Recipe: Roasted Garlic

[ellyssian]

• 7 garlic bulbs
• olive oil
• sea salt
• fresh ground pepper

In this shot of ingredients, tools, and equipment used for the Valentine's Feast, you can see a few things critical to this recipe - namely, the garlic, the pan, the foil, the knife, the olive oil, the salt, the pepper, and the cutting board:



Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

Behead the garlic and expose the cloves inside. I'm sure this step works great on homogenous bulbs. The ones I used had all manner of irregularities and oddities. This made it challenging, to say the least. Although I can see the labor-saving to be found, when you have to struggle to cut most of the cloves to a unique height all their own and lop off too much of the ones within a certain range of specification, this becomes nearly as labor-intensive as the method I've used in the past (although that recipe doesn't include garlic, I've roasted garlic using that method several times since). Maybe even more so.

Violas and Voila! See what monstrosities I had to work with ~ delicious monsters, but monsters nonetheless:



Drizzle olive oil ~ 1-2 tbsp ~ in the pan and tilt the pan around to coat the bottom thoroughly. If you're doing it right, you're moving it so fast with one hand that the camera in the other hand and the eyeball looking at it and the finger on the shutter can't coordinate enough to take a decent picture and you wind up with something like this:



I'm just kidding ~ you don't need to move it fast at all. In fact, you'll have a much easier time of it if you don't attempt photography and cooking. I know I'll have trouble convincing myself pictures are worth even a half-dozen words the next time I almost get a notion to mix the two.

Place the garlic heads, cut side up, in the pan ~ if the heads won't sit flat, slice the bottom off the bulb so they do. I just kind of stuffed them in, although I did a much better job with the "test fitting" before I greased things up then I did trying to get them back in on top of the oil:



Speaking of tops and oil, drizzle the exposed cloves with olive oil so they are coated. Look, an action shot!



This is like a Summer movie ~ yet another exciting action scene as you lightly salt & pepper the garlic:



And more drama:



And now thinks settle down, as we get them under wraps. Cover the pan with aluminum foil like so:



Finish pinning the foil down all around, and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes.

Sure, the big finale has lots of action in it ~ it's kind of a variation on a chase scene ~ but it also involves both hands dripping hot, roasted oil and garlic, so the camera stayed away and hid for this segment. Extract roasted cloves by grabbing the bottom of the bulb and gently squeezing. Some gave up the garlic easier than others; again the oddities fought against me.

Here's the final scene ~ the garlic getting plated on top of the mashed potatoes (also, it's well mixed in there, so more than enough garlic to keep vampires away. One can only hope it works on sparkly-type vampires...)



Oh, if you thought I told the story well, or, more importantly, if you felt I flubbed it, go read how Pioneer Woman did it ~ there's better photographs and more entertaining reading there. Besides, I was just following along with her recipe. Thanks, Ree! =)

Comments

[darkbay.livejournal.com]

Ha, I loved your commentary. So educational.

God that looks so wonderful, too. Roasted garlic is just so amazing. Than you for sharing this.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! =)

If you try this ~ or any other recipe I post ~ let me know how it goes!