31 days of garlic

Oh yum. There is NO such thing as too much garlic. Ed made an egg fried rice from leftovers for lunch today out of this book http://susanjanewhite.com/the-extra-virgin-kitchen/ and the garlic bit was a couple of cloves squeezed and basically stirred through it just before you take the pan off the heat – she’s big on semi-cooked garlic for the health benefits, apparently. Amazingly tasty. And just as well it’s not an office day, too.

I’ve got “The Complete Garlic Lover’s Cookbook”, from the Gilroy festival. And I agree: For a garlic themed dish, there’s no such thing as too much garlic.

Especially if you use it whole, instead of crushing or dicing it. Entirely different flavor whole.

I’m planning to make puttanesca sauce today for pasta, and I will probably use an entire head of garlic.

One of our favorites is shrimp in olive oil, red pepper flakes and garlic, tossed with fettucine and dusted with parmesan cheese.

(For 2)
6-8 large shrimp (more if you have big appetites)
3-4 medium garlic cloves, minced
2-3 TBS extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp (or to taste) hot red pepper flakes
4 oz (or more, to your taste) dried fettucine

Start the pasta. It should be done about the same time as the shrimp.

Clean, shell, and devein the shrimp.
Heat olive oil in a 10-12 inch skillet.
Add the shrimp, garlic, and red pepper flakes.
Should take 4-6 minutes total to cook the shrimp.
Drain pasta, add to skillet, and toss to coat.

Serve, and dust with parmesan at the table. Goes nicely with a mixed greens salad.

We do this maybe once a month.

I think next week I might make 40 clove garlic turkey; We just broke down a whole turkey, and my wife is marinating one of the breasts in teriyaki with rosemary, to grill for dinner. (In our fireplace!) But the leg quarters would be nice cooked with garlic in a week or two.

A Thai-ish recipe of my own. You want quick, you got quick:

Snowy Fish with Basil and Chili

Ingredients:

1 lb. firm-fleshed white fish filets (cod, mahi-mahi, huachinango, etc.) cut into 1/2 inch thick strips
1 13.5 ounce can of Thai coconut milk
1 Tbs. Nuoc Mam (Vietnamese or Thai fish sauce)
2 Tbs. Freshly-squeezed lime juice
6-8 garlic cloves, minced
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger root, minced
1/2-1 habañero or 2-3 Thai bird chilis (red or orange only) finely chopped (with seeds)
2 cups packed basil leaves, cut into a chiffonade
3 Tbs. peanut oil

Preparation:

Heat the oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, ginger and chili. Cook until the garlic and ginger soften and become fragrant. Add the coconut milk and fish sauce, stir to mix, and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat to medium, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the coconut milk is reduced to the consistency of condensed milk, or gravy. Add the fish, and continue simmering until the fish is just cooked through. Remove from heat, and stir in lime juice and basil. (Here, recipes usually say season to taste. Tastes differ, but in this case, I do think you’ll find that there’s plenty of salt in the fish sauce, and pepper isn’t really needed. If you think otherwise, I’d suggest being a bit tentative with the salt at first, and trying white pepper rather than black.)

Serve immediately over rice. (I prefer basmati, although it’s hardly in the Thai-ish spirit.)

If you want Romanian: ceafa la gratar. Obviously, in Romania one needs plenty of garlic.

For simple roast chicken, my sister in law mashes garlic with roasted butter and “bastes” the chicken with it every 15-20 minutes. (I can’t remember whether it goes on before the chicken goes in, or whether that’s just salt and pepper and maybe olive oil.)

I also like to mix together some chopped garlic with some lemon juice and olive oil when I roast cauliflower. Or saute asparagus with a bunch of garlic.

(Simple recipes are pretty much all you get from me. I also rely heavily on the pre-minced garlic that comes in jars.)

Stir-fry anything stir-fryable with chilli, garlic, basil (+lemongrass if you can get it). Serve with lime.

And don’t forget that garlic wards off vampires. We go through about 1-2 heads of garlic a week, and have never had a vampire problem.

My former housemate came back on Election Day here in Victoria to harvest the 40 odd garlic plants she had planted earlier in the year, so at the moment there’s a bunch plaited and drying hanging in the laundry.

For when your oven is fixed Eszter I highly recommend Swooning Imam which she used to make very well – it’s a bit similar to the other eggplant recipes but AFAICT different . We used this recipe :

http://newint.org/blog/books/2010/12/27/recipe-of-the-week-fifteen-swooning-imam/

Otherwise something quick and easy with garlic is hummus – I just throw things together and blend – chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon, olive oil, maybe parsley or cumin…

Just here to make a token protest about attributing a dish with an unmistakably Turkish name (imam bayıldı – the imam fainted/was delighted) to Romanians or Armenians. It’s a bit like reading about the famous Gaelic specialty ‘ToAd indhe Hole’.

