Locally grown by our friends at Samsara Fields Organics, French Artichoke Garlic is the latest exciting addition to our produce department!
So named because of the way the cloves are arranged inside the head (which people thought looked like an artichoke), this is one of the mildest varieties of softneck heirloom garlic. It’s the preferred variety for roasting, and it’s amazing in salads, aioli, pesto, garlic bread, or in any other dish where you want to add delicious garlic flavour without it overpowering all of the other flavours in the dish.
French Artichoke Garlic sometimes has a bit of purple spotting on the outside, but don’t confuse it with Purple Stripe Garlic, which is a hardneck variety – French Artichoke Garlic is softneck garlic. If you’ve ever seen a garlic braid, that’s softneck garlic! As well, Artichoke Garlic has an amazing capacity for dry storage, with a shelf-life of eight-months to a year!
At Samsara Fields Organic, the local organic farm where this garlic was grown, JP Gural and Soyoung Lee grow gorgeous and exotic fruits and vegetables, and in the past few years they have become one of our most important local farm partners. They have a profound devotion to growing heirloom varieties, and if in the past few years you’ve sampled some of the incredible and diverse variety in our produce department of hot peppers, or heirloom potatoes, or garlic, you’ve enjoyed the fruit of their labours!
As with so many of the best things in life, local heirloom produce is seasonal and fleeting – so treat yourself to some of this amazing garlic before it’s gone!