Garlic

dellas1979

Do you like garlic?

I love garlic - think am addicted to it in fact. I try and add it to everything. Anyone out there with nice garlicy recipies? Any thing alternative to try with garlic?

noby

Yes.

I never make mashed spuds without throwing in at least a clove of garlic.

beans

Roast it!

The Hill Billy

How about roast chicken with 40 cloves of garlic?

rubadub

Garlic is not that cheap, some recipies are pretty wasteful of it. I stir fry chicken with cashewnuts, chilli, soy sauce and garlic. I get jars of minced garlic in asian stores, very cheap there and a higher garlic content than even the "premium" stuff in supermarkets. It is usually 85-90% garlic, rest is oil, in supermarkets the tubes are only 50-60% garlic.

Fresh is better but I like the convenience & price. Dried garlic powder is also in asian shops but I would not recommend it, doesnt mix well and is hygrocopic (sucks moisture from the air and clumps)

babaduck

Steam some green beans, melt some butter in the (empty of water) pot, add some garlic & leave to warm through - add beans, toss and serve... sheer heaven

Minder

babaduck wrote:

Steam some green beans, melt some butter in the (empty of water) pot, add some garlic & leave to warm through - add beans, toss and serve... sheer heaven

Had exactly that the other night with chicken savoyarde - bliss!!

Minder

Pumpkin risotto with sage and roast garlic. The garlic is roasted in it's skin with the pumpkin and some sage leaves. When the pumpkin is tender, it is added to the risotto along with the roast garlic. Delicious.

The Hill Billy

rubadub wrote:

Garlic is not that cheap

3 bulbs of garlic for 99¢ in my local supermarket.
That's cheap to me considering that I'd go through at least 2 bulbs per week.

rubadub wrote:

some recipies are pretty wasteful of it.

Depends on how much you like garlic. (I would sometimes double or even treble the quantities of garlic recommended in some recipes.

IMO - Recipes are guidelines. If there's something you don't like - leave it out altogether (if it doesn't significantly alter the dish) or just put in less than the recipe advises.

bonkey

rubadub wrote:

Garlic is not that cheap,

What do you call "not that cheap" ???

some recipies are pretty wasteful of it.

That can be said of anything.

Fresh is better but I like the convenience & price.

You find processed is cheaper than buying fresh garlic? Wow. I must be shopping in the wrong places

Anyway...getting back to the OP's question...

I'm definitely a fan of garlic, but like all foods it has its place. Its not suited to all cooking, nor would I want to have everything reeking of it when I do use it. A bit like chilli in that sense...I know people who want to use it in everything and always to the "blow your head off" state. I find food far more interesting when you cook with more variety.

I've also found that finely diced garlic works completely differently flavour-wise to crushed garlic. If you're doing a stir-fry, for example, crushing will tend to flavour the oil (and thus everything) where finely (or roughly) diced will tend to give you more isolated "hits" of garlic. Depending on what you're cooking, one or other can work better.

Some relevations I made upon moving to Switzerland:

1) Fresh garlic is not what you typically buy in Ireland. Fresh garlic is when the skin hasn't dried to paper yet but is
still thicker and fibrous. Wonderful stuff.

2) "Giant" garlic. This is where you have basically one massive clove as the entire bulb. Typically about 1/4 the size of a regular bulb of garlic, and far milder.

3) "Wild" garlic (bärlauch), also known as wood garlic, bear's garlic, or ramson. A broad-ish leaf which has a mid-strength garlic flavour. Fantastic in salads or for making a pesto (using this instead of basil), where raw garlic would be too harsh.

4) Pink garlic. As the name suggests, the bulbs and cloves have a pink tint. Slightly sweeter, milder flavour.

5) Smoked garlic. Pretty easy to get over here. Unfortunately, its the skin (paper) which takes most of the flavour. The best way to use this stuff is unpeeled in something like a stuffing, or just thrown into your roasting tray with whatever you're roasting. Then if you're making a gravy and don't want to serve the garlic on the plate, you can just smash them into the mix, makign sure to strain the gravy when done (as you probably would anyway).

rubadub

bonkey wrote:

What do you call "not that cheap" ???.

When the amount I use in a single serving recipe costs almost as much as the meat. It is a relatively expensive vegetable (root?) per weight.

some recipies are pretty wasteful of it.

By that I meant some recipies I have seen use it whole and then it can be tossed out. Like people putting whole onions in chicken cavities and not using the onion after.

You find processed is cheaper than buying fresh garlic? Wow. I must be shopping in the wrong places

I have never weighed it out, but I reckon jars are about 1/4 the price by usable weight maybe less.
I dont know if you were being sarcastic about shopping in the wrong places, but in some shops fresh garlic is cheaper than processed, especially when you take into account the % garlic in the processed stuff, which can be only 50%. Food in Asian markets is often a fraction of the price of what it is in supermarkets, and a lot of the time it is nicer too.

Alun

bonkey wrote:

3) "Wild" garlic (bärlauch), also known as wood garlic, bear's garlic, or ramson. A broad-ish leaf which has a mid-strength garlic flavour. Fantastic in salads or for making a pesto (using this instead of basil), where raw garlic would be too harsh.

You can find it growing wild here in abundance at the right time of the year if you know where to look. Never seen it in the shops though. You can also use the whole plant as well as just the leaves .. saw Hugh Fearnly-Whatsisname making some soup using it together with nettles and wild sorrel on TV once.

bonkey

rubadub wrote:

When the amount I use in a single serving recipe costs almost as much as the meat.

Fair enough...but surely you're an exceptional case?

The average amount of meat per portion is generally reckoned at around 150gm. Some people will obviously use less, some more.

Even at 100g of cheap meat, that's still going to pay for an entire bulb of garlic (unless you're getting ripped off on your garlic whilst getting cheap meat).

If that's the type of ratio you use, then fair enough. However, most use of the stuff would top out at around one clove per person per dish and even then that would be considered quite heavy in garlic.

It is a relatively expensive vegetable (root?) per weight.

Per weight, all herbs and spices are expensive. The thing is, though, that you generally don't use a lot of them. If you do use a lot of them and do so regularly, then sure, they work out expensive. But that would be like someone arguing that meat was terribly expensive because they only ever cooked with fillet steak and used a quarter-kilo per person.

I would have said my wife and I use a lot of garlic in our cooknig compared to the "norm" in that we'd go through maybe 3-4 largeish bulbs in a week for just the two of us. That still works out at no more than 1-2 euro Irish prices.

I dont know if you were being sarcastic about shopping in the wrong places,

No, I wasn't. It may be simply down to the pricing differences of various tings over here in Switzlerand, but processed garlic is simply not comparable to buying it fresh.

rediguana

Yeah, I'm addicted to garlic too. I'm sure it's why I'm never, ever sick and I haven't been attacked by vampires since I was a kid.

My consumption has shot up some 300% since I bought a crusher. All that chopping was awfully tedious.

ShowUsYourXbox

Garlic Mayonnaise and just add dip whatever the **** you want in it