Dreams Of Noise

My wfe has some fnny views on gender roles (she seems to think cooking and cleaning are women's work for some reason) and she is jealous of any time she is not the one cooking for me, so my skills are getting rusty. About the only things I make any more are homemade chili rice and homemade "Rice-a-roni". I generally add garlic powder to either one. Being a seat-of-the-pants type, I add it until it looks like it will taste good. Great thing about garlic - I'm never wrong...

From:

roane.livejournal.com

This, absolutely this. I use Ina Garten's version, here (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/chicken-with-forty-cloves-of-garlic-recipe/index.html).

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jcbemis.livejournal.com

I've become sensitized to garlic - bad reactions if I have too much of it :(

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Thanks for mentioning chili -- I have no idea why I forgot mine. I'm pretty proud of it -- just a bit of a burn, and a heck of a lot of flavor. :D And the texture's much improved since I used the Cooks Illustrated trick of using a panade. Next time I make it, just a bit of soy sauce for umami....

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capplor.livejournal.com

I learned to make pesto from

figmo, but since I was originally rather poor at identifying herbs, I make it with basil, cilantro, or parsely (but never cheese) interchangeably. Nuts are occasionally changed out, also -- usually pine nuts, but sometimes walnuts, and I'm eyeing the almonds.

We finally decided to replace the bread machine we broke > 5 years ago. The new one makes dough, so last night was "build your own pizza" with the kids. Next time, though, Fred & I will use the powdered garlic rather than the minced one, because it will be easier to apply evenly. (Parts of our pizzas really did have too much garlic on it, says the lady who went back for seconds of the Garlic Ice Cream at Gilroy)

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acelightning.livejournal.com

From:

I am truly sorry for both of you. I know a couple of people who are allergic to tomatoes, and I can't imagine that at all. Another friend has major problems with corn products, and given how much corn starch and high-fructose corn syrup there is in everything these days....

From:

acelightning.livejournal.com

From:

saganth.livejournal.com

I use mostly powdered garlic, it's simplest to work with, tho sometimes if I have dried minced garlic I'll use that to doctor a pasta sauce. I have almost never used fresh garlic - I know it's great and I do enjoy it when others use it, but I find it a hassle to work with (and cleaning out the stubborn bits from a garlic press annoys me no end).

I've used powdered garlic mainly to doctor ready-made foods like pasta sauce, tomato soup, and even cottage cheese (along with other herbs and spices, it makes a nice healthy dip for crackers and veggies).

I also include garlic in my world-famous-at-home stir-fry, which is unlike any stir-fry dish you'll find in any asian restaurant. There's no fixed recipe as it is inherently flexible, you can put in as much or as little as you wish:

Simply cook up a cup or three of 20-minute rice (depending on how many people you're cooking for and how many servings you want available) in watered-down chicken broth and, just after the rice has been added to the boiling pot, put in any or all of the following seasonings that happen to be on hand: garlic, oregano, dill, celery seed, sesame seed (I prefer roasted), coriander, onion powder, lemon juice (a squirt), dijon mustard (no more than a teaspoon), teriyaki, soy sauce, ginger, curry, ground black pepper, rosemary... and whatever else strikes your fancy. Just go light on them all, especially the fluids, and DO NOT add salt, or at least no more than a pinch of sea salt (the soy and teriyaki and mustard will already have sodium in them).

While the rice simmers in all that, in a wok or large pan stir-fry your diced veggies. You want half-cup portions of each, or more if you use fewer kinds of veggies. Basically, use your judgment. Food allergies have never been an issue for me, thankfully, so I use as much as I can of my favorites - snow or sugar-snap peas (in the pod), red bell pepper, celery, scallion/onion/chive, cauliflower, broccoli, bean sprouts (NOT alfalfa), zucchini, summer squash, and carrot (I rarely use it anymore as it must be very thinly sliced to cook properly and I have trouble getting it to be that thin). Also, you must use unsalted dry roasted peanuts, or some kind of unsalted nut (pecan or cashew work nicely I have found) - the cooking process does wonderful things for the flavor, especially the peanut. Stir-fry all these in peanut oil (light vegetable oil can also work, not sure about olive oil) and season them with most if not all of the same seasonings that went into the rice pot.

And in a separate pan or wok, cook your diced or cubed meat in the exact same way as you cook the veggies. I have done this with many types - beef, ground beef, chicken, turkey, ground turkey (you really gotta season it good), shrimp or prawn, and even filet of bass (that was interesting, not great but not bad either). I am not a huge pork fan but feel free to try it or any other meat/critter you enjoy. For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if scallop or venison went well with this.

