February 19, 2005

Roasted Garlic Recipe

My dad and I have often joked about the fact that we must have Italian ancestry through his family - we both love Italian food! We'll never know for sure - Dad was adopted - but decided it doesn't matter anyway, because we'll eat like we are. For me, I am always seeking out Italian style recipes that are new, bold and fun to learn. One element that I discovered in many of the new dishes I found was roasted garlic. I looked awhile before I found a roasted garlic recipe that I liked and was easy to do.

What's so good about roasted garlic? Garlic has a pretty bad reputation for being bitey, smelly and overpowering, right? Well, roasting garlic will mellow out the flavor and aroma, while developing a flavor that is incredible - sweeter and much more subtle than its raw form. Many of the dishes you see in restaurants that have a garlic cream sauce (or a cream sauce of any kind, at times) will be made with roasted garlic. Additionally, it is unbelievable what roasted garlic will do to a nice garlic bread (I'm drooling just thinking about it!) - and you can even spread it like butter on a piece of crusty bread. Trust me on this - this is a good recipe to have in your hip pocket to pull out as needed.

Ingredients

1 head of fresh garlic
Extra Virgin Olive Oil - aka EVOO - (no substitutes), enough to coat

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Break the head of garlic into individual cloves. Do not peel the skin off. Place the cloves on a sheet of aluminum foil and toss them in a teaspoon or two of EVOO (just enough to coat the cloves).

Fold the foil into an airtight pouch and place in the oven for about 30-45 minutes (I put on a cookie sheet "just in case"). When the garlic is done, and cooled a bit, simply squeeze it out of the skin - the flesh should just slide out simply - like toothpaste. Use it in your favorite recipes, or you can refrigerate in an airtight container for a few days.