(And yes, I’m well aware that there were Armenians in Turkey, and Ottoman Turks in Romania, so the dish can have entered the cuisine of both countries. Still, whatever Alsaciens might tell you, ‘sauerkraut’ is not a traditional French dish either.)

Oh, and garlic butter – mash some garlic into your butter – may be a useful culinary accompaniment to things like grilled chicken or to pasta.

Ok, dinner’s on the grill. And, yes, plenty of garlic in the marinade:

Hi Eszter! We love garlic and use it a lot. Two easy standby’s: 1. garlic/lemon salad: Pull leaves of romaine off stem and tear into the size you like for salad. Mince 2 cloves of garlic (we always buy it already peeled in vacuum sealed bags–in produce refrigerated section usually). Sprinkle on leaves, along with generous amount of shredded parmesan, a few swirls of olive oil, a few hefty shakes of salt (to taste), and juice of 1 small or half large lemon. Toss and enjoy. 2. grilled tomatoes: buy on-the-vine tomatoes, cut in half crosswise, smear olive oil on each open half, salt and pepper and cover (we pile it on!) with minced garlic and broil (about 5-7 minutes, until soft and garlic is browned). We love this with pesto pasta.

Also forgot to mention: the garlic lemon salad is great with store-bought roast chicken next to it! And you might be interested in Marcella Hazan’s recipe for this salad which does not use any measurements but says simply that you need four hands to make it: a generous one for the oil, a stingy one for the lemon, a judicious one for the salt and a patient one for the tossing.

praisegod barebones, I’m pretty sure most of us who make this dish know where it came from originally, but few of us will want to re-fight the battle of Lepanto over a bit of eggplant. Would any self-respecting Neapolitan back in the day have put canned pineapple chunks and Canadian bacon on his pizza? Where were burritos really invented? Was Bernardo O’Higgins Irish?

Please, can this not wait till after I’m done eating?

Would any self-respecting Neapolitan back in the day have put canned pineapple chunks and Canadian bacon on his pizza?

You don’t really have to go back to the day. You could just listen, any day of the week, to some of the Italian-American members of my family (descendants of Neapolitans every one) grumble about onions on pizza, never mind pineapple. (Which even I think is an abomination, though onions are okay.)

But I had better not get started. I miss my grandma’s cooking, that’s all.

Guacamole always benefits from raw garlic. Also garlic stock is a simple and quick way to make a delicious soup base… http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/health/nutrition/01recipehealth.html
Re: 10. The shrimp can be replaced with good canned tuna and some lemon juice, fresh parsley if you have it.

Amaranth

half cup sweet rice
half cup amaranth
3 cups water
salt as you prefer

Boil water and salt, then add grains. Simmer covered for 30-40 minutes, until the water is absorbed or thick. Add butter and minced garlic. Plus whatever spices you like. I like coriander, a little pinch of turmeric and a tiny pinch of clove. (You can add the garlic earlier if you don’t mind it getting cooked.) Add anything else you like — corn, peas, minced meat, cheese, etc.

It comes out glutinous enough that you can treat it as a dip or a spread, or use it to stick other foods together, or just eat it.

On the matter of peeling garlic- usually I just crush the cloves with a knife, but this year I learned another method where you put the cloves into a jar and shake vigorously for some time and somehow this peels them for you

http://youtu.be/zeN-wjQUoZ0

nice recipes to for academics because you can make them in advance and have handy, both keep in the fridge for ~a week:

Hummus (I’d go easy on the garlic): http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/12703-hummus

Babba Ganoush (I’d go heavy on the garlic): http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Eggplant-Dip-Baba-Ghanoush-51121500
or Bittman’s Indian version thereof:
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014830-baingan-bharta which also has some extra tips for roasting the eggplant without an oven

Carrot and lots of garlic soup
http://www.canadianliving.com/food/carrot_and_lots_of_garlic_soup.php

References to garlic to prevent colds remind me of a funny story from Andrew Weil’s Natural Health, Natural Medicine — he mentioned that he recommended to all his patients that they eat two cloves of raw garlic as soon as they felt the symptoms of a cold coming on [my usual method is to mince the garlic and eat it on toast with some kind of unctuous topping to cut the sharpness, like vegan cream cheese]. One patient came in and told Dr. Weil that he had followed his advice, eating the cloves straight, but it had been the hardest thing he had ever done. Upon being asked to elaborate it turned out that he had thought a clove of garlic was a head of garlic!

