No Vampires in Gilroy, California

When was the last time you saw a vampire in Gilroy, California? Gilroy is, for the uninitiated, the garlic capital of the world; a title clamed during the first annual Garlic Festival in 1979 held there. Halloween is notoriously the night for vampires, along with all the other ghouls and ghosts—and, since garlic wards off vampires—a great night for garlic!


Our hosts for the dinner club to which we belong decided to get a head start on chasing off the blood-sucking, black-caped monsters with their scary fangs by setting the theme for last year’s feast as garlic. I located my Gilroy Garlic Festival cookbooks to find the perfect appetizers. This course is an easy one for a garlic theme; there were so many that sounded wonderful, I had a hard time limiting myself to 3—the usual number of appetizers we serve but I was certainly glad I wasn’t bringing the dessert course.

A little background on garlic is in order, especially since I think many people misunderstand how to use this fantastic ingredient in everyday cooking. You may be too conservative when you begin using fresh garlic, but like onions and other members of the allium family, when you cook them, they caramelize and the pungent quality softens into a mellow sweetness. One of the most popular ways to serve fresh garlic is to bake whole heads to serve with crunchy bread or along side meats and vegetables. Peel outer skin away but leave the cloves unpeeled and the head intact. Place heads in covered casserole or on a piece of heavy aluminum foil, drizzle with olive oil, add salt and pepper and bake covered at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until cloves are soft. Squeeze cloves out of their skins onto bread or other food. Offer the roasted cloves in one small dish and a very high-quality extra-virgin olive oil in another dish. Diners dip the bread in the oil and then squeeze a clove of roasted garlic on the bread.

In addition to being delicious, garlic is very, very good for you. The sulphur compounds that give garlic its pungent taste and strong aroma provide anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiseptic and anti-microbial protection. It also has the power to protect against heart attack and stroke, cancer, high blood pressure and—of course—vampires.

If you really love garlic, you can make your own garlic salt and garlic oil and give away some to your garlic-loving friends. For oil (or vinegar), just add peeled whole cloves to bottles of your favorite oil or vinegar for two or three days before using. To make salt, just bury 3 peeled and pressed garlic cloves in half a cup of salt. Add fresh ground pepper and ground ginger to taste. Let stand for a few days in a screw-top jar. Remove garlic and use salt as desired.

These appetizer recipes won top prizes at Gilroy’s Garlic Cook-off:

Garlic Mushrooms Morgan Hill

4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1/3 cup olive oil
2/3 cup white wine vinegar
1/3 cup dry red or white wine
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. honey
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
1 Tbsp. salt
2 lbs. fresh mushrooms

Saute garlic in oil. Add vinegar, wine, soy sauce, honey, parsley and salt. Stir until mixture is well blended and hot. Place mushrooms in heatproof container with tightly fitting lid. Pour hot mixture over mushrooms, allow to marinate from 1 to 3 hours, or more, turning over several times. Save marinade for later use on more mushrooms or use it as a salad dressing.

Party Dip

1 round loaf sourdough bread
¼ lb. butter
1 bunch green onions, chopped
12 cloves fresh garlic, minced finely
1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, at room temperature
16 oz. sour cream
12 oz. Cheddar cheese, grated
1 can (10 oz.) artichoke hearts, drained and cut into quarters (water pack, not marinated)
1 French baguette, sliced thinly

Slice top off loaf of sourdough, about 5-inches in diameter. Remove soft bread from cut portion. Scoop out inside portion of the loaf and save for other uses. In about 2 Tbsp. butter, saute green onions and half the garlic until onions wilt. Do not burn. Cut cream cheese into small chunks and add along with onions, garlic, sour cream, and Cheddar cheese. Mix well. Fold in artichoke hearts. Put all of this mixture into hollowed out bread. Place top on bread and wrap in a double thickness of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Bake in 350 deg. Oven for 1 ½ to 2 hours. Slice baguette thinly and butter with remaining butter and garlic. Wrap in foil and bake with big loaf for the last ½ hour. When ready, remove foil and serve, using slices of baguette to dip in sauce.