I feel Texas country music lyrics incubating. Dead end on The Allium Highway -- Stoney LaRue? Wade Bowen? How shall we play it?

I'm more blues myself. The Allium Highway's gotta be with Roy Buchanan driving.

I'll have to let you know later about shallots. I never used them much but, having grown them in the garden this year, I now have them in abundance. They were started from seeds indoors in February and they turned out well. After curing they are rock hard and have nice tight skins so I expect them to store well.

If you like chives, plant a clump outside. It is a very easy, trouble free plant. While you're at it, plant some Italian parsley. Both are perennial and will grow for years with no special care. Personally I don't have much use for chives but my hero, Jacques Pepin, uses them a lot.

Jim

Jim...Italian parsley is actually a biennial with a life cycle of two years. Mine goes to seed within one year.....and I think many living in a warm climate find it won't live for two years but if you let the seeds fall below the plant, it will reseed, and the patch will continue to survive. I also have chives and Italian parsley growing year round in pots.

I do buy shallots but as John mentions, they are a bit of a nuisance to use as they are so small and I haven't really found too much difference in flavour from that of a mild onion. I seem to buy them and forget to use them, and realize that when it's too late.

I use leeks all the time, both as a vegetable, chopped into a pot of steaming mixed vegetables, later to be drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper as well as one of my main ingredients in soups and stews. I've also used them creamed in a casserole with bacon.

And as for garlic, well it goes into almost everything except desserts, which I seldom make.

SharonCb

Thanks for the good info on parsley, Sharon. Must be my parsley patches reseeded themselves. I don't recall how many years they lasted. Maybe not so many. They did require replanting occasionally, which is explained by what you said. It is handy to have parsley growing so you don't need to keep buying a bunch. It can be harvested even in mid-winter by brushing the snow away.

Jim

To me, shallots are very different from mild onions. The taste is subtler, simpler in some sense. If I'm going to make a recipe that specifies shallots, I do buy them. I don't try to keep them around all the time though. When they're on sale (sometimes half-price at the farmer's market), I buy them. If I haven't used them in a few days, I put them in the refrigerator.
Chives are a must. Mine are in a pot looking unhappy right now.

John, how about Joe Bonamassa?

We do have shallots in our markets and I might have used them a time or two in recipes, but mostly I use regular onions or Vidalia onions in season. The only time I used leeks was the first time I made Cock-A-Leekie soup. They are scarce here and quite expensive. They often look a bit tired and the worse for traveling in our stores. I tried for years to grow chives, but the humidity gets to them, so I now mince green onion tops when a recipe calls for chives. Green onions are available all year here and are reasonably priced. I often grow them in the spring. I frequently buy red onions for salads, sandwiches, salsa, etc. and I love them for their color.

Teresa in warm, humid NC

1. I am growing elephant garlic this year. Not sure what to do with them yet.

2. I have lots of wild garlic that I am trying to get rid of on my lawn. Anyone uses them?

3. I cook leek (green)tops and (white)bottoms separate. They take different cooking time and they taste different.

4. Garlic scape, as you know, is a delicacy.

5. When you use scallions, just use the tops and put the bottoms to grow in a glass of water by your kitchen window, you will have scallions to use for a long while.

6. "Posted by canarybird -----------And as for garlic, well it goes into almost everything except desserts, --------"

Not true. You can find many garlic dessert recipes on line.

dcarch

I buy yellow, white and red onions. I don't seek out Walla Wall's or Vidalia's because I've never tasted any that claimed to be sweet that were sweet.

Shallots are very expensive here and only on a rare ocassion will I buy them. I mostly replace them in a recipe with onions.

I love to use leeks both for taste and looks. Garlic is a must and I doubt if I would care for any dessert using garlic.

I use a lot of green onions and thank you Dcarch for teling me I can grow them in a glass of water. I didn't know that.

Almost every time I've bought leeks they have gone bad before I got to use them, so I don't buy them any more.

I've never used elephant garlic because I simply don't understand what I would use it for.

The level of "onion" in a dish is what I am after when I use chives or shallots. To me, if the recipe calls for a shallot then a regular onion will be too powerful for the opposing ingredient. Wendy (Weed) has a dish (pork medallions in cream sauce) that utilizes the whites of scallions, which I didn't have the other night, and so subbed a yellow onion. Wrong. It was just wrong. Way to strong. To me, it seems as though the order of "strength of onion" flavor is:

Chives
Scallions
Shallots
Leeks
Yellow onion
White onion
Purple onion

I could be wrong, but that's how I taste it.

Scallions are so versatile! They taste good, look good and are easy to prep. They can be cut in several ways to garnish hot or cold dishes.

White Spanish onions have a sharpness I like in many dishes, especially Mexican ones. That's something I learned from Diana Kennedy, one of my favorite cookbook authors.

Spanish onions are good as a garnish for hot dogs and other things. In that case it is essential to mince them finely. Big chunks of onion, which seem to be the rule at ball games, fairs and similar venues, fall off and spoil the experience.

Jim

Since I've reached my currant advanced age,
And in addition to a bout with bleeding uclers a few years back,
My eating habits have had to change.
A lot.
Most onions and garlic are out for me.
And I used to put them in almost everything!