Spaghetti puttanesca, as Keith Ivey mentioned above, is a quick and easy dish that incorporates garlic. Heat water for the pasta (I am decadent enough to always use fresh pasta, so I cook it when the sauce is done. Obviously for dried you want to start further in advance.) Chop finely some anchovy filets. Heat up olive oil in a sauce pan and add the anchovy, chopped minced or crushed garlic, and red chili flakes, and cook for 30 seconds to a minute, till the oil is nicely flavored. Add tomatoes of whatever sort y0u like, cooking 5 or so minutes for fresh, longer for canned. I actually use sun-dried as well as fresh, usually, adding the sun-dried a minute or two before the fresh to let them get acquainted with the oil. When the tomatoes are about done, add some kalamata olives and parsley. Capers are common in this dish but I hate them so I leave them out. When you serve it grate some parmesan onto the sauce or onto the pasta.

As for cornbread. Jiffy is fine. Martha Washington, too. (Not that purely homemade is a chef’s feat.) Just follow the directions for ONE box. Forget the rosemary! (Well, go with it as an occasional excursion if you like, but, gee. Cornbread is American. If you want to go Italian, there are better ways to use cornmeal.) If there are leftovers, here’s what you do. Slice cornbread wedges in half horizontally (I often labor to decipher horizontal/vertical in recipes: what I mean is, expose the bready surfaces), place on top butter (or, to be old school, pork fat), and broil. Delicious in the morning, delicious in the evening, delicious all through the night.

The caramelised garlic tart by Ottolenghi in his amazing book Plenty is a bit involved, but if you buy the pastry ready made it’s not particularly difficult – and the outcome is impressive & delicious. In my family we have had this as an excellent Christmas vegetarian dish.

http://www.thetastecollective.com.au/recipes/ottolenghi-s-caramelised-garlic-tart

This produces a marinated broccoli that is something like ceviche, as if cooked by the acid. The broccoli turns out to be bright green, softened but still crunchy, and the marinade is great. It’s vegan, but we omnivores like it, too. I like to garnish with sesame seeds. Some red pimento is nice, too, if I have it in the house. Adapted from the New York Times.

Recipe: Garlicky Sesame-Cured Broccoli Salad
Time: 10 minutes, plus 1 hour marinating

2 teaspoons red wine, balsamic or other vinegar or lemon
juice
1 teaspoon salt, more to taste
2 heads broccoli, 1 pound each, cut into bite-size florets
1/2 to 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin, coriander, caraway, mustard or fennel seeds (or whatever)
1 Tablespoon toasted (Asian) sesame oil
Large pinch crushed red pepper flakes
[1 teaspoon or so tahini]

1. In a large bowl, stir together the vinegar and salt. Add broccoli and toss to combine.
2. Place the olive oil and garlic into a small saucepan
3. Heat the olive oil until the first bits of garlic float to the surface. Exactly one minute later, turn off the heat.
4. Stir in sesame oil, spices, [tahini] and pepper flakes.
5. Pour mixture over broccoli and toss well. Let sit for at least 1 hour at room temperature, and up to 48 refrigerated. (Chill it if you want to keep it for more than 2 hours.) Adjust seasonings (it may need more salt and black pepper) and serve.
Yield: 6 to 8 side-dish servings or more as an hors d’oeuvre.

‘We went into the room, taking the [garlic] with us. The Professor’s actions were certainly odd and not to be found in any pharmacopeia that I ever heard of. First he fastened up the windows and latched them securely. Next, taking a handful of the flowers, he rubbed them all over the sashes, as though to ensure that every whiff of air that might get in would be laden with the garlic smell. Then with the wisp he rubbed all over the jamb of the door, above, below, and at each side, and round the fireplace in the same way.
‘It all seemed grotesque to me, and presently I said, “Well, Professor, I know you always have a reason for what you do, but this certainly puzzles me. It is well we have no sceptic here, or he would say that you were working some spell to keep out an evil spirit.”
‘ “Perhaps I am!” He answered quietly as he began to make the wreath which Lucy was to wear round her neck.’–Bram Stoker, Dracula

Spaghetti Aglio E Olio. Saute garlic in olive oil, short of burning obviously, toss in cooked spaghetti, add fresh ground pepper and your preferred grated cheese.

