. When roasted over the barbecue, this melange is the perfect accompaniment to grilled spatchcocked chicken previously marinated in lemon juice and herbs. Oh yes, I’ll have another glass of that chilled Coppola Rosso.

Onions, shallots and garlic get some very intensive use in the HG/BSK kitchen. They enhance and augment everything except ice cream. Sarah N., the long, lean, lovely Executive Director of the Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute, recently sent HG information about the health benefits of the onion family. Good for lots of stuff that ails you. The shallot is the most potent cancer fighter but onions and garlic also aid the immune system. Garlic has a side benefit. It is useful in banishing vampires. So, take that, Count Dracula. You won’t take a nosh from HG’s neck.