How to store Aglione della Valdichiana

The aglione arrives and the question is always the same: where do I put it? The short answer is somewhere cool, dry and airy, in the dark. The long answer explains why, and above all which places are wrong.

The whole bulb

A healthy bulb with its outer skin intact keeps for months if three conditions are met.

Dry. Damp is enemy number one: it is what rots the base of the bulb or makes it sprout early.

Airy. No plastic bags, no sealed containers. A wooden crate, a net, a hanging basket: the air has to move through. In the countryside bulbs are plaited and hung for exactly this reason.

Dark and cool. Direct light and heat bring the sprout forward. The ideal temperature is around 15-18 degrees: a larder, a dry cellar, a storeroom.

The mistakes that cost you a bulb

The fridge. The commonest error. The damp cold of a fridge does not preserve aglione: it pushes it to sprout and softens the cloves. The fridge is only right for a bulb already opened, and only for a few days.

The plastic bag. It traps the moisture the bulb gives off and hands it back. Within a week you can see the mould.

Next to the hob. Convenient to have it at hand, but the constant heat of a cooktop is exactly what shortens a bulb's life.

Once the bulb is open

Take out a clove or two and the bulb will not close again. The remaining cloves should be used within a week or ten days, wrapped in a cotton cloth, not in cling film.

If some are left over and you would rather not throw them away, the simplest thing is to cook them. Whole cloves, extra virgin olive oil, the lowest possible heat for forty minutes: they turn into a cream that keeps in the fridge for a few days and solves a plate of pasta in two minutes.

Making the season last

Aglione is a seasonal product, and seasons end. The two traditional ways to carry it forward are drying — in thin slices, until they snap — and under oil, which is what has always been done with the shoots.

We work the aglione as soon as it is picked. The Aglione Cream and the Shoots under oil exist for precisely this reason: to have in February what the field gives in July.

And if you would rather have the bulb itself, Aglione della Valdichiana arrives dry and ready to store.