Garlic: love at first bite

WHAT IS GARLIC?

Is it a herb? Is it a vegetable? Is it a peculiar smelling deterrent invented by the French to keep the British out of their onion fields? Actually, garlic is one of the smaller members of the onion family, and enjoys regular dinners with its in-laws the leek, chive, shallot and onion. Often known as the stinking rose, its cloves are the most oft-used part, although the flower stalks are occasionally employed in cooking too, usually in stir-fries. If you've ever torn apart a garlic plant with your hands you'll know it also secretes a sticky juice in the bulb cloves, which is strong enough to be used as an adhesive in mending glass and china. It's one way to save on the Pritt Stick.

GARLIC IN RELIGION

Always up to no good, Satan. According to Christian myth, when the devil was trampling across the Garden of Eden, garlic arose from his left footprint, and onion from his right. If only he'd had a third foot and left tomatoes behind, Ragu sauce might have made it into the Bible. In both Hinduism and Jainism, garlic is said to promote desire and warm the body – so much so that some Hindus even avoid it during religious festivals. Garlic also pops up in Islam, but for rather less prosaic reasons, with Mohammed sensibly pointing out: "Whoever has eaten (garlic] should not approach our mosque because the smell from the mouth will irritate the fellow worshippers."

GATHERING WILD GARLIC

You don't have to wander far into the Scottish countryside right now to come across the distinctive scent of wild garlic wafting across the hedgerows. Wild garlic has a short season (until the end of the April) but an abundant one, and although more delicate in flavour than its cultivated cousin, it makes for an excellent cooking ingredient. If you fancy foraging for wild garlic yourself, you'll find it most commonly in damp, shady spots such as woods and riverbanks. Make sure you don't confuse it with two similar looking plants – autumn crocus and lily of the valley. Neither smell of garlic but both are toxic so choose carefully. Once you're back in the kitchen wash thoroughly and then use as you like in recipes such as home-made pesto, risotto, or in a simple cream sauce with black pepper, single cream, white wine and spring onions. Delicious.

THE HEALTH BENEFITS

Garlic has been attributed with a remarkable number of healing properties, from repelling mosquitoes to working as an antiseptic, and every health shop has a shelf that creaks with garlic supplements. It has been claimed to help prevent heart disease and lower cholesterol levels, and can help regulate blood sugar levels, and stop certain complications arising from diabetes. It has also been used in the treatment of Aids-related complications. Louis Pasteur was a fan of garlic's antibacterial qualities, and it was used as an antiseptic to prevent gangrene in the First World War. It's also said to be beneficial in warding off colds and coughs, and keeping the antibacterial levels in your tummy healthy. In other words, it's good for you.

WHY DOES GARLIC MAKE ME SMELL FUNNY, MUMMY?

Ever sniffed out the garlic eater at a drinks party from a good 20 paces? Or shifted bikes in the gym after a fellow exerciser started emitting a garlicky smell that can most kindly be described as 'pungent'? The reason a person's breath and sweat can reek after eating garlic is down to a gas with the sinister moniker allyl methyl sulfide. AMS is absorbed into the blood during the digestion of garlic, causing it to travel to the lungs and the skin, where it then starts wafting out again, causing acute social embarrassment for the sufferer. A good scrub will get rid of the worst of it, and eating parsley will mask the smell on your breath, but much of the stench can be prevented by removing that small green bit at the centre of a garlic clove before you cook it.

GARLIC: A HISTORY

Garlic was first thought to have been used in ancient Egypt as early as 3000 BC. Quickly employed for both culinary and medicinal uses, its fame rapidly spread across the ancient world. Pliny the Elder extolled its healing virtues, while the ancient Greeks were said to have taken it at the very first Olympics Games for its energy-giving properties. Its powers as an aphrodisiac are hailed in an ancient Sanskrit text from around the second century BC, and it was widely popular in Asian cookery for thousands of years (and still is). Although it grows happily on British soil, we Brits were late converts to the garlic party, although the 'onion Johnnies' – French onion salesmen who went door to door in Britain on bikes in the mid-20th century and sold garlic cloves, did much to embed the humble clove in modern British cookery.

GORDON RAMSAY'S CLASSIC GARLIC PRAWNS

The patron saint of strong flavours and colourful language whipped up this recipe on his The F Word programme on Channel 4 (the full instructions are at www.channel4.com), and it couldn't be simpler, or make better use of garlic's in-your-face pungency. Throw six peeled and thinly sliced garlic cloves into an olive oil coated, heated frying pan with two finely chopped red chillies and season. Fry for a minute until the garlic colours slightly, then add 600g large raw prawns and fry for about 1 minutes on each side until bright red and opaque. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with lemon wedges and crusty bread.

DANGEROUS GARLIC

It's not all sunshine and stinking roses in the garlic world. Some folk, known as the "garlic-sensitive", can have pronounced negative reactions to garlic including breathing difficulties, mouth and throat ulcerations, irritable bowels and diarrhoea. It can even cause anaphylactic shock, and when applied to the skin, can cause burns. If all that's not enough to put you off, garlic can also thin the blood in a similar manner to aspirin, and, in large quantities, may interact with drugs such as warfarin and hypoglycemic medications. Perhaps most terrifying of all, two outbreaks of botulism have been caused by commercially produced garlic-in-oil preparations that weren't properly preserved. It's not just humans either – garlic, like chocolate, is toxic to dogs. No wonder then that some people have even been known to develop alliumphobia – a fear of garlic.

GARLIC THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Van Helsing uses garlic to protect Lucy from the vampire Count by placing it in her room and around her neck, but the notion that draping yourself in garlic can protect you from blood suckers goes back much further. It was common in Romania, where corpses believed to be vampires were stuffed with garlic. Whether it stopped them developing pointy teeth is unclear, but it probably did a good job of keeping the germs away.

Other theories on how the two came to be connected muse on the idea that rabies sufferers, who can become fixated and mesmerised by a strong smell, were once believed to be vampires. Then there were garlic's reputed powers as a mosquito repellent (mossies being blood-sucking bugs that bite). If you do come across a vampire, the correct procedure to ward them off apparently is to stuff garlic in their mouth. Or, you know, run.

HOW TO CHOP GARLIC

There's a reason the inventor of the garlic press is a very rich man. Chopping a garlic clove is a tiresome business. But although garlic crushers are convenient, you'll probably lose half your garlic clove in the process. Here's how to chop a clove like an expert. Lay your individual clove on its side in the middle of a chopping board, and lay the flat blade of a knife on top of it. Use the palm of your hand to smash the clove. Pull the papery covering off and discard. Laying the clove on its side again, cut the clove into slices as thin as possible, rocking the knife in an up and down motion in order to chop the garlic. Of course if you're too lazy for all that and live near a Waitrose, you can buy one of their tubs of ready peeled cloves. We promise we won't tell anyone.

INTERNATIONAL FOOD OF MYSTERY

Although France is widely regarded and abused for being the centre of things garlicky, China is by far the largest producer of garlic, with approximately 10.5 billion kilograms annually, accounting for more than 77 per cent of world output. India and South Korea follow, with Russia in fourth place and the United States in fifth place. France just likes to smell of it.