In the early Spring when fresh green garlic is in season, I use it a lot. As a precaution, I try to serve it to everyone around me, also. Here's how I cook the garlic as a vegetable, starting with about three pounds or a bit more.

Wash and trim it and, without trying to get every last drop, dry it off with a towel. Chop it crosswise into 1 cm. or 3/8ths in. pieces, a few stalks at a time, and arrange it on a big towel, preserving the distinction among solid white stems, solid green stems, and leaves.

Over a medium-high flame, melt in a very heavy aluminum 10" pot three tablespoons or a bit less of that wonderful Springhill Jersey butter that you bought from the nice Russkie women at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. When the sizzling has nearly completely subsided, start tossing in handfuls, beginning with the white stem pieces, at a rate sufficiently slow to prevent the temperature from dropping very much. Continue throwing in handfuls, stirring after each addition, until the last of the leaves are in.

Immediately turn the flame to very low, splash in a quarter cup of water, give it a quick stir, and tightly cover the pot. You do not want to add too much water; we are not going for boiled garlic here but rather garlic re-hydrated and steam-tenderized after the sautéeing. A quarter cup of water (or better yet, a light stock) should just disappear instantaneously into all that lightly-sautéed garlic. After five minutes or so, uncover the pot, stir well, and sample a green leaf.

The leaves are the critical part because they're tough if you don't cook them enough to soften them and they're tough if you dry them out by cooking them too long. Also, they will cook a bit more from the heat of the pot after you have taken them off the fire. So you have to keep sampling until they are almost done. Of course, if you take the cover off too much, you'll need to splash a bit more liquid in. Even so, the dish is more forgiving than I'm making it sound.

So get yourself out there to wherever you have to go and buy some fresh garlic this season. You owe it to yourself...not to mention whoever you're sharing it with. And oh, it looks so much like green onions that I've had to give up and ask. Well, it's not quite as bad as asking for directions.