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Hello and welcome to The Food Chain from the BBC World Service.
I'm Romela Dasgupta.
On today's programme we're talking myths.
There's an Armenian vampire that goes for people's feet,
so campers in Armenia will rub garlic on their feet.
Medicines.
But it essentially gives some of its unique properties like antimicrobial,
antiviral and some of those immunity properties, if you like.
and marvellous flavours.
We use it a lot, and so from stocks to soups and in vegetable dishes,
meat dishes, there is very certain a clove of garlic in somewhere.
It's unimaginable not using garlic.
That's right, garlic.
We'll go back thousands of years to ancient cultures,
journey into your gut to find out what it does,
and hear why one religion thinks that eating garlic can have karmic consequences.
That's all coming up in today's programme.
So now we are making ready for a mushroom risotto and we're going to put some ground mushrooms and garlic and then we're going to make a vegetable stock.
Let's start with some wonderful aromas of sizzling garlic.