The new garlic harvest arrived

I bought six heirloom seed garlic bulbs at the Eggplant Urban Farm Supply shop on Selby Ave in St.Paul MN last fall and planted the cloves in November in my garden, a bit late but still.  The original seed bulbs came from the Filaree Garlic Farm in Okanogan, WA. I followed their growing recommendation to the letter, which means, plant the cloves and basically forget about them except for some weeding and the occasional bit of watering. Dead easy...

This weekend was harvest time.  I was completely overwhelmed with the result, spectacular large bulbs came out of the ground. 
They are now "curing" this is a fancy word for drying. As you can see, I have enough garlic for the year.

In other words, it’s time to think about cooking with garlic and as a garlic-loving cook this is a real great time of the year. New garlic is fresh and crisp, the cloves are bursting with flavor, so now is the time to use it in everything, grated raw into salads, simmered or roasted to get out the sweetness.

I came across several recipes:
David Lebovitz's Chopped salad with lemon-garlic dressing
New York Times: Provençal Garlic Soup with poached egg
Karen Hursh Graber of Mexconnect: Sopa de Ajo Mexicana
Lorraine Pascale's: Camembert and roasted garlic
James Martin's: Forty garlic clove chicken with garlic mushrooms and garlic croustades

Last but certainly not least, one of my favorites: roasted garlic ice-cream.
I first tasted this at Sebastian Joe's in Minneapolis. Shockingly delicious is the right expression. There are several recipes to be found on the web, this one is from Kathryn Vercillo: 3 Ways for how to make garlic ice-cream.
 
Enjoy the garlic season.