2007 Elke regio, provincie of streek in Italië heeft zo de eigen gebruiken als het gaat om koken. En er zijn regels. Sommige dingen doé je niet. Ik vertelde een vriend eens gloedvol over mijn lamsbout met gorgonzola en ik dacht dat hij flauw ging vallen. Gorgonzola! Te vet! Neemt de smaak weg! Schifo (spreek uit skiefo). Terwijl een andere vriendin die best wel van het experimenteren is zei dat het best kon maar met de zeer milde variant.
Do not combine several species in one dish
But she also has her limits. For instance, it is highly questionable if you put several types of garlic together in one dish. So no garlic with onions, no leek with garlic. It is not allowed. I wanted to know more about this. And what did I find out?
I heard a lot of stories: the different kinds of garlic don't tolerate each other. So one takes away the taste of the other. Someone else claimed that they influence each other in such a negative way that they even become poisonous. Slightly, but still.
One explanation has always made sense to me: garlic, onions, chives and leeks put a lot of strain on your digestion and are gas forming. If you already suffer from this, you'll go nuts if you use several types of garlic.
Over the years I've learned that "taking away the flavor of the other garlic" is also a good reason. If you taste carefully, onions and garlic blend together. Or rather, they take on each other's flavor and then you don't even taste them both that well.
No onion in 'storage sauce
There is something else weird with onions: if you make a sauce that you want to keep (see the Pomodoresse) then it is better not to add onions. Somehow the sauce will become less tasty when you reheat it. Garlic is fine, but only if you are making Aglione.
Red onion and garlic: the sting out of it
Onions and garlic are healthy. Garlic purifies the blood for example. But you don't always want that taste because it dominates. The same goes for the red onion: tasty, but used raw it's a bit too much.
You can do something about that: you can boil garlic in water for 10 minutes.
Do you have red onion? And you want to use it in a salad? I learned a trick for that in Italy. Finely chop the onion and leave it (preferably overnight) in lukewarm water with a big splash of red wine vinegar. Then the onion is tasty, but the taste doesn't dominate as much. Or as they say in Italy: you take the sting out of it.
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