GARLICKY GOODNESS
For perfect flavor, use whole cloves in these recipes.
Not too long ago, few Americans ate garlic. It had too strong a taste; it was too sharp. It made your breath smell bad. There is a reason that it was associated with keeping away vampires — the flavor and aroma were too intense, even for them.
If consumed at all, garlic would only be eaten in Italian food, and only in small amounts. That was how we thought at least through the 1960s. But now, we love the stuff. On average, Americans now eat more than 2 pounds of garlic each year, according to the Garlic Seed Foundation.
So I thought I would make several dishes that make the most out of garlic. I wanted the garlic flavor to be at the front and center of each dish, but I did not want it to be too strong, too pungent. I wanted the garlickiness to be redolent, but relatively mild. Nothing offensive here. Just garlic that is smooth and mellow. There are a couple of ways to achieve this result, both of which I used in all of my recipes. The first is to leave the cloves whole. Most people mince or chop their garlic, exposing more surface area. That makes the flavor more acute and concentrated.
In Italy, where they know something about garlic, the cloves are left whole so that the flavor is noticeable but not overpowering.
The other trick is to cook it at a relatively low temperature for a relatively long time. That way, the flavors get a chance to ripen and mature until the garlic is almost sweet.
Perhaps the purest example of these concepts is oven-roasted garlic. I first had this at a wonderful French restaurant in Chicago, Bistro 110, in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It made such an impression on me that they happily provided the recipe, printed nicely on an index card.
An hourlong braise in the oven renders an entire head’s worth of cloves impossibly soft and spreadable. Cooked to the point where its natural sugars have caramelized, the garlic is at its best simply smeared on a piece of baguette. If the baguette has been buttered, well, so much the better.
Oven-roasted garlic plays an essential role in the next food I made, too: garlic vodka. All you do is roast a head of garlic in the oven and then drop it in a jar with vodka. All it takes is 12 to 24 hours, for a subtle to a progressively stronger flavor.
I like garlic and I like vodka, but I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of garlic vodka — and this is coming from someone who thinks horseradish vodka is the king of alcoholic drinks. But if you, too, like garlic and vodka, you might want to give it a try.
It would make a wonderful bloody mary. And think of how great it would be in pasta with vodka sauce.
If you are still wary of using a lot of garlic in a dish, then you have probably forgotten about chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. It was all the rage in the 1970s and ’80s.
It is indeed chicken cooked with 40 actual cloves of garlic, and it is sublime. Far from being acrid, as you would expect, the chicken is suffused with a warm, garlicky glow. But not too garlicky. The garlic does not even compete with the chicken; it only serves to enhance it.
If you have never had chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, I cannot recommend it enough. It may become your favorite way of preparing chicken.
And if the thought of 40 cloves scares you, then feel free to use 38 cloves. Just tell everyone it was 40.
No such deception is needed with the garlic bread I made. I used my Italian wife’s recipe. Her garlic bread begins with an equal combination of butter and olive oil, the way her mother made it. Into the mixture goes a couple of whole cloves of garlic — never minced or crushed in a garlic press, she warns. For this garlic bread, the subtlety of the garlic is key.
She does not touch her garlic beyond peeling it to make hers, but I made mine just a little stronger by crushing my cloves before adding them to the butter and olive oil. Either way is fine, but frankly I think I might like her slightly milder version better.
Subtlety was never on my mind before when I made stir-fried spinach with garlic, which I first had 25 years ago at the City Lights of China restaurant in Washington, D.C. I recall it being the sort of dish that left you smelling like garlic four days after you ate it, and I gleefully made it that same way in my own kitchen ever since.
But that’s not the effect I was going for this time. Instead of essentially making the spinach a backdrop for the garlic, this time I left the cloves whole and allowed the garlic to flavor the spinach. I like the old, garlicky way just fine, but I like this more understated dish better.
For an unexpected dish, I made fresh thyme and garlic soup. It was particularly easy to make, the sort of soup that you could easily whip up on a weeknight and serve either as a first course or as an entrée, if paired with something else such as cheese and bread. It is too thin to stand alone as an entrée.
It is unexpectedly good, because it is so easy to make. All you do is simmer garlic cloves in chicken (or vegetable) stock and sprigs of fresh thyme. When the garlic is soft, you remove the thyme and puree the garlic and stock. A healthy splash of lemon juice gives it just the right acidic counterpoint. A slice of stale — or toasted — bread on the bottom of the dish provides a foundation on which the other flavors are built.
Finally, I made a shrimp and garlic sauce — not the familiar Chinese dish but a version that would be more at home in Italy or Provence.
The dish comes together quickly, as it usually does when shrimp is involved, and it is unusually satisfying. It isn’t just the shrimp and it isn’t even the garlic. The way the shrimp and garlic come together with lemon juice, dry sherry and olive oil is quite a marvel. It is the stuff that culinary dreams are made of.