no vam­pires in MY house

--February 20th, 2009--
baked garlic

How much gar­lic can one fam­ily of three eat on a Thurs­day evening shortly before the spring sol­stice? I’m sure there is a for­mula for work­ing this sort of thing out, but I’ll make it easy for you. A LOT. Suf­fice to say, the con­tents of this lovely dish you see before you? Gone, along with almost an entire baguette and a whole baked chicken. I’ll explain.

Some­times my meat-veg-starch plate arrange­ment at din­ner gets me down. How many dif­fer­ent ways can you present a potato, espe­cially when a baked one has been banned from your din­ner table because your poor child was forced to eat one every day of her life at school for a year? And rice isn’t very pop­u­lar in my house either, while cous­cous gets eaten but with a marked lack of enthu­si­asm. Then yes­ter­day, while idly leaf­ing through Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Sto­ries (another book I would marry if I were sin­gle), I came across this gem (I’ve adapted it slightly for quantities):

Baked Gar­lic With Creamed Goat’s Cheese
(how many it serves is entirely down to you and your fel­low din­ers: I counted on one head of gar­lic per per­son and it was about right)

4 heads gar­lic
4 tbsps olive oil
4 thyme sprigs
1 rose­mary sprig
4 bay leaves
1 lemon cut into 6 wedges
salt and pepper

For the creamed goat’s cheese

6 oz goat’s cheese (a nice sim­ple one with­out rind or ash)
3 oz dou­ble cream
1/2 tsp dried chili flakes
salt

Pre­heat oven to 400F, 200C. Slice the tops off the gar­lic heads about a quar­ter of the way down. Pack into an oven­proof dish in one layer. Driz­zle over the olive oil and tuck the herbs and lemon around the heads, giv­ing a squeeze of each of the lemon wedges as you do so. Sea­son with salt and pep­per. Place in oven and leave there for 10 min­utes, then turn heat down to 250F, 170C for another 50 min­utes. When the gar­lic comes out of the oven, tip the dish so you can spoon the now lus­ciously fla­vored oil over the heads. Set aside to cool slightly.

Mean­while, cream the goat’s cheese with the cream, add the chili flakes and salt and stir well till mixed thoroughly.

To eat, serve with nice chunks of baguette. Dig into the heads of gar­lic with a lit­tle fork or spoon and spread the gar­lic onto the baguette, top­ping with the goat’s cheese mixture.

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Now, two things stand out as being imper­a­tive truths about this dish: you and your guests have to be potty about gar­lic, and you ALL have to eat it. I couldn’t tell if we stunk to high heaven, just because of this last pre­cau­tion. The tex­ture of the gar­lic is soft and silky, the fla­vor is gen­tle and per­me­ated with the heady thyme and rose­mary, and the lemon adds a bit of bite. Some­how the com­bi­na­tion, along with the seri­ously self-indulgent creamy cheese, is heaven.

With this we had one of my favorite chicken dishes, invented by my dear mother in a rare dis­play of culi­nary interest:

Mama Nel’s Chicken
(serves 4)

1 whole chicken, cut into legs, breasts and wings
4 tbsps flour
1 tsp each: thyme, basil, gar­lic pow­der, paprika, lemon pep­per
1/3 cup veg­etable oil

I’ve become quite adept at what is called here “joint­ing” a chicken, sim­ply tak­ing a whole bird and cut­ting it up, partly because it is unbe­liev­ably inex­pen­sive to do this, and partly because unless you have a real butcher, you will not find chicken breasts on the bone with skin left on in this coun­try. Nor are your typ­i­cal super­mar­kets keen on whole legs, pre­fer­ring in gen­eral to sep­a­rate the thighs from the drum­sticks. I myself hate the look of a chicken drum­stick, feel­ing it has a Flint­stones look about it, a cave­man sort of desperation.

Now, in a recy­cled super­mar­ket plas­tic bag (I used to use Ziplock until I saw the ungreen error of my ways), mix the flour with the herbs, then shake the chicken pieces in this until nicely coated. I sup­pose you could get all Martha Stew­art and dip the pieces in egg or milk first, but my mother did not bother and so nor do I.

Line a 9x13 oven­proof dish with alu­minum foil (a great aid to cleanup) and pour in the veg­etable oil. Lay the chicken pieces skin side down and bake at 400F, 200C for half an hour, then turn the pieces over and bake for another half hour. Sim­plic­ity itself.

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If you’re being ter­ri­bly credit crunchy, you may toss the back and rib bones from your clever joint­ing into a stock­pot, throw in some car­rots, cel­ery and onion, sea­son it all well and cover with water, then sim­mer for a cou­ple of hours and voila: chicken soup.

I must dash: we are off to see War Horse, a play that has received almost unprece­dented fab­u­lous reviews, both before Christ­mas and in its cur­rent revival. Have some gar­lic, brush your teeth, and I’ll be back with a review…

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