The Pantry / Garlic Chives
Garlic Chives
Allium tuberosum · Chinese chives · gau choy · jiucai · nira · buchu
The nearest thing to gandana on a shop shelf.
What it is
Garlic chives are a clumping allium with flat, solid leaves, broader than ordinary chives, and a clear taste of garlic that softens with cooking. There is no white bulb end to speak of: the whole leaf is used, and the flowering stems, sold separately with a closed bud at the tip, are sweeter still.
Where it comes from
The plant is native to China and grown across East and Southeast Asia, where it is one of the everyday greens. It entered Afghan kitchens abroad by convenience: in London or Washington it is the easiest way to get close to gandana.
What it's called
Garlic chives or Chinese chives (English) · gau choy (Cantonese) · jiucai (Mandarin) · nira (Japanese) · buchu (Korean). Ordinary chives, Allium schoenoprasum, are hollow and much milder, and will not stand in.
In the kitchen
In the Silk Road Table they do the job of gandana. Chopped fine and fried in oil with coriander, they go into qorma-e-sabzi with the spinach. Cooked down with leek and onion, they make the filling for bolani, and mixed with spring onion they come close in aushak. Cook them through: half-cooked, they stay stringy and taste raw.
What we know about the claims
A green allium, with vitamin K, vitamin A and the sulphur compounds that give it its garlic taste. Nothing more is claimed for it here.
Choosing and buying
Chinese supermarkets sell them in bunches all year: Wing Yip and See Woo in the UK, H Mart and any Asian grocer in the US. Look for flat, dark green, unbroken leaves with no yellow at the tips, and use them within two or three days. Garden centres sell the plant, which is perennial and hardy in a British garden.