When Your Cousin is a Garlic Farmer
You learn things like 'elephant garlic' isn't garlic at all:
Elephant garlic is Allium ampeloprasum, making it a close relative of the leek while true garlic is Allium sativum.
While we were enjoying a visit with our cousins, the parents of said garlic farmer, I was lamenting about not being able to find elephant garlic lately, and boy did I get an education.
In chatting about bulbs that are large enough to roast, Barb suggested German Red as a true garlic alternative. Of course my next question was, can Molly send me some?
In less than 48 hours after Barb and Rod departed to head back to upstate NY, these arrived from UPS. The bag on the right holds the German Red bulbs and the other is German White variety which has smaller bulbs. Both have between 8 and 12 cloves per bulb.
As soon as I had time to play with them, I set to roasting the Reds. Since I wrote my post An Ode to Garlic back when I could get my hands on fake elephant garlic, I had am epiphany about roasting it and employed the silicon muffin pan liners to ensure easy clean-up.
garlic after roasting squeezed garlic pulp
I roasted the bulbs in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes, What I found was the Reg German with 8+ cloves was mot easy to handle. My beloved fake elephant garlic is a larger bulb to start with and it on;y has 4-6 cloves. Om the case of the later, I could separate and remove the skin from each clove and after freezing them on a cookie sheet, just toss them in a bag to keep in the freezer.
With the German Red, the best I could do was to squeeze out the yummy roasted garlic pulp (for lack of a better word) into a bowl and figure out how I would store it. It was a messy job that I couldn't manage photos of, but imagine holding the bulb from the bottom and squeezing like a piece of fruit over a bowl. Once I felt like there was a lot of garlic left in the bulbs, I decided to boil them into broth.
discarded garlic bulbs about to become broth pressing every ounce of goodness out of thos boiled garlic skins
It's truly amazing what can be boiled with a little into a useful broth. The broth ended up in that risotto I mentioned last week.
Ultimately I divided the creamy garlic into 2-oounce plastic containers and froze them to use later. I also rubbed a few tablespoons over that Heartstone Ancestral blend before roasting it.
goldn garlic crust after an hour in the oven
The garlic spread on the meatloaf turned a beautiful golden color and added a sweet and savory dimension to the meat. I see roast pork with the same treatment and garlic herb butter for pretty much anything you can slather it on.
This post brought to you by the generosity of our cousin Molly
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THANKS CUZ!!!!
