Spring’s onions

Spring has come and with it the abundance of wonderful veggies–asparagus, beans, root vegetables including onions and garlic.

I had never really paid much attention to seasonal vegetables. We seem to get most produce year round. But after I helped a chef friend Todd sell vegetable in a farmer’s market stall, I began more aware of them. In early spring we sold spinach, kale, Swiss chard, various lettuces, asparagus and root vegetables—turnips, golden sweet potatoes and the cutest radishes.

But what fascinated me for weeks were the garlic and onion. These were not the garlic and onion with the papery dry skins. These garlic and onion both large white, juicy-looking bulbs, with stems that resembled leek. They weren’t spring onions either. They were spring’s onions! We sold it as garlic and onion, which I, and everyone, found confusing.

I could not tell the garlic and onion apart, which sounds idiotic. (Hey, I know what garlic and onion look like. Maybe.) Todd said that the leaves of the garlic are flatter, and the onions rounder. But since they had been stuffed in the box from the farm, they looked alike to me, both like leek or giant old spring onions except they had bulbous ends. He then showed me the bottoms of the bulbs. The roots on the garlic looked like it spread out in a larger round from the base and the roots of the onions were more centered. They had a lot of roots. I nodded but still could not tell the difference.

Alas, I didn’t think to photograph–or taste–the two bulbs then. Several weeks went by and when I went to the nearby farmer’s market last Sunday, I could only find green onions that were nicely trimmed (see first picture, below, next to purple kohlrabi). By now, the two were starting to look different. Garlic is in second picture below. Two or three weeks made such a difference. Now each vegetable looked much more recognizable.

Other stalls had garlic that was yet older. Their leaves looked less like leek and now looked scrawny and drier. These, I suppose, would dry up more with time until you can use them to braid the garlic. The onion bulb looked more like a spring onion with a bulbous base. The difference is clear.

How do we cook it, a customer had asked me. I said, cook it like leeks. Then I quickly went to check with Chef Todd. No, not like leeks, he said. Cook them like garlic and onion. You can use the bulb and maybe up to four inches up the stem or neck, he said. The rest is fibrous. Hmm, I thought, then why wouldn’t I buy regular garlic and onion? (My customer must have thought the same because she returned the vegetables to me!) Not convinced you can’t cook it like leek I decided to buy the two different vegetables–the green garlic and the spring’s green onion–and give it a shot. It tastes like onion. But milder.

Cut crosswise, the garlic I bought looked like it was in its puberty stage–not a full, mature garlic which you can press to peel off its covering. This coat was starting to get papery but was slightly moist and the cloves were tender and less dense than regular garlic. I had to toss the neck and leafy part. You can see it in the picture it looks rather woody. Chef was right. When young, you can use up to about four inches of the neck of both garlic and onion. Once the garlic matured, the stem got too dry and fibrous. The onion I sliced at a slant but used only about four inches of the neck, its stem and leaves.

Since I had four chicken thighs that needed to be cooked, I decided to make soup noodles. For Quick Soup Noodles with Sichuan Preserved Vegetable, see here. I threw in Sichuan preserved vegetable (zha cai) for a Chinese flavor, but it’s optional. The garlic fried like sliced shallots; it’s juicier and seemed to brown less quickly. I liked the way it ended up more tender than if I had used regular garlic. It was also less pungent. The green onions fried like leeks but it was fleshier and also more tender with a subtle flavor. They tasted good.