Garlic Passion

I don’t know who first started cooking with garlic, but they did the world a favor. I mean, think about it. Did some primitive man gathering berries and roots while waiting for a brontosaurus steak to cook, dig up the bulbous herb, sniff it, and yell to his buddy, “Hey, try this.”

Hard to imagine just chomping down on a big head of this long-domesticated plant, isn’t it? But it’s equally hard to imagine a world without garlic bread, garlic mashed potatoes, and all the other dishes that garlic enhances with its unique flavor.

Garlic bread, without a doubt, is the easiest thing in the world to make. Let me tell you how my mom does it. We’ll call this Basic Garlic Bread.

She takes a loaf of French bread and slices it lengthwise. Then she drizzles a good extra virgin olive oil over both the cut surfaces. The olive oil was my contribution to her recipe. She used to use butter, but I’ve been working on converting her from a butter culture to an olive oil culture because of the health benefits offered by extra virgin olive oil.

She used to sprinkle garlic powder on both cut surfaces. In a pinch, if you don’t have any fresh garlic, you can do that. But, the best tasting garlic bread comes from crushed garlic cloves. A loaf of bread takes about two cloves.

Just line up the cute little cloves on a cutting board. Whack them with the flat side of a heavy knife to smash them a bit which makes the papery peel slip right off. Then finely mince the garlic, or mash it, or throw it into a food processor. Either way, add about a fourth cup of olive oil to the garlic.

Spread this paste on the bread. Sprinkle with fresh chopped basil and oregano or use dried herbs. You can even use that stuff they bottle and call Italian Seasoning. Put the two halves together, wrap in foil, and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, and it’s ready to eat and delicious.

With the basic recipe, there’s all kinds of variations you can do like sprinkle the cut sides with Parmesan when you remove it from the over then putting it under the broiler until it’s bubbly. The sky is the limit when it comes to variations. Maybe I’ll tell you other options another time.

Right now, I want to tell you how Aunt Dinah, my honorary aunt who’s my granny’s best friend, makes Garlic Mashed Potatoes.

I was surprised the first time I saw Garlic Mashed Potatoes on a restaurant menu a few years ago. I’d only had them at Aunt Dinah’s house. I guess the rest of the world finally caught on that adding garlic to mashed potatoes kicked them up a notch in the best way possible.

Aunt Dinah always puts a couple of cloves of garlic for every large potato she cuts up. She boils it all together until the potatoes are soft then she drains off the water, adds real cream, though I guess you could use half and half or milk, and a tablespoon of olive oil. She adds salt and pepper to taste then beats the potatoes with her hand mixer until they’re smooth and creamy and, oh, so delicious.

Like garlic bread, there are all kinds of variations. Whichever way she makes them, people rave about them. The only problem with the garlic mashed potatoes and garlic bread is that there are never any leftovers for a hungry girl, namely me, to take home to her own kitchen.