Grocer Garlic

I shopped at a grocer on Long Island this weekend after going out to the North Fork. When I was a kid, this same store was oriented toward working class Italians, and today it is still that, but also reorienting toward Asian and Central and South American food products. It is where I saw my first sheep head in cellophane for sale, complete with eyeballs and brains.

In the produce aisles they had plenty of net socked Chinese garlic for very little. But they also had this very novel specimen for the usual $3 per pound. It didn't state where it originated, but it appears to be an Asiatic or Turban variety, not unlike the cultivar 'Tuscan' that I am growing now. Nice purple mottle, large size, and a ring of large, tawny rose-colored cloves around the central stem. Very unusual for an ordinary grocer.