Monday, January 24, 2011
I love garlic. That bodacious bulb of the Lilly family is so unctuously wonderful on the palate that when prepared and applied properly it cannot be overused. If you happen to have been born with the genetic defect to be predisposed to dislike garlic, I truly, truly pity. You are missing out on an extremely wonderful gastronomic experience, missing out on several health benefits and you suffer from multiple unnecessary mosquito and spider bites we garlic lovers just don't suffer from.
I am not a lover of raw garlic, but if you are one of those fire eaters from the berry family, also known as chili peppers, try eating raw garlic with you hot peppers and you will discover a new layer of flavor and heat that will greatly enhance your hot pepper dining experience.
For those of you who have only experienced roasted garlic at a restaurant or as part of a pasta sauce or mash potatoes when dining out, you really haven't yet enjoyed the palate pleasing delight of real roasted garlic. I have watched people who only enjoyed a mild casual acquaintance with garlic consume fully roasted garlic by the pound over toasted French bread and good conversation.
My wife was not much of a garlic eater when we first started dating, but now my beloved considers it to be as powerful an aphrodisiac as anything else possibly could be. If you want to spice up the romance in your marriage, start having special meals together where you consume dishes composed of bold flavors. It will lead to bold conversations and bold behaviors and before you know it you be acting like young lovers again, willing to explore new things together.
Garlic only causes bad breath and unpleasant other body smells if only one of you eats it. My wife and I will regularly indulge in meals containing loads of garlic and some of the dishes and appetizers may feature garlic as the theme ingredient. The rule of thumb at those meals are that both must consume garlic until it rises from our pores. This way neither one of us smells bad breath from the other one because our breath smells exactly the same as each other's does. There is no need to turn away from the other when you try to cuddle in the middle of the night because of a garlicky body odor. You would never notice a change in odor when the same perfume is wafting up to your nose from your body too.
Perfect Roasted Garlic
Roasted garlic is not just heated until it is softened, it is not braised in chicken stock, and if it is done correctly those little terra-cotta garlic roasters that hold one bulb will never satisfy. With a lot of practice you can learn to effectively roast peeled cloves, but the best results come from roast garlic in the bulb. When you roast it in the bulb it gets a chance to caramelize all the way through and takes on a nutty, buttery, almost sweet flavor.
Most people cut the stem ends off of the bulb of garlic. This works best if you want to squeeze out the whole bulb of roasted garlic at once. If I am roasting garlic to eat on toasted bread, I will leave the clove in tact and just remove the first couple of layers of skin surrounding the bulb so it will be easier to separate the cloves after they are roasted, then just pop them individually on slices of toasted bread to eat them. It gives the dining experience a little more of a social atmosphere and keeps the garlic from disappearing so fast.
If you have never had properly roasted garlic you will be surprised how easy it will be to just keep eating and eating it. My two sisters-in-law, one Christmas, didn't think they would really like it. They had both had it made the wrong way before and didn't really care if they ever tried it again, but my wife, their sister, convinced to give it a second chance. Well, three hours after dinner was over and every thing had been put away, the three girls were still at the table talking and eating roasted garlic and French bread. It can be that intoxicating, so buy the big three pound bag and roast the whole thing for a dinner party or family gathering.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.
Peel off one or two layers of skin on your garlic bulbs but leave the connected at the root end and don't peel the individual cloves.
Arrange the bulbs in a single layer in a deep roasting pan.
Drizzle liberally with extra virgin olive oil.
Cover roasting pan with foil and seal the edges.
Roast for one hour.
You should be able to test for fineness by poking a clove with a toothpick. If the toothpick easily passes through the clove and comes out messy, then it is done.
Here's another funny story about roasted garlic, but to fully appreciate this you must understand that my mother-in-law hates garlic and my father-in-law loved it but rarely got to eat it.
One point early in our marriage my wife and I stayed with her parents for a few months while we were looking for a house. I had cooked dinner one night and had roasted about five pounds of garlic and squeezed it all out into a bowl and toasted some bread. Right after we prayed over the meal my tater-in-law pick up the bowl of mashed roasted garlic and scooped up a large mashed potato portion. I quickly spoke up, "Dad, you do know that is garlic and no potatoes?" To which he replied, "Yes." I thought about for a minute, while my mother-in-law looked at me like she was going to kill me, and decided that I easily eat that much on bread all the time and spooned up the same portion on my plate too and it was great. Who needs garlic mash potatoes that have a slight hint of garlic to them when you can just have mashed garlic?
