For nigh on a year and a half, fermented black garlic has been the darling of the day. Something about its stygian black-metal hue, its sweet, sticky, licoricelike muskiness, and its inconsistently accounted-for origins have caught the fancy of plenty of food writers, who sing of its high antioxidant levels, its surprisingly incongruous flavor, and the mitigated afterbreath it leaves behind (yet not word one on its effectiveness against the undead). Matthias Merges of Trotter’s was an early proponent, and with so many respected fine-dining chefs incorporating it into dishes, it has taken on an added air of exclusivity.