Professional China garlic company supplying fresh and dehydrated garlic products.

The girls at Fishnet Seafood are always smiling when I walk through their door. They're usually slinging fresh fish into big pots of boiling grease and bantering back and forth about some morsel of local gossip. And on any given day there's a steady supply of fresh whiting and croaker crackling with a crispy dredged batter. These offerings alone would make it worthy of a stop next time you happen by the Savannah Highway outpost, but the fried crabs ― and we mean whole fried hard crabs ― are a revelation to behold.

Most people I query have never heard of frying up hard crabs, but there's a smattering of places about town that do just that. It's a simple dish, but one honed with a deep local tradition, including fishmongers who do double duty as take-out kitchen cooks next to large baskets of live blue crabs. They are as delicious as they are hard to find. Fried crabs, as done in the Lowcountry, are not overly complicated. All you really need is hot grease, live crabs, and some seasoned flour to dredge them in. They've likely been in the local vernacular for some time. Basic riffs on the idea surround how the crab is cleaned before frying and whether you steam them ahead of time. The best are cleaned raw, dredged in flour, deep fried until golden and crispy, and served hot with a spicy garlic butter drizzled all over. Think fried shrimp and Alaskan crab legs all wrapped up in a garlicky, melted-butter heart attack.

Around Charleston, the dish seems to attract a decidedly African-American crowd, and North Charleston makes a strong case as an epicenter of fried crab cookery. There, only a few miles apart, you'll find Marvin's Seafood and Charlie Brown Seafood duking it out for the heavyweight title. Hop through the door of Marvin's on a busy Friday afternoon, and the folks will be 10-deep at the counter, jostling to get to the cash register that guards the grease and a thousand Styrofoam trays, stacked and ready for the hot, sizzling crustaceans. A full crab will set you back only $1.99.

Options are few, but secrets are closely guarded, mostly those associated with the sauces and their fiery heat. As one customer once told me, "My wife always cooks them at home, but she can't never get the spice right." And it's the spice that seems to divide devotees between Marvin's and Charlie Brown. All garlic butters are not created equally.

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When it's not being used to ward off vampires not that today's female audiences want to ward them off garlic serves as a multifunctional ingredient, ideal for use in foods ranging from pasta, pizza and potatoes to savory crackers, chips and dips.Garlic also can be enjoyed fresh or raw a state in which it is said to have additional nutritional and health benefits. The medicinal use of garlic dates back thousands of years and has long been a staple of the Mediterranean diet.

There is some evidence that garlic may help prevent heart disease, slow down atherosclerosis hardening of the arteries and lower blood pressure slightly, as well as strengthen the immune system when taken as a supplement, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Despite its pungent odor and sharp bite, garlic has continued to garner fans over time, making it a welcome element in any number of prepared foods.

People are using more fresh garlic than ever before, says John Duffus, vice president of sales for Bakersfield, Calif. This can be attributed to a number of trends, starting with the popularity of round-the-clock food programming like the Food Network, which exposes consumers to a lot of new cuisines. There is also a growing interest in ethnic foods that has risen out of changing U.S. demographics and from consumers who want to try new cuisines." In addition, garlic's health benefits appeal to those who want flavorful foods without excess calories, he notes.

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Green garlic arrived in the markets earlier than usual this year, apparently thanks to the plentiful rainfall. The garlic bulb is slender, pinkish-white in color, and its stalks are long and pale green. Green garlic, or baby garlic, is pulled from the damp soil before it matures and separates into cloves. Its taste is more delicate than that of mature garlic, and its fragrance is intoxicating.

When fresh garlic shows up in the markets I am reminded of goti - that was the name of a shakshuka dish I ate years ago in a little village in eastern Turkey. It was a thick shakshuka of sweet tomatoes, seasoned generously with green garlic. Browsing through Levantine culinary books, I came across an ancient recipe by the same name, probably from the days of the Ottoman Empire. The original shakshuka was a dish of vegetables seasoned with fresh garlic, goat meat and hard-boiled eggs. Over the years the meat gave way to tomatoes and peppers. Possibly because of its beauty, a good shakshuka causes diners to purr with pleasure. Or perhaps the secret of its charm lies in wiping up the thick sauce with challah, pita or a good baguette.

Below are two shakshuka recipes that are suitable for a proper breakfast, Shabbat brunch, or a light and nourishing family supper. But, before getting down to it, there are a few rules that should be followed:

Vegetables: Use ripe tomatoes that are rich in lycopene (the pigment that gives tomatoes their color - look for ones that are deep red ), which taste sweet even when eaten raw. If it's not prime tomato season, it is preferable to use high-quality canned tomatoes from Italy. A good tomato sauce will be seasoned with aromatic olive oil, green garlic and fresh spices. The name of the game is minimalism - no onions, peppers, celery or carrots. Red peppers may be added to shakshuka alongside the eggs, but not as part of the sauce. If green garlic season is over, substitute regular garlic at a ratio of half a clove per stalk of fresh garlic.

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Alexander, it pains me to admit, is a pricker. She says to ''prick most sausages with a fine skewer and … parboil in 1cm of water for 5 minutes before grilling or frying'' to stop them bursting.

