Have you tried it?

Generally, I try to stay away from buying "green house" food. It's a dilemma at this time of year. Local lettuces and things like that are available, but they are grown under greenhouse conditions. So they're local, and they're organic, but how do they taste, and do they meet all the criteria of sustainability? It's very hard to reach a satisfactory conclusion here. Buy stuff from a NY state green house, or a California farm? Would that everyone's problems were as minimal as that one.

So this is by way of introducing "green garlic." For folks who follow crops, the garlic cycle is very interesting. The stuff that we're all used to using as hard, sometimes too hard, too dry, bulbs, starts as a green plant, not unlike a spring onion. It forms a bulb, and it has a green shoot, and eventually, it forms the cloves that we're accustomed to. Then it's dried, and that's how we get it. Early on, it's very tender, and sort of like a cross between an onion and garlic. And you can use all of it. There is no "skin" to speak of really, and you can chop everything all the way up to the top and use it for all kinds of things.

One of the farms we patronize , the D'attolico farm, is essentially a greenhouse. They are completely organic. And one of the things they grow in that greenhouse is garlic. It seems to be one of those "things." Garlic grown indoors never forms the common type of bulb we know. It goes to the "green" stage, and just stops. So, during the winter, they have what is really a treat of mid/late spring: green garlic.

This year, they introduced green "elephant" garlic. Some years ago, these huge bulbs and cloves were introduced as "garlic without attitude," and indeed, when dried, the cloves have almost none of the bite that garlic does.

So, what's the point? I won't use them. But the idea of these big, green garlic bulbs was very appealing and I brought a bunch of them home this past weekend. Yesterday, I put them to use.

It was a long, holiday weekend, and on Sunday, we had prepared, and shared, a wonderful, party dinner with a group of friends. One of the best we had ever had, on all fronts. So we had eaten well, no question about it. So, "standard" wisdom tells us that, after a day of excess, you should be eating things like steamed vegetables and salads.

Well, I've read a few articles lately that take issue with that. They don't disagree that you have to turn down the calories, but they suggest a tapering. So, if you've had what is probably a 10,000 calorie dinner (maybe a slight exaggeration, but only slight) on one night, don't follow it with a 400 calorie one the next day. Something in between is called for.

So we were sitting at home, hungry. I was thinking of ordering in Chinese food for lunch, but it was also freezing out. The wind chill factor said 2-4 degrees. One of the idiosyncracies I have is that I don't want to force people out in weather that I won't go out in. So I wouldn't do the Chinese food thing. I went into the kitchen to see what I could do. We had some left over ricotta from the party (we had a ricotta tasting: buffalo, sheep and goat. Buffalo won, hands down, with yours truly in dissent). Ricotta and pasta are a match made in heaven. I started by chopping up the three big heads of garlic that I had. As I did it, I was thinking that leeks would work, but would taste different . Use em if you got em. I sauteed the leeks in butter, because the plan I had called for soft cheese, and cream, and olive oil didn't seem right. That was a right decision, I think. After I had sauteed the garlic in a little butter, until it just got soft, I added about a quarter cup. Ok a third of a cup of heavy cream. In the heat, the cream cooked right away. Then, off the heat, I added about a cup of mixed ricotta, and some salt. You should always add cheese OFF the heat. It's already been cooked, and the second "cook" could force it to separate into curds and whey. So, now I had a wonderful white, creamy delicious sauce, that I mixed into half a pound of tagliarini and I served it forth.

A pretty good lunch, in fifteen minutes I would say.

You will find green garlic in the spring at farmer's markets everywhere. If you can't get D'attolico's, then use leeks. But try this. I bet you're gonna like it.

And it's not 10,000 calories