Red sauce for pasta:

Chop three cloves of garlic and one onion
Saute in butter a few minutes
Add a bunch of tomato sauce, a little red wine and a small amount of tomato paste
Season with salt, basil and oregano (sometimes I saut̩ the basil and oregano with the garlic and onion Рmakes the house smell great)
Add a cup of water if too thick
Simmer for a while on the stove
Serve over pasta

If you eat bread, make garlic bread. Slice a baguette in half lengthwise. Saute garlic in butter and brush onto the bread. Top with cheese sprinkles (we use parmesan – mozzarella works too.) Toast in the oven until the cheese is toasty brown.

And if you stir fry anything, it’s always better when garlic is added….

@58 Or leave out the hot pepper, replace the olives with tuna, and you have tonnato sauce, though I don’t know whether it could take more than a few cloves of garlic.

Obviously, any red pasta sauce should have garlic in it. Lots of it. Main Street Muses’ recipe looks solid. The one I use involves more veggies (in addition to the onion & garlic, I also saute chopped carrots and bell pepper), but otherwise it’s basically the same.

When I make either Piccata or Scampi sauce, I use garlic. If you find a recipe that doesn’t include garlic, just add some. Damn, now I want some, and I’m trying to undo the damage I did over the holidays.

My usual chilli recipe uses a few cloves of garlic, too. You may or may not taste it in such a dish, what with all the other ingredients, but given your goal here that should be fine. So make up some chilli and make sure to include some garlic even if the recipe doesn’t call for it.

Broccoli rabe with garlic: chop or slice as much garlic as you want, then chop or slice some more. Cut about 1/4-1/3 of the stems off a bunch of broccoli rabe, dump in boiling water for a couple of minutes (you can skip this step and still have an acceptable dish, but most people would find the result a bit too crunchy). Saute the garlic in olive oil, add a pinch or so of red pepper flakes (sausage or pancetta or guanciale is optional and should be added here if using). When the garlic is sweated, not burnt, and the meat, if used, is browned, add b/r and a bit of the water, less than half a cup. Some lemon juice at this step is nice as well. Cook until the b/r is tender (somewhat longer if you skipped the blanching). You can do the same thing with regular broccoli, kale, chard, collards, or mustard greens. Cooking timew will vary.
But all that is just an excuse to tell a story. Once when I was recently out on my own, I was preparing a recipe that called for two cloves of minced garlic. Although my mincing technique (in those pre-food-processor days) was pretty good, I had been slogging for 45 minutes when I decided to call my mother. I told her that I was trying to mince two cloves of garlic and after 45 minutes had gotten only half a clove done. She laughed and told me I had misunderstood what a clove was and was actually half-way through a bulb. The cloves were the individual pieces from the bulb. I used all the garlic I had minced anyway — a portent of garlic cookery to come.

That’s all I got. All I know about cooking is cut some stuff up and/or open some cans, dump it all in a pot and heat it up.

Seven Hour Spoon Lamb http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2009/11/recipe-seven-hour-spoon-lamb/30129/

Recipe says use the oven, but it would work great in a slow cooker. Here are the ingredients:

• One 5 to 6 pound leg of lamb tied (have the butcher trim off the shank bone trimmed) OR a boneless lamb shoulder, about 5 pounds, tied into a compact bundle
• 5 heads garlic
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup Cognac or Armagnac
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons wildflower honey
• 1 or 2 strips orange zest
• 2 to 3 sprigs fresh thyme

Thai Garlic and Pepper Chicken, as laid out on the website (http://www.realthairecipes.com/recipes/garlic-and-pepper-chicken/):

1 chicken breast, sliced into thin bite-size pieces (3/4 cup)
1/4 cup garlic cloves, smashed
3/4 teaspoon palm sugar (or white sugar)
3/4 teaspoon white pepper powder or black pepper powder (or mix ‘em!)
1 3/4 teaspoons fish sauce
1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil (enough to coat bottom of pan)
2-3 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon coriander leaves (for garnish)

Note that it calls for 1/4 cup garlic for 3/4 cup cut up chicken, so the ratio of garlic to chicken really is quite high. I typically use an entire medium to large head of garlic.

Also, I’ve found that adding just a little soy sauce at the end of the stir-frying darekens the chicken and making for a nicer presentation. It also makes it a bit saltier, though, which may not be to your liking.

One of my current favorites.

My roommate buys large bags of produce at Costco (because they’re cheap) and lets them rot (because she’s too busy to cook). I rescued the bag of garlic a few days ago. Peeled all the cloves and sauteed them in olive oil until they were soft, dark, and tasty. Then I decided to saute some onions, mix them with the garlic, and puree the whole mess. I froze half of this. I think the rest is going to be diluted with chicken stock and turned into soup. I will add sauteed veggies and cooked beans. Perhaps some sausage.

