A task that had been on my back burner for months: deal with all the garlic downstairs! The garlic we grew had been drying in the “larder” (which is just a corner of our basement). But it was time to clean up that area and use the garlic before it went bad.
One thing I’ve noticed is that our garlic is beginning to sprout. This doesn’t mean it’s bad or toxic, but it does mean it’s time to use it (it doesn’t need to be thrown out and wasted!). Sprouted garlic is best roasted, which removes any of the bitter taste the green center can impart into a dish. I do still have some garlic to use fresh, and I just remove the green center before cooking with it.
How to make garlic paste
I first cleaned the dirt and loose paper off the bulbs, cut the dirty roots off the bottom and cut the tops off to expose the cloves. I tucked all of these pieces into a small baking dish, poured some olive oil over the top, and sprinkled with some salt and pepper.
Preheat the oven to 375 and cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil. After 45 minutes, I removed the foil and baked another 20 minutes until the tops were golden and the cloves started popping out of their casing.
I let the garlic cool and then rolled up my sleeves for a pretty messy process of squeezing all of the garlic cloves into a bowl. Any hard bits from the roasting I removed, added more oil, and mixed aggressively to form a paste.
I’ve read that garlic and olive oil can grow botulism, so for safety, I opted to put the paste into small ice cube trays. After they freeze for a night, I will remove from the trays and add to a freezer bag and then will pop out a cube or two whenever I want to add roasted garlic to sauces, pizza, seafood, or any other recipe.
