My partner’s mother, Enid, introduced me to duck with 40 cloves of garlic. She told me it originated from an old Jewish Ashkenazi recipe, although the French claim it’s theirs. It doesn’t matter because it’s delicious, with most of the cloves shoved under the crispy duck skin, permeating the meat, and several pushed into the cavity along with half an orange. Because it is cooked long and slow, and the duck is very fatty, the garlic turns mellow, sweet and extremely aromatic. When I asked Enid if she counted the cloves, she held out both hands and said, ‘about this much’.
That opened my eyes to the world of garlic as a primary ingredient rather than just a supporting player: I learned that cooking garlic in certain ways can completely transform its flavour. For example, a long, slow roast on a low heat, wrapped in foil and drizzled with olive oil, produces a sweet and strong flavour, with a caramelised edge.
There’s an infamous scene in the film Goodfellas, where the Paulie character uses a razor blade to slice garlic, claiming that this will mean it liquefies in the pan. It doesn’t, of course, because the thinner garlic is sliced the quicker it turns brown which, if it’s a microsecond too long, leaves it burned, bitter and inedible.
Toasted garlic, sliced very thinly, is stunning if flash fried in sesame oil until it just turns brown, left to cool, then added to a Thai salad. Mix with crunchy vegetables sliced into thin sticks, maybe some toasted peanuts, and pile in the garlic, which adds texture as well as flavour.
Whenever I do a tapas-type meal, one dish will always be the biggest garlic bulb I can find, sliced through the middle, roasted and served with sea salt, which I leave on the table for guests to spread on little toasted breads or eat alongside salads and other dishes. Then there are whole roasted cloves cooked with chilli peppers in olive oil, which works well as a side dish to anything from fish or steak to slow-braised vegetables. Make peeling a breeze by dropping the cloves into boiling water, then fishing them out after 10 seconds – the skin will come off very easily. Then cover the cloves with enough olive oil to drown them, and bake in a shallow dish on a long, low heat for a couple of hours. Add chilli flakes and a good pinch of sea salt, and serve with a chunk of bread to scrape up the sticky bits at the bottom.
Garlic chips are also heavenly. Slice the largest cloves you can find into strips, then fry them quickly in hot oil, being sure to remove them while still light brown. Drain them on kitchen paper and sprinkle with salt, then add to soups, dips or a grilled cheese sandwich.
Mashed potato can be transformed into something completely different by mixing a load of roasted garlic into it. Just roast the garlic as above in the oven, then hand mash the potato (using a food processor makes it too gluey) and make sure you get that garlic spread evenly throughout.
Toasted garlic, sliced very thinly, is stunning if flash fried in sesame oil until it just turns brown
When I have very little in the house and someone drops by for a meal unexpectedly, if I’ve got a packet of spaghetti and garlic (which I always do, even if it’s the minced variety that comes in a jar from the Indian supermarket), I make the Italian classic of spaghetti with lots, and lots, and lots of garlic, plenty of black pepper and sea salt, and whatever green herb you have in the fridge to make it look prettier on the plate. If you’ve got a day-old baguette, garlic can be crushed and mixed with oil or butter, spread on the cut sides, and shoved in the oven for ten minutes.
If one day you find yourself bored, or in need of some relaxing culinary therapy, buy a huge bag of garlic and confit it. Use good-quality olive oil for this, because the oil itself becomes a dressing for part of the dish you serve it with. Use the freshest, firmest bulbs you can find, separate and peel the cloves, add a bunch of fresh thyme, and simmer very gently on the stove top, on the lowest heat possible, until they turn soft and golden. Be patient, because it’s the slow cooking that transforms the garlic from pungent and sharp to mellow, sweet and spreadable. Once it’s cooled, put the garlic and the oil into a very large airtight glass jar, then put it straight into the fridge, where it will keep for two to three weeks. Add the confit to soup or salad dressings – or spread it on slow-cooked roast meat or vegetables straight out of the oven.
If I crave aioli, effectively garlic mayonnaise, I just buy a jar of very good-quality mayo, add three or four cloves of confit garlic, and I’ve got a perfect accompaniment to a proper Spanish (potato) omelette.
A word of caution: not every dish and ingredient feels the benefit of a dose of garlic. Some seafood definitely does not (imagine oysters with garlic – no!) and neither does fresh tuna or, if we are being pedantic, the northern Italian version of ragu sauce (Bolognese). Delicate flavours such as courgette flowers will be drowned out by garlic. I once had a cheese bruschetta in an Italian restaurant, and the garlic was so overpowering I couldn’t taste anything else. Be bold, and don’t be scared of eating huge amounts – as big as an apple – of the slow-roasted or simmered stuff. And know when to skip it.
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