garlic Archives - Page 8 of 8

pesto in my beloved pestle and mortar

Pesto epitomises my favourite foods: it simultaneously celebrates the individual ingredients and yet comes together to create an exciting new taste. If that wasn’t good enough, the sauce is ready before the pasta’s boiled. I don’t know who first had the idea for this, but they are worth applauding.

It’s not much of a recipe, my son can rattle off the ingredients: garlic, basil, parmesan, pine nuts, all bashed up together and then your best olive oil is added to make a paste, finally seasoned. If I have one spare, some lemon juice makes all the difference.

It’s brilliantly summery, the flavours astonish everyone who have only ever eaten it out of a jar, and I always make sure I have the bits for it lurking round my kitchen.

garlic bread

Another in the continuing saga of a-bread-a-week: this week, king of doughy accompaniments, much undersold as sweaty baguettes, garlic bread.

Polite Notice: please leave Peter Kay-related gags in 2003, many thanks.

My typical BBQ standby is to slice up a french stick, dip it in parsley and garlicky-infused oil and stick it on the bars of a searing-hot grill until blackened. Chomp and watch oil dribble down your chin.

However I wanted to start right at the beginning today, dough first. A little different to regular batter, a fair gloop of olive oil in the mix, and some dried oregano. As Saturday was a very sunny day the conservatory gave the yeast a real party; the dough had risen enormously! Whilst the second proving went on I gently fried some minced garlic in a freakish amount of olive oil. Not so it coloured, just so it was allowed to sweat aand develop a bit of flavour. I slashed the bread a little to allow the garlic juices to seep in between the bread, then drizzled the oil all over, plus a sprinkle of sea salt. 20 mins in the oven later, I had some pretty bloody good garlic bread. It ended up as a kind of fougasse. It was a real success, it’s coming out again.