When the rice is done and drained of any excess fluids (I always add a tiny bit extra water to ensure moistness), dump into a large bowl. Mix in the freshly cooked veggies and meat thoroughly, using some of the oil but not all of it (don't want to make this too oily, so drain off most of it first).

And you're all set to serve, though chopsticks will not go well with this dish so have spoons handy. Note that the rice does NOT get fried. A couple bowls of this and people tend to feel like they have been FED. And, if you really wanna get fancy, frying up some seasoned scrambled egg and mixing that into the final dish too works nicely.

From:

saganth.livejournal.com

Clarification: the scrambled egg should be just egg, not the kind that has milk added to it.

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otherdeb.livejournal.com

Being a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, I use garlic in almost all of my cooking.

One of my favorite ways to eat garlic was shown to my by an acquaintance from Poland: Spread a little schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) on a piece of rye bread. top that with either a little garlic powder, or some diced garlic, and toast lightly. After toasting, she would cut a scallions to cover the surface, and serve the toast. It was really yummy.

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otherdeb.livejournal.com

Oh, if you are not attached to the chicken flavor of the schmaltz, or if your diet forbids it, you can use butter or margarine instead. But it really does taste better with the schmaltz.

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technoshaman.livejournal.com

Would be interested in the chili recipe. I like mine with slightly more than a little heat, but not too much. Chipotle and cumin figure in... I don't actually put garlic in mine, tho.

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technoshaman.livejournal.com

*chuckle* I know a nice Jewish girl from Oregon, ye gods can she cook! She showed me this:

Bake 1 cup garlic cloves, covered in olive oil, @ 300F until beige and soft. (an hour?)

Slice one lemon thin; remove seeds. (Leave skin on.)

Alternate layers of lemon and garlic in pint jar, adding 1/4 tsp salt per layer; top off with extra olive oil if needed.

Lid and store in fridge for a week to let flavors meld.

Spread on fresh sourdough, use as a rub on chicken, ....?

Vegan (I'm decidedly not, but some are, and that also means it's parve, so can serve with, say, alfredo), it's the good kind of fat, and... gaaaahlic. :)

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otherdeb.livejournal.com

That sounds really yummy - will have to try it soonest.

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technoshaman.livejournal.com

ok, so my *other* favorite garlic dish is decidedly treif... :)

Shrimp Scampi (developed with Katt Garvey, RIP *sigh*)

This is one of those "start throwing ingredients" kind of thing, bear with me.

1lb shrimp, peeled and deveined. Arrange in baking pan. If starting with whole garlic cloves, mince; move oven rack to top and preheat oven to 450F.

Enough olive oil to thickly cover a large skillet. Melt in this a cube of butter. Start sauteeing minced garlic (We used 6-7 cloves, depending on mood). Add oregano, basil, and parsley to taste, and then as garlic gets done a dash of salt and a squeeze of lemon.

Pour over shrimp, bake on top rack 4 min until shrimp start turning red, then flip to broiler and broil 3min until tails just crispy (edges will darken). Serve with rice pilaf and a big damn chardonnay (if you like that sort of thing, but anything smaller tastewise will NOT stand up to the GAAAAAHLICK!) And if you're going for the garlic gusto, add sourdough and the garlic/lemon recipe above, or bagna cauda (garlic, olive oil, butter, and optionally, anchovies, in order of decreasing amounts, roasted - NOM)...

(I got hooked on bagna cauda thanks to Michael Garibaldi, and the Stinking Rose in San Francisco. :)

Oh, and Tom? If your garlic is burning in the oven? Add olive oil. If you can get one of those oil spray bottle thingys, that works real well for getting enough to prevent burning but not so much you drown the food...

And +zillion on garlic in pasta sauce. ANY pasta sauce! :)

From:

hitchkitty.livejournal.com

Yeesh, Tom, ask the old lady in the shoe to pick a favorite child, why don't you?

There's a lovely little Italian place just down the road from the university where my wife works, and with their garlic bread twists you can get a small bowl of olive oil, diced garlic, bruised basil and slivered red peppers.

I'm a sucker for good garlic bread, but doesn't have to be of an Italian persuasion. My favorite Indian restaurant, where a Hindu friend of mine likes to joke they have a "you must be this brown to order" chart for the spicier dishes, makes an absolutely incredible garlic naan.

And then there's the steakhouse down the street that roasts heads of garlic and serves the resultant schmeer with a variety of breads.

...dammit, now I'm hungry.

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Oh, I love garlic in the oven -- as whole cloves, or part of something like lasagna that's baking at medium-to-high temps. The problem I have with it in the oven is, specifically, using it in a spice rub. It's got too much moisture, which deters the rest of the rub clinging to the meat, and then it dries out and burns too quickly. As CI eventually taught me, the powdered form works much better as a rub ingredient. (NOT garlic salt, which is a really stupid and bad-tasting mutant product I recommend to nobody.)