But I have found that sweet onions and Elephant Garlic do work for me at times.
I've always used Elephant Garlic just like regular garlic.
It is just a lot more mild. IMHO.
For onions, I get the "1015" or the "Texas Sweet"
(Vidalia'a are very seldom seen here)
And I've found it true that the flatter the onion, the sweeter it is.
And in onions, I believe 'sweet' means 'mild', not the sugar kind of sweet.

I guess what this rambling boils down to is simply, I envy those of you who can and do use a wide variety of alliums in your cooking.

Rusty

I've got chives all the time. In the winter they grow in a pot in my kitchen and in the summer (and right now) I have a big bunch in the raised herb garden by the deck.

I grew onions this year myself, white, yellow and red for storage and a "sweet" onion for immediate use. I can't tell the difference except the "sweet" onions spoil faster! Cathy (mustangs) did bring me some true Vidalia onions and I roasted those whole with a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic and they were yummy and mild, my own onions are stronger.

I did not grow garlic this year but I usually do. I use the scapes as "green garlic" and then store the hard necked garlic for kitchen use.

Scallions I don't use often enough to grow, so I buy them. However, I don't buy them very often and I buy shallots even less often, usually onions take their place suitably, if not ideally, and I can seldom get either at my small town grocery.

I did grow a 50 foot row of leeks this year, LOL, and I've been eating leek and fresh tomato tarts and roasted fingerling potatoes with caramelized leeks and leek and potato soup. I don't know that it's worth growing them again next year, though they are extremely expensive here they don't store well.

Annie

Annie, I have some hard-neck garlic from a local grower. That neck is HARD! Boy it's a challenge to separate the first clove without digging into others! Any tips?

I'm not Annie ;o) - but I can give you one answer to the hard garlic neck question. Put your hands, one on top of the other, down on the top of the garlic bulb (using a cloth to protect you hand if needed) and press down very hard. The pressure should cause the bulb to separate into the individual cloves.

Teresa

A friend of mine grew leeks and overwintered them in the ground, thus solving the storage problem. Winters are usually very mild here in Zone 7A. I'm not sure if this would work in places like Michigan. Also, because the ground doesn't freeze up until at least December or January, her leeks could be harvested during most of the winter. Hmmmm. I may be talking myself into growing leeks.

Jim

CC, I take the heads apart much like Teresa describes, I pull off the outer layers and then give the whole head a good whack with my hand, and they come apart. I trim that hard neck down as close to the cloves as I can when I'm ready to use it, but I store with a couple of inches of "neck" and all the layers of paper/skin on, I don't remove them until lI'm ready to use the garlic.

Jim, definitely grow leeks. They were easy and grew well, but they won't tolerate being kept in the ground here in zone 5. I was told that if I put enough hay on top, I could keep them through November but truthfully, I pulled them all last week and they were already a bit soft on the outside layers.

Annie

Thanks, Annie and Teresa.

dcarch...

I was referring how I use alliums in MY house when I said ' garlic goes into everything except desserts.'

I wasn't referring to general usage by others or whatever is out there on line.

SharonCb

"Posted by canarybird ------------dcarch...
I was referring how I use alliums in MY house when I said ' garlic goes into everything except desserts.'
I wasn't referring to general usage by others or whatever is out there on line.
SharonCb"

Sharon, I was actually semi kidding. You name any ingredient, you can for sure find outrageous recipes on the internet that someone has made that into a dessert.

However, there is an interesting possibility that garlic can in fact be used in deserts, which actually is not crazy.

I will post details some other time.

dcarch

A couple of interesting alliums haven't been mentioned yet.

Garlic chives, aka Chinese chives, resemble scallions except they have no white bulb and the leaves are strap-like instead of round. The flavor is mild garlicky. Garlic chives can be found in Asian markets. I've had them cooked with eggs. They are useful finely chopped as an ingredient in filling for dumplings.

Another interesting allium is wild leeks, aka as ramps. These have a white bulb with a narrow neck and broad, flat leaf unlike onions. Their flavor and aroma is highly pungent. They grow in woodlands, where they are gathered in early spring before they bloom. They are seldom cultivated, although I transplanted some to a shady rhododendron garden behind my house where they have lived for many years.

Jim

Jim, I have both chives and garlic chives in my herb box, or at least that's what the pots said when I bought them. The garlic chives are bigger but other than that they look the same. They do smell slightly more pungent than the "plain" chives.

Ramps are commonly foraged for here too, I have some in the backyard and you can sure tell when you hit them with the lawnmower! I never thought of actually growing them on purpose...

Annie

Watch out for garlic chives. I worked hard to eliminate them from my garden, and thought I succeeded years ago. Then this year I spotted a couple -- growing up through a crack in the driveway macadam.

"The garlic chives are bigger but other than that they look the same."

I suspect the common name, garlic chive, is being applied to more than one plant. This often happens with common names. The garlic chives I am referring to are not just bigger than regular chives, they have a different type of leaf. Their leaves are tubular like scallions but flat, not round.

Jim

That is the plant to fear.