In The Beginning, There Was Garlic

I can say with quite certainty that if I ever were to write a food bible, I would begin it just like any other foodie would ... with the words: "In the beginning, there was garlic". I suppose if I had to name one ingredient that I could not live without, it really would have to be salt. Salt, alone, though would not be enough to "float my boat". There would have to be garlic involved.

Whenever I am shopping in the city, the smell of garlic cooking can make me stop dead in my tracks to scan the horizon for the source of the heavenly scent. I love it when garlic heads are roasted whole and I insert one of my wooden pallet knives and the garlic is buttery soft. Roasted garlic on a good baguette equals happiness to me.

Lately, in an attempt to really get down to the nitty gritty of kitchen basics, I have been trying out a few new cookbooks.

The above book, How To Roast A Lamb, is one of seven new cookbooks I recently listed on "My Favorite Books" link. They are all fantastic resources if you are learning how to cook, or if, like me, you are starting all over even though you have been cooking for years. I cannot recommend them enough. This book, How To Roast A Lamb,  is filled with recipes that are Greek in origin. I have been trying several of the recipes in this cookbook and have had great success. As I get better at them, I will share them, here, on The Muse.

Lets get on with it. In this book, there is a recipe for garlic confit. "Confit" is a method of preparing food that preserves the food by cooking and flavoring it while it is submerged in a liquid. When most people talk about "confit", they are talking about duck confit (confit de canard). The leg meat from a duck is cooked (and also stored) in the rendered fat of a duck. I haven't tried it - yet. I do hear plenty of people rave about it, though. Those people must not be eating in my town. Lucky buggers. You can "confit" just about any meat - rabbit, chicken, veal, guinea fowl, and woodcock, but more commonly you will see confit of goose, pork, and turkey. For centuries confit specialty zones have been a part of the French landscape. Someday, when it is my time to go on a confit-mecca, I will go to France. I'll rent a tiny Renault like this one:

I can envision myself zipping along the back country roads of the Basque and Béarn regions of France, tasting a cassoulet here, and a cassoulet there, getting my confit fill. Today, I am sharing with you a simple, basic preparation of garlic confit - a must for you to have in your fridge. Cooking with garlic can be tricky. Because garlic has much less water than onions do (60% vs. 90%) and a much higher concentration of sugar (fructose), the chances of you burning it are much greater. There are two things that can make garlic taste bitter - one, the most obvious offender, is if you burn it. Once you burn garlic, you have to throw it out and start all over again. When cooking onions and garlic together, you will fair better if you hold off on the garlic until the onions have cooked long enough to become translucent. The other offender, not as obvious but consistently able to ruin garlics' flavor, is that little, bright green sprout lurking inside of each garlic clove.When the garlic is not super fresh, the little green sprout starts to grow inside and when left in your cooking can impart a bitterness that seems to linger on the toungue. Pick out the little sprout with the tip of a sharp knife. Although it is not as pretty to slice (lengthwise) a garlic clove in half when you really would like to see all perfectly plump, whole cloves in your confit, I belong to the group of people where flavor trumps beauty. So as far as my thoughts on what to do about that sprout : have no doubts, take it out.

To begin then: get yourself as many garlic heads as you think you have the stamina to peel. Peeling the garlic is the only "hard" part of this, and the difficulty lies not in the skills but rather in the fact that peeling that many garlic cloves is simply annoying. You must focus on the prize. Peel them all now, and you will reap the rewards for weeks. Trust me. 

My friend, Cathy, has one of those silicone garlic peelers to help speed up the process of peeling all that garlic. She swears by it. I must try that gadget. In the meantime, I found that cupping my hands around 5-10 cloves at a time and rubbing vigouresly back and forth for a bit rendered the skins from the bulbs (actually a leaf, but those are semantics, here.) To remove the raw garlic smell from your hands you can place them under running water and move your hands along a stainless steal knife, rubbing the surface will remove the odor. I am more than a bit of a clutz, therefore, I must take the necessary precautions in order to avoid going through an entire box of Hello Kitty bandaids too quickly, and I use this little gadget:

At eight bucks, it is a great stocking stuffer for the chef on your Christmas list, and does the trick of neutralizing the odors in an instant. Although I followed the recipe as far as amount of garlic (3 cups) and amount of oil (enough to cover the cloves), I did not add the thyme, bay leaf, or peppercorns the recipe called for. I wanted the garlic cloves to stay "neutral" enough so that I could "push" the flavor I wanted in the final dish. If I only was going to prepare Greek food with it, then by all means I would have added the other ingredients the recipe called for. I put the garlic cloves in my dutch oven. You can get a very inexpensive one that works great, I just had to buy mine because one of us, in the family, can not intake iron. They both work equally well for a variety of tasks. I make my bread in it, I cook whole stews in it, you really can't go wrong adding a dutch oven to your kitchen. Just make sure it is big enough so you aren't doing all the work for itty bitty amounts of food. If your current budget only allows for the purchase of oil and garlic, then you must put whatever oven proof pan you have into the oven and cover it with tin foil while it bakes.

