Roasted garlic lends depth of flavor to a simple soup

Does everyone know about the glorious versatility of roasted garlic? I hope so. But just in case you don’t, the next time you’ve got your oven going for at least the better part of an hour, roast some and you’ll see. Just take a whole head of garlic, cut it in half horizontally, so you get through all the cloves, drizzle each half with olive oil, wrap each in foil, and roast for 45 minutes or so. Let it cool slightly, and then squeeze out the cloves.

Slather some on toast while it’s still warm, sprinkle with salt, and devour. Save the rest to whisk into vinaigrette, puree into hummus or other bean dips, add to marinades, stews or soups. There are as many uses as there are cooks.

Roasted garlic adds depth of flavor to the most basic recipes. Take a simple cauliflower soup like the one I spied in “Little Bird Goodness” by Megan May (Penguin Books, 2017). You sim- mer cauliflower florets in vegetable broth until they’re tender, then blend the affair with cashews (for plantbased creaminess) and, yes, a whole head’s worth of roasted garlic. What would have surely been pale, bland and boring turns into something with an almost mys- terious backdrop of nutty sweetness.

As we head into soup sea- son, it’s a trick to remem- ber. If you’re like me, you’ll appreciate the idea so much that you’ll want to make one important amendment to the advice I gave at the top of this column. Don’t roast a whole head of garlic. Roast two, at least.