Spice up your dishes with black garlic

Add “black'' to the many ways we're taking our garlic. In relatively short order, black garlic has morphed from obscure dietary supplement to top-chef ingredient.

Here's how:

Inventor Scott Kim began developing the product in 2004. His goal was to market fermented black garlic as a superfood: Its patented, heat-curing process creates a high level of antioxidants and a natural cancer-preventing compound.

Forms of fermented garlic have long been eaten for health reasons in Korea and Japan.

Kim formed a company called Black Garlic Inc, bringing on John Yi, a long-time garlic producer.

Based in Hayward, California, the company is the sole manufacturer and supplier in the US.

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A year before Kim's company was up and running, Bruce Hill, executive chef and co-owner of Bix Restaurant in San Francisco, tried black garlic for the first time in Kyoto, Japan.

A friend and fellow chef piped beads of black garlic paste around a composed vegetable and chicken salad and used it in a tapenade.

Hill, who co-owns Picco restaurant in Larkspur, California, loved the ingredient. “It lends itself to Mediterranean flavours, things like peppers and olives,'' he says.

Black garlic offers a sweet, licorice twist and a chewy texture. Its garlic flavour and aroma are present but diminished.

Hill tracked down a supplier, who happened to be Kim. “I think we were the first to use it'' culinarily in the area, the chef says.

Matthias Merges, executive chef at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, tagged it as one of his top five food finds in a recent issue of Restaurant News, a trade publication.

Black garlic became a big-hit item for Le Sanctuaire.com, an upscale gourmet foods purveyor and was sold by speciality trade purveyors.

The famous New York seafood restaurant Le Bernardin uses it in a spiced monkfish dish that was highlighted on a recent episode of Bravo's Top Chef: New York.

Jeremy Fox, executive chef at Ubuntu in Napa, drizzles drops of pureed black garlic on his fingerling potato salad.

Kim says demand is growing. A 1.27-ounce package costs about $3.50 (Dh13).

To order, contact the company info@blackgarlic.com or go to www.blackgarlic.com.