I often make a big batch of onion-garlic-celery-carrot sofrito and freeze it in batches. A container of sofrito, a container of frozen cooked beans, and there’s dinner. With premade sofrito, you could easily have garlic every day.

FÅ‘zelék! With the exception, perhaps, of green pea or cabbage, there isn’t a fÅ‘zelék that won’t be improved by adding some garlic, either in the dish itself or fried crispy on top. I’d start with sárgaborsó fÅ‘zelék, krumpli fÅ‘zelék, and tökfÅ‘zelék.

Whole roasted cloves of garlic are also good as a pizza topping.

It seems only Corey Robin has mentioned steak. Steak grilled to taste seasoned with soy sauce and lots of fried to a brown crisp garlic slices is seriously lovely.

There’s a crazed steak house near Ichigaya Station (dead downtown Tokyo) that does triple duty as a butcher shop, steak house, and a furniture store specializing in table tops made from slabs cut from trees with the whole width of the tree used as the table width (and custom cabinets), so you get to sit at some lovely tables. The steaks themselves are fine, but the only way to get the garlic is to order garlic rice (which is Japanese short-grained rice steamed with an amazingly large amount of fried to a brown crisp garlic slices). The salad, soup, mashed potatoes, and vegetables that come with the steak are terrible. But the steaks and rice and tables are good enough to make it worth going to occasionally.

#93 e abrams

what is a rational person supposed to say to someone who says, I think there that garlic is healthy [link] and the link shows that there is little (if any) real science to suppose garlic is healthy

Say “I’m happy you are getting the chance to cook things you like”?

There isn’t solid evidence for very much that people believe. But it’s reasonably clear that most people in good health do not find fresh garlic toxic even when they eat pretty much of it. So let them do what they want until we get good reason not to?

There’s a long tradition that eating garlic is healthy. Whether it serves as a mosquito repellant (helping prevent malaria and other diseases that Eszter is unlikely to be exposed to), or whether it provides vitamins that people with modern diets are unlikely to have a deficiency in, or maybe it was an unfounded superstition all along … still it’s unlikely to be harmful.

The benefits of eating fresh food instead of whatever corporate food is available is likely to overcome whatever health problems come from the garlic. So if she’s more likely to cook good food if she’s thinking about putting garlic in it, nothing terrible there.

I still have my copy of The impoverished students’ book of cookery, drinkery, and housekeepery. The Imam fainted because of his new bride’s use of a liter of olive oil in the eggplant. I refused to allow my (no longer new ) bride to chuck my copy.
I second the Bagna Cauda at #9 above. The next several days, you will smell garlic from the pores of your fingers, so you had best be with fellow users. Fennel and broccoli are excellent carriers, plus a good loaf of Italian bread to mop up every single last delicious flavorful drop. This goes best with a solid wine from Piemonte, such as a Dolcetto (not sweet, despite the name).

Cook Sichuan and Hunanese food. It is full of garlic and ginger. See Dunlap’s excellent cookbooks. For instance, her recipe for cilantro salad: cilantro + raw garlic chopped fine + red oil + a little sesame oil + rice wine vinegar + salt + sugar + red chiles (optional)

31 days of garlic sounds like a bit of a toe-dipper, if we’re just talking about using garlic in something at least once each day. Without even trying, I’m pretty sure I’ve done 365 days of garlic a number of times in my life.

“There’s a long tradition that eating garlic is healthy. Whether it serves as a mosquito repellant (helping prevent malaria and other diseases that Eszter is unlikely to be exposed to), or whether it provides vitamins that people with modern diets are unlikely to have a deficiency in, or maybe it was an unfounded superstition all along … still it’s unlikely to be harmful.

The benefits of eating fresh food instead of whatever corporate food is available is likely to overcome whatever health problems come from the garlic. So if she’s more likely to cook good food if she’s thinking about putting garlic in it, nothing terrible there.”

And this is 100% right and 0% wrong.

Garlic has known and potential interactions with over 200 prescription drugs, especially if taken in supplement form.

Eszter @97 – ah, nice one ! Right, Im gonna have to do it. I bought a bag of tomatoes the other day aswell but it completly slipped my mind.
Tomorrow it is so..

Try Korean cuisine, which uses garlic in practically every dish. I recommend trying Bossam, or Kalbi, whereby you’re eating whole pieces of grilled or steamed meat with rice wrapped in lettuce or other greens, with cloves of garlic dipped in ssamjang (soybean bean paste). Of course, there are also plenty of soups and stews to chose from, all of which have garlic as an ingredient. Delicious!