To the garlic cloves add oil, that is half olive oil, and half canola oil, to cover the cloves. Place the lid on the dutch oven. Put the whole pot in a preheated (300°F) oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Take it out of the oven and let it cool. Put the cloves and the garlic into a clean jar and place in the refrigerator until ready for use. It will keep for 3 weeks as long as the cloves remain covered with oil.

What to do with it :

• mix a few cloves and a Tblsp. or so of the garlic oil with mayo for an instant aoili.
• mix it instead with goat cheese and chopped sundried tomatoes in oil. Spread on toast (bruschetta).
• Use instead of plain olive oil in salads.
• place a few of the cloves, as is, on pizza before it goes into the oven.
• mash a few cloves and add it to a creamy soup.
• in a blender, combine 10 cloves with 3 Tblsp. canned chipotle chilis in adobo sauce, chopped cilantro (small handful), a little salt, and the zest of a lime. Put THAT on your burger or in your taco. 

The important thing, here, is that now, in your fridge, you have a jar of "help". The more you get used to grabbing for your garlic confit, the more uses for it that you will find.

Remember that this is not the same as the preserved "fresh" garlic you see in grocery stores. When you use that garlic you have to cook it after you take it out of the jar. They sell that stuff so that you can skipp the step of peeling your garlic.

A note of caution: if you were to take a bunch of raw garlic cloves, cover them with oil and forgo the process of cooking, you are dramtically increasing your chances of ingesting the deadly botulism bacteria that thrives in the absence of air. The only way around it is to do like the factories do - bathe the garlic in acid for several hours first before placing the cloves in the oil. That is why the store bought stuff tastes "off" even after you cook it. Do like I did, here, and cook it with the oil, and then store it in the fridge. You will get all the soft, comforting, nutty flavor that comes from roasting them, and by cooking it in oil you get two products that you can use, the oil, and the cloves. As I said, it will keep for three weeks. Mine has been in there for a week. I don't think I will make it to three weeks before we run out. Next time I will peel even more garlic.

I know that, at this time of year, most people are busy making cookies to give as gifts. I think a jar of garlic confit would be quite the gift to recieve. I know that I am in love with it.

I would love to see a picture of your jar of heavenly garlic confit in your fridge. Good luck with it.

Carolina

Comments

[Elizabeth]

That sounds like a fun project to do on a winters day. I don't think that they would last three weeks in my fridge either :) You must buy that silicone peeler, I just used mine last night when I had to peal many cloves. Otherwise I smash it with the side of my knife if I don't need the clove whole.
I'm with you with the garlic, if it isn't in a recipe that I think should include it, I move on, or I add it.

One year I decided to do the oil covered herbs with raw garlic as gifts, and then I had to call everyone to tell them not to use it. I thought it was such a great idea, but not safe to consume.

You know, I had many a good confit in France, but one the very best ones I have ever had, was here in California, in a small seaside town of Mendocino. My French son in law ordered it as well, and said" this is the best confit canard, that I have ever eaten in my life!!!"

Love this post A LOT. I can't wait to see more cooking adventures here :) Keep cooking girl!!!!

[Melissa P]

I'm drooling now, thank you very much. Life without garlic...I shudder at the thought. (And I care not one whit if I am the only one at the table eating garlic laced food.)

Your house must be filled with incredible aromas. Happy cooking!

[Amy]

What a great idea - and simple too!! As I was reading through I thought to myself this would make a great addition to the cookies and chocolates I give out every year and who doesn't love garlic!! I am going to try this - thank you for the idea. Oh and I can totally picture you bee boppin' around France in one of those cool cars. haha!

[Eva]

Thank you for the great instruction and all the tips on how to use the confit! I'll definitely try it some time! More likely after Christmas, though ...

[Alicia Armstrong]

The picture of all that lovely garlic in olive oil in your dutch oven makes me want to cook something right now. We are huge fans of really good olive oil in this house and a jar of garlic confit sounds like another perfect addition. Looks like a beautiful cookbook too, love that Mediterranean cooking!

I can so see you in that Renault!