There are ingredients you buy once and immediately notice while cooking that something is different. Pink garlic from Lautrec is one of them. It is milder than you expect, and it lingers in the mouth without becoming overpowering. Once you have had it in your house, you are reluctant to reach for the net bag from the supermarket again.
Lautrec is a village in the Tarn department, southeast of Toulouse. An old windmill stands on the hill, fields lie below, and around the village, about 160 families grow the same garlic. Only they are allowed to call it that.
The Legend of the Merchant
No one knows exactly how garlic came to Lautrec. The story told locally goes like this: A traveling merchant from Asia stopped at an inn near Lautrec and ate there. He could not pay. So he gave the innkeeper a few cloves of garlic with pink skins. The innkeeper planted them in the ground, and the rest is history.
This cannot be proven; it is a beautiful story and nothing more. What is documented, however, is what happened in the 19th century: Garlic grew in small gardens, often on five to ten ares, and was sold at the markets between Castres and Albi. At the end of the 1950s, several farmers came together, compared their methods, and began to market the garlic together. What began as a garden crop became a growing region.
In 1966, it received the Label Rouge. Pink garlic was one of the very first French food products to receive this designation. In 1996, the European IGP followed, and the name has been protected ever since. Where Ail Rose de Lautrec is written, that is what is inside.
Why It Is Not Braided
You know white garlic as a braid. That does not work with garlic from Lautrec. Its flower stalk is stiff and cannot be bent. So the bulbs are tied together into round bunches, which locally are called "manouille". These bunches are the hallmark of the product, not just decoration.
The farmers cut off the flower stalk itself in spring. The plant is not supposed to put its energy into the flower, but into the bulb underground. It is harvested at the end of June or beginning of July. After that, the garlic dries for at least 15 days, losing a quarter of its weight in the process. Only then is it peeled by hand, sorted by size, and tied. It goes on sale in mid-July, when the producers' association opens the season.
The effort has a reason. This garlic sprouts later than other varieties and therefore lasts almost until spring. With good producers, completely without sprout inhibitors.
Sébastien Marty and Black Garlic
One of these producers is Sébastien Marty. His farm, La Lautrécoise, is located on Rue Obscure, in the middle of the village. Everything is grown, sorted, packaged, and refined in the same place.
It gets interesting with his black garlic. For this, Marty uses exclusively his own pink garlic. The bulbs are placed in a damp chamber at over 60 degrees for several weeks. There, the Maillard reaction takes place, the same one that turns a bread crust brown. It has nothing to do with fermentation, even though you often read that. It is pure heat and time.
After that, the garlic continues to mature for several more months. In the end, the cloves are deep black, soft, and shiny like licorice. They taste sweet, slightly balsamic, and slightly woody. There is no sharpness left. Who tries them for the first time thinks more of a baked prune than of garlic.
The reason Lautrec garlic is particularly well suited for this is its higher sugar content. More sugar, more Maillard, more aroma.
In the Kitchen
It is best to treat fresh pink garlic simply. In Lautrec, they make a soup with chicken broth, thin noodles, and a spoonful of mayonnaise, which is stirred in at the end. It sounds unusual, but it is exactly what the garlic needs. We have written down the traditional recipe from Lautrec here: Soupe à l’Ail Rose de Lautrec.
In the picture above: the Portuguese Sopa Alentejana, a bread-garlic soup with cilantro and a poached egg. You can find three more ideas especially for Lautrec garlic under Aïl, aïl, aïl – all garlic: aioli, confit garlic, and bread salad. And if you want to do it quickly: Garlic-sardine bruschetta.
You use black garlic differently. It is not cooked with, but added at the end. On buttered bread, in a vinaigrette, with lightly fried meat, under mashed potatoes. Or you place a clove next to a piece of goat cheese and wonder how well they go together.
By the way, in early August, Lautrec celebrates its garlic with its own festival. Anyone driving through the Tarn in summer should plan the detour.
Further Reading
Anaïs Causse portrayed Sébastien Marty and his garlic for the Berlin magazine Garçon: Ail Rose de Lautrec, published on January 24, 2020.
