BBC: Do you like garlic?

It smells delicious sizzling in oil and it's great for keeping vampires away, but don't eat it on a first date! I'm talking, of course, about garlic, Neil, do you like garlic?

Oh, yes, I love garlic. I had a very garlicky meal last night. 

Mmm, I know- I can smell it from here! Here is Jason Chan, an Australian chef who specializes in Asian cuisine, and Poul Erik Jenson, a Danish chef living in France, tallking about their love of garlic to BBC World Service programme, The Food Chain:

I love garlic because it's a versatile ingredient that can be used for cooking and offers various health benefits. 

We use it a lot and so from stocks to soups- and in vegetable dishes, meat dishes- there's very certain a clove of garlic in somewhere. Yeah, it's unimaginable not using garlic. 

Jason loves garlic because it's versatile, meaning it can be used in many different ways. And Poul thinks cooking without garlic is unimaginable, meaning it's difficult to imagine because it would be so bad. 

Love garlic or hate it, in this episode we'll be finding out more about this versatile, strong-smelling food. And, as usual, we'll be learning some useful new words and phrases as well. 

And remember- you can find all the vocabulary from this episode on our website, bbcleraningenglish.com. Now, Beth, I have a question for you. It's a little-known fact that of the 600 varieties of garlic, many grew only in the former Soviet Union and were unavailable in the West until the fall of communism in the 1900s. So, which of the following variesties of garlic grew in the former USSR? Is it:

a) rocamblole    b) fire    or   c) riesig?

Oh, I have no idea. I'm going to guess fire. 

OK, we'll find out if you're right at the end of the programme. Garlic is much more than just a cooking ingredient. For centuries, garlic was an important food throughout ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, as well as India and China. It was the Roman Empire that brought garlic to European countries like France. And everywhere garlic grew, it was praised for its heatlth-giving powers. 

Here, BBC presenter Rumella Dasgupta asks author and garlic expert Robin Cherry about garlic's medicinal uses, on BBC World Service's The Food Chain:

And what kind of illnesses or conditions would they have treated, for instance?

Everything from cancer, scurvy, the plague, respiratory ailments...it was used as an aphrodisiac. 

Garlic was used to treat respiratory ailments. An ailment is another word for an illness or minor health problem, so a respiratory ailment is an illness of the lungs. 

In Ancient Greece, garlic was alos used as an aphrodisiac- a food or drink believed to increase sexual desire. But interestingly, this was the same reason why some cultures avoided eating garlic altogether, including a religious group from India called Jains. 

Yes, Jainism is an ancient Indian religion, like Hinduism and Buddhism, based on the idea of 'ahimsa', or non-violence. But unlike amany Hindus and Buddhists, Jains' definition of non-violence includes plants and vegetables. Jains don't eat garlic because uprooting the plant kills both it and the soild ecosystem it grows in.