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I'll find it and transcribe it -- basically, it's just me tweaking to taste something out of one of the America's Test Kitchen books. The most important part, which I'm pretty sure you can adapt to your recipe if you're using ground beef (I use 90% sirloin), is:

Add a slice of good hearty white bread and a tablespoon or so of milk to every pound of ground beef, mix 'em together with your hands (not too roughly, you don't want the meat to get tough from overhandling), and don't brown the meat -- only cook it until it loses its color -- before adding the tomatoes & beans 'n' stuff. (Opinion varies as to when to add the beans -- earlier means fuller flavor, but possibly tougher skins because of the tomatoes' acidity. I usually simmer the stuff for a couple of hours, and add the beans with about 30-45 minutes to go.)

From:

droewyn.livejournal.com

Garlic parmesan popcorn.

This is a stovetop recipe, and I use one of those kettle poppers with the crank that keeps the kernels moving inside the popper.

Pour ~3 tablespoons of olive oil in the bottom of your pot, just enough to cover.

Add unflavored popcorn salt (I use regular salt ground fine with a mortar and pestle) and black pepper to taste. Note that the salt and pepper probably won't work if you *don't* use a popper with some kind of spinning arm. If that's the case, just add that after popping.

Crush at least four cloves of garlic, and add to pot.

Add three kernels of popcorn.

Heat slowly, on low-medium heat. The longer it takes to get hot, the more flavor transfers from the garlic to the oil.

When the kernels pop, add the rest of your unpopped corn. 1/3 cup of kernels makes a pretty big bowl. 1/2 cup will feed a family, and often jams up the spinning arm on my popper.

Turn up the heat a bit to medium-high, and pop until done.

Pour the corn out into a bowl and IMMEDIATELY (before the oil dries on the popped corn) sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese. The cheap stuff from Kroger works well for this since it's a fine powder. It should stick nicely.

Enjoy. You can throw out the spent cloves, or eat them. I tend to eat them.

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3lbs red potatoes, cut into bite sizes pieces and boiled, drained, then cooled

1 head garlic peeled and roughly chopped
cilantro
1/2 white onion
olive oil
cook together until softened blend in food processor

mix with 1 cup mayo and hot sauce (if desired)

put in bottom of bowl and slowly add cooked potatoes, folding the mixture together until blended.

let sit in fridge for several hours to let flavors meld

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Cook 1 lb of ground turkey in pan with half a can beer (recommend a lager), liquid from dill pickle jar, and hot sauces (remember what Alton Brown said about how water brings nothing to the party). Cook until most of the liquid has boiled away, stirring often and breaking up the meat.

In a slow cooker add
1 can of black beans, rinsed
1 can of kidney beans, rinsed
1 can of chili beans
other half of beer
chili powder
ground cumin
hot sauce
garlic blend from Garlic Potato Salad but with 1 minced jalapeno added
other half of white onion chopped
3 slices of turkey bacon, cooked and chopped

cook on low for several hours

From:

aylinn.livejournal.com

If Kory or I are cooking, (usually Kory since it's HIS kitchen and I'll let Janny tell you the story of how she found out about that...*grin*)

Garlic is not an herb, not a spice, not a condiment, not even a vegetable.

Nope. Garlic is a STAPLE.

We prefer granulated garlic to garlic powder for cooking.

From:

aylinn.livejournal.com

*waves hi*

From:

aylinn.livejournal.com

definitely interested in the chili recipe - question though - how is it without the beans?

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Just dandy. I love beans in chili, but they are, as far as I'm concerned, entirely optional. My preference is for dark red kidney beans, but I'm probably going to try pinto sometime this fall.

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That is very nice, and I prefer it myself. But the last container I got, from CostCo a few years ago, is getting a little stale -- it was so huge even I couldn't possibly use it all. Garlic powder is more common, but, yeah, the stuff specifically labeled "granulated" seems to work better.

From:

teddywolf.livejournal.com

Penzeys has some excellent granulated garlic.

From:

teddywolf.livejournal.com

Sometimes I use garlic regularly, sometimes I don't use it for weeks. I've used fresh garlic, roasted garlic, granulated garlic, garlic powder and garlic-infused oil.

