It’s mid-afternoon, and I’m looking for a bit of a snack. I just happen to have one of my favourite treats in the world: a bulb of giant elephant garlic. If you roast this mild cousin of regular garlic long enough, elephant garlic becomes creamy and spreadable. It turns into a rich, golden cracker topping that hits those garlic notes with caramel, sweetness, and none of the harsh, acidic flavours of regular garlic.
Roasted elephant garlic is something you can put out at a party to spread on crackers or toasted slices of baguette. If you cook, try adding it to soup, rice, or having it beside meats. Elephant garlic amazingly easy to prepare and more or less safe provided you bake it long enough to avoid the inherent hazards of eating under-cooked garlic.
Ingredients
- Elephant garlic
- Olive oil
- Salt
Instructions
Pre-heat your oven to 400ºF (~200ºC). While that’s warming up, slice the top off the elephant garlic so that all of the cloves are exposed and put it in a little baking dish. Drizzle it with some nice olive oil and sprinkle with a bit of salt. Cover it with a bit of foil. When the oven’s hot, pop it in and wait for an hour or until the cloves are soft like butter. It will take only a short while before your home fills with the sweet, tangy aroma of roasting garlic.
And this brings us to an important point. Don’t take your elephant garlic out of the oven too soon. Why? This may be a little indelicate but… have you ever noticed how eating a little bit of raw garlic can make you a little bit… um… windy? I’m sorry, but there’s really no way to avoid this topic.
As I said, bit of under-cooked garlic can make you a bit flatulent. Now imagine eating gigantic cloves of under-cooked garlic. Right. Bad things are about to happen.
If you don’t bake your elephant garlic long enough, you’ll be fartier than you’ve ever been in your life. Fartier than Wil Wheaton several hours after Burritowatch. So farty, you’ll feel like you’ve been inflated like a beach ball and regularly blow off lengthy, noisy expulsions as you repeatedly deflate yourself to avoid bursting your internal organs. So farty, you can expect to hear Geordi LaForge shouting, “Explosive decompression in the torpedo bay, Captain!”
In short, you’ll be quite flatulent.
And for this reason, I emphasize how important it is to ensure that your baked elephant garlic really is well and truly baked. Soft. Spreadable. Golden. Caramelized. More or less safe. I make no guarantees about how farty you may become even with a well-baked elephant garlic, so after eating this stuff, book the following day off just to be sure. Besides, you’ll be oozing garlic oil from every pore anyway, so it’s just good sense to go into quarantine, socially speaking.
Where was I? Oh yes. After 60, 70, or 80 minutes, or however long it takes to ensure that it really is caramelized and ready to eat, take it out of the oven. Let it cool for several minutes and, using a small spoon, scoop those golden, goopy cloves out of their papery skin into a small bowl.
If you like, you can mash them with a fork, or serve as-is. Spread them on crackers. Use them in salads or dressings. I like to have them on crackers with cream cheese when I’m not just spooning them directly into my mouth.
Enjoy. And remember… stay away from people for at least 24 hours. Please.