[Sca-cooks] Garlic

[Elaine Koogler]

lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

> Re comment (by Stefan, i think) on the combination of garlic and sugar 
> being icky...
>
> First, in the medieval context, we have recipes that contain both 
> ingredients.
>
> Second, modern Thai and Indonesian recipes are often seasoned with 
> garlic and sweetened with sugar, and are doubtless other in cuisines 
> that mix sweet and garlic in recipes.
>
> Third, check the ingredients on commercial spaghetti sauce and salad 
> dressing bottles - many contain both garlic and a sweetener. I don't 
> buy sweetened spaghetti sauce (Ragu... it's like tomato syrup on 
> spaghetti, yuck) and avoid excessively sweet salad dressings. There is 
> or may be both garlic and sweetener in commercial catsup, commercial 
> chili sauce, and many barbecue sauces, commercial and homemade. I know 
> my homemade barbecue sauce has both garlic and brown sugar, along with 
> hot chili paste, soy sauce, sherry, and a dash of catsup.
>
> Re comment on garlic almonds being icky...
>
> Mmm-mmm-mmm, more for me :-) I much prefer savory to sweet. I assume 
> that person who thinks garlic almonds are eew-y also thinks smoked 
> almonds are eew-y... I like them, except they're usually too salty.
>
> Urtatim / Anahita

I very rarely purchase ready-made spaghetti sauce (though I've recently 
discovered a Vodka Marinara that's pretty good...).  When I make my own, 
I use a pinch of sugar in the sauce (along with all of the usual 
ingredients.  The idea here is to firstly enhane the flavor of the other 
ingredients and secondly to cut a bit of the acidity from the tomatoes.  
I don't believe you can even taste a sweet taste to the sauce, however.

Kiri