A Great Leap for GarlicPeeling garlic by...

A Great Leap for Garlic

Peeling garlic by hand can be painful as well as tiresome. At last there’s a device that does the vile part of the job for you: the E-Z-Rol Garlic Peeler, a floppy tube made from an FDA-approved material that looks and feels like a cross between garden hose and Silly Putty. You put your clove in it, press down firmly and roll it back and forth briskly with the palm of your hand until you hear the peel snap (the instructions refer to a “crinkle sound”). When you upend the tube, presto--out falls the clove, perfectly intact but naked as a jaybird. Once you get the hang of it, it works even on those maddening little tiny cloves.

Inventor Ben Omessi designed it for people with disabilities and only thought of marketing it generally when he noticed that physical therapists wanted their own E-Z-Rols. Currently available at the Christopher Ranch Garlic Store in the Glendale Galleria.

More Garlic News

Three businessmen in garlic-raising Gilroy, Calif., have announced plans for a $500-million country music complex to be called Garlic Country USA.

Still More Garlic News

Researcher Eric Block of the State University of New York, Albany, points out one problem with odorless garlic pills--nutritionally valuable selenium compounds occur in close association with the sulfur compounds that give garlic that loud smell.

Too Many ‘Roos News

When Australian ranchers put out watering tanks for their cattle and sheep, they inadvertently caused a population explosion of kangaroos who would otherwise not have survived droughts. The excess ‘roos have been poaching on farms, breaking down fences and obstructing roads in Australia, so about 3 million kangaroos a year (out of 31 million in the country) are being legally culled by “‘roo shooters.” The skins are used for kangaroo rugs and leather goods, and the meat is increasingly being featured in Australian restaurants and promoted as “the Australian health meat” to foreign markets such as Japan.

The Whole World’s Deli

The CMC Company has a mail-order catalogue of ethnic ingredients. Many of them are actually no problem to get if you live near ethnic markets, but others are truly hard to find, like black salt (used in the Indian snacks called chats ), smoked morita peppers, genuine machaca (dried shredded beef) for enchiladas, the macadamia-like kemiri nut (also known as candlenut, essential for Indonesian cooking but slightly toxic until cooked--don’t eat them raw). And even, for the gourmet who has everything, a four-quart solid-copper polenta pot at $125. Write the CMC Company, P.O. Box 322, Avalon, N.J. 08202, or call (800) CMC-2780; fax (609) 861-0043.

The Quick Chill

Rapid Ice can chill a bottle of wine to cellar temperature (40 degrees) in five minutes. It works so fast because the foil-coated sleeve contains a gel that stays soft even at freezing temperatures, so it can mold itself air-tight to the bottle and absorb heat quickly. When you’re done, store it in the freezer, where it folds flat and will be ready to use again in six hours. A smaller version, Rapid Ice Mini, will chill beer or anything in a 12-ounce can or bottle in three minutes. Available at Williams Sonoma, Brookstone and many houseware and department stores.

Fish Down, Pigs Up

America’s fish consumption rose in the early ‘80s but has dipped very slightly in the past 10 years, reports the National Live Stock & Meat Board; meanwhile, the decline in beef consumption is slowing and pork-eating has actually risen since 1990. Comments Robert Merritt, CEO of the Florida-based Outback Steakhouse chain: “We’re not in the health food business. . . . We don’t think people want to hear ‘no’ nowadays.”