If you have access to a place that sells bulk shelled garlic cloves you can make a combination of roasted garlic cloves and garlic-infused oil - don't use extra-virgin olive oil for this recipe. Heat your oven to 325-350ºF and get your favorite oven-safe ceramic or glass deep cookware (like a large souffle ramekin, or perhaps a lasagna pan in a pinch). Spread out the garlic in a roughly even layer, then pour your oil over until the cloves are basically covered. If a few cloves are sticking up slightly that is OK. Cook for about 40-60 minutes or you are satisfied with the texture - you want to be able to easily slide a sharp knife into a clove, or a fork, and the cloves should be soft enough to spread with a knife. Separate your cloves from your oil and prepare to store both of them in the fridge, however you like to store them. It's OK to let them cool down in tightly-fit containers for a few hours before putting them in your fridge - or if it's cold outside and you have secured space, let your containers cool outdoors before putting them in your fridge.

I highly suggest using a light-flavored oil for the above, like canola/rapeseed, safflower, or perhaps grapeseed or light olive if you are feeling expansive. I suggest avoiding extra virgin olive, corn, soybean or anonymous "vegetable" (which is, for the record, usually soybean) oils. EVOO does badly at high heat, and the other oils don't really have a good flavor. I have no opinion regarding peanut oil as I don't use it much.

If you want to further infuse the garlic oil, you could put in some peppercorns while its still hot; or after it cools to roughly room temperature you can put in some basil, rosemary leaves and/or hot peppers and let it sit for a few days minimum for the flavor to infuse throughout. Normally I'd suggest some mustard seeds, but mustard is a water-soluble flavor instead of oil-soluble.

I love cooking my omelets with a mix of butter and garlic oil instead of just butter. You can also use it for pasta sauce, cooking a steak, or most anything else where garlic is a welcome flavor. The cloves... let's just say excellent garlic bread is never far away with the roasted cloves.

From:

batyatoon

Garlic is TOTALLY a staple. I use it fresh, or chopped and jarred, or granulated; powder if granulated isn't available.

From:

batyatoon

A marinade I like for roast chicken: chopped garlic (I like to use Polaner brand jarred garlic for this), olive oil, black pepper, and rosemary. Rub it all over the chicken and let it sit for maybe ten or twenty minutes, then roast just as-is or add other seasonings.

The garlic-olive oil-pepper mixture also works beautifully for thinly sliced eggplant, oven-roasted at high temperatures (400, usually). I've never tried that with rosemary but I can't imagine it could be bad.

Artichokes! I put a halved lemon, black pepper, bay leaves, and a good bit of garlic into the water before steaming them. Garlic is also an essential ingredient to the dip I usually make for artichokes: take fresh garlic, chop fine, sautee in butter or margarine, add onion powder and herbs (usually basil, parsley and thyme) to taste, add lemon juice (about half as much again as the quantity of melted butter) just before the garlic starts to brown. Simmer long enough to soften the garlic thoroughly.

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Black beans are good too. Plus the fiber content. I put 3 different kinds of beans in my chili (kidney, black, and chili) for variety and to help keep down the costs.

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forgot to include a can of chopped tomatoes of your favorite variety

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I hear garlic powder doesn't have much garlic in it. The granulated kind, however, is real garlic.

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Huh - I thought I was the only one who added Soy Sauce to chili (or chili rice, more accurately in my case). I find it a delicious combo, and up until recently it was the only ingredient with no health benefits (then they discovered soy has anticancer and blood pressure benefits last century).

From:

selenesue.livejournal.com

Favorite? Impossible. Most recent: Hummus, which is dead easy with a food processor. This weekend I used 4 cans of garbanzos, drained; the liquid from only one of the cans; most of a jar of tahini; a small head of garlic, roasted for an hour; the meat of one lemon; 1 Tbsp. Penzey's "Turkish Seasoning" and some salt to taste.

From:

selenesue.livejournal.com

Oh, and I intend to enter the Gilroy Garlic Festival cooking contest in the amateur division one of these days with the family's Cioppino recipe. For security reasons, I must refrain from publishing the recipe, but one batch did try to crawl out of the pot once. My father and I bear witness.

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Since I don't follow a recipe, this is going to be a little stream of consciousnesses:
Take 1 can of beans - I prefer kidney beans, and have no preference as to which variety - and empty into an appropriate pot. Add ½ cup rice, and then the spices: a bunch of chili powder, a little curry powder, a bit of either cayenne pepper or crushed chilies, a bit of dried minced onions, a bunch of cumin, a bit of garlic powder or Garlic+ spice mix, and a glug or two of soy sauce (I often add the last only after adding the water for more even distribution. Sometimes I add a little olive oil or some uncooked ground meat. Add 1 full cup of water.
Heat on high until the water starts to boil, then simmer on low for twenty minutes. I sometimes mix in shredded or cubed cheese (or Mac-n-cheese powder), and/or crushed-up corn chips to taste. The twenty minute boil cooks the meat thoroughly (if used), and simmers all the spices into the beans and the rice. All spices are subject to modification to taste and mood.

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