I make my own sausages using natural skins, which are stronger than man-made skins. I cook them slowly on a low heat or over dying charcoal. I have never had a sausage burst and love the flavour imparted by the fat. My children, however, comment on my expanding belly.

THIS is one of the first vegetables I grew with my father. I remember being aged four and the sweet corn towering above me. I stood among the stalks, listening to the leaves rustling against each other. As the summer days grew shorter, we would check the corn to see if it was ready. First we'd watch the silk (the blonde threads) that was emerging from the ends of the cobs.

When these were dry and brown, it was a good sign they were ready. Dad would also make us feel the thin end of the cob to make sure the kernels inside were plump. When ready, we'd pull off the dried silk, strip the leaves down but not pull them off, slather the cobs in butter, salt and pepper, pull all the leaves back up and tie them with a piece of rolled husk or leaf. We'd barbecue them over coals until the kernels were steamed soft and then serve them all hot and buttery.

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Not long ago I wrote about a family restaurant's not-just-Friday fish fry far from the city center. Of course, there's likely a fish fry to be had most nights somewhere, but one place in the heart of town that dishes one up daily is Motor, the comfort food-focused restaurant at the Harley-Davidson Museum.Motor, 400 W. Canal Street, in the Menomonee Valley, dishes up its fish fry every day, and all day Fridays it's all you can eat, for $12.95.

I took the kids over recently to try it out and had a great experience. The staff was friendly and doted on the kids and the fish fry even though it was a Monday and, thus, not an endless flow of food was a meal fit for a king.There was a giant, tender piece of breaded cod laying atop a giant bed of french fries, with coleslaw, cornbread and tartar sauce.According to Rob Levin, director of operations for Levy Restaurants, which runs Motor, the fish fry has always been a popular item and has almost never changed.

"We've been open since 2008 and we've done it since then. We started just recently doing on Friday, all you can eat all day. That part is new," he says.

"The options are the same, the fish is the same. We have good history with it. Everything we do is in-house, is fresh. We bread it to order. We don't have fish that's sitting up there, we don't buy out anything. We've never really been instigated by unpleasant reviews (to change anything)."

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WITH so many good cafes in the city, it's not easy to make a mark. But in just six weeks, Bowen Holden has created a stir with a small, simple standing room-only place. Patricia is a laneway cafe with no sign, no seats, a few pastries and exceptional coffee sourced from several of Melbourne's best roasters.

Holden graduated from the Seven Seeds school of coffee after a four-year stint at Brother Baba Budan. He had dreamt of opening his own place and was determined to come up with an original concept. ''I wanted to rethink everything but I didn't want to be different just for the sake of it,'' he says.

Across the laneway from the NAB complex near Earl Canteen and Paco's Tacos, the cafe has a European retro feel with a third-wave coffee twist. Most opt for takeaways or there's a counter at the back with newspapers pinned on reading boards and a few window sills for those who want their brew in-house.

IN A brave move, Holden has made the cafe a cappuccino-free zone. He wants to make good coffee by simplifying the choice, which as the sign says is black, white or filter. He says there's little difference between most milk coffees apart from the froth so a Patricia white is basically a flat white served in a cute handmade cup. Despite this, the mood is friendly, not pretentious; skinny and soy orders are welcome; and black coffees can be short or long (phew). A regular white coffee brewed from Seven Seeds seasonal blend is a well-balanced, medium-bodied drink with natural cocoa finish that stands up well through the milk. Pour-over filter coffee is proving surprisingly popular, Holden says.

But he has a fresh take on filter, offering a smaller serve than usual - a petite 140 millilitres at a very reasonably priced $3.50, which encourages people to experiment.

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Good ideas sometimes get a second chance. That could be the case with Dragon Fire, a device its backers say could dramatically cut restaurants' utility bills.The idea may be getting a second chance now, thanks to changes in industry standards and a renewed interest in saving energy.

Chef Bob Prasser invented the Dragon Fire while working at a Vail restaurant in the early 1990s. He'd seen a presentation for a cooktop ventilator hood that could be cleaned with a built-in water bath. Prasser thought the device was a good idea, sort of. But Prasser thought about water in a vent hood, then thought about all the heat that goes into the air through those hoods, and the idea for Dragon Fire was born.

Using the grease filter part of the hood, Prasser ran water through plumbing that sort of resembled an automotive radiator, right down to the aluminum fins on the outside. Cold water going through the filter was heated to 120 degrees or more by the time it came out the other side, while the cool water going into the filter lowered the temperature of the airborne grease, thus making it easier to capture.Not long after Prasser had hammered out his prototype, friend Jocko Galvin came on board as an investor and backer.

The then-new company sold a handful of systems to local restaurants, but didn't get much further. The aluminum fins on the first models clogged easily, and the fins were easy to break during cleaning.

Ultimately, the industry just wasn't interested, Galvin said. While the idea lay dormant for more than a decade, Prasser and Galvin always kept control of the idea. Galvin stayed in the valley, but Prasser moved from the Vail Valley to Wisconsin.

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