On Missing Garlic

On Missing Garlic
NUMBERS 11: 1-35

My mother didn’t know about garlic. This is not unreasonable; she had learned to cook in the days when British cooking was boring, before Elizabeth David introduced us to proper cooking (she was our Julia Child) and before immigration from the Indian subcontinent turned chicken tikka masala into our national dish. My mother didn’t even know about onions or leeks; only from my wife (who came from another part of the country) did I discover that onions are the most important vegetable in the world. And I don’t think any of us ate melon until the first time we visited Israel. (We did know about fish, but mostly as in fish and chips. We certainly knew about cucumbers, though growing these is a bit of a challenge in the British climate.)...