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Treat Garlic With Love

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Garlic Bulbs and Cloves

Until relatively recently, I found garlic to be very annoying to handle. It didn’t peel easily, and it was too much of a pain to mince the peeled cloves. Then, quite suddenly, I underwent a change a few months ago. I said to myself, “I love the taste of garlic, so I should change the way I work with it.”

A few months ago, I purchased a hollow rubber tube from an Italian food store. I would put one unpeeled clove of garlic into it and apply pressure while rolling it on a cutting board. After pressure has been applied, it’s easy to strip off the outer papery protective skin with my fingers.

The next step was suggested to me by Martin Scorsese’s film Goodfellas (1990), in which we see the imprisoned mafiosi slicing the cloves of garlic with a single-edged razor blade. Then, I read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, in which he comes out against using a garlic crusher, recommending instead slicing the cloves fine. Now this is what I do. In my favorite Spanish rice dish, I use eight cloves of garlic prepared this way. (BTW, I now use eight cloves of garlic in my recipe, and I don’t crush the cloves.)

One thing I do not recommend is using garlic powder or bottled garlic cloves. Garlic is an amazing spice with numerous health benefits, and nowhere have I enjoyed the flavor of garlic as in the dishes I prepare using the s-l-o-w method described above.

Today’s Spanish rice was the best yet. I owe the taste to the way I process the garlic, and by using fire-roasted Hatch chiles from New Mexico for a good burn.

If you want a device to help you peel the garlic, check out these on Amazon.Com.

Going Vegetarian With Style

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You Start by Fire-Roasting Hatch or Ancho Chiles…

I think that if you are seriously interested in going vegetarian, you should avoid bland vegetarian dishes altogether. That’s why I think that most American vegetarian recipes are yuck.

Of late, I have been working on a Spanish rice recipe that is inspired by three sources:

  • Rice-a-Roni Spanish Rice, combining rice with vermicelli
  • Mexican dishes based on fire-roasted chiles
  • My Mom’s unbearably hot home Hungarian lecso, or tomato and pepper stew (unbearable because I was only a kid at the time)

Here are the steps to making my Spanish Rice recipe:

  1. Get two or more Hatch or Ancho or California or Pueblo chiles. They are about six inches long. Fire roast them until the skin is black and blistered, as in the above photo. Lay them aside to cool.
  2. Toss a half handful of vermicelli or fideo noodles in a pan with olive oil and heat until they turn dark brown. Lay them aside. Pieces should be 1/2 to 3/4 inches in length.
  3. In a large pot with cover, add about a quarter cup of olive oil and begin to heat (medium).
  4. Peel and chop one Spanish onion and add.
  5. Using a small sharp knife, trim the blistered skin from the chiles you have fire roasted. Chop them and add to the onions.
  6. Crush six (yes, six!) cloves of garlic and add to the onions and chile.
  7. Add one cup of long grain rice (I use Trader Joe’s Jasmine Rice) to the mixture and stir for a couple of minutes.
  8. Chop up a pound of ripe, fresh tomatoes and add to the rice. I like Campari Tomatoes for this.
  9. Add the browned vermicelli noodles at this point.
  10. Add salt and pepper to taste.
  11. Add one can of chicken (or vegetable) stock and about 3/4 cup of water.
  12. Lower heat and cover.
  13. When most of the liquid has been absorbed, chop one can of pitted black olives roughly and add to the rice mix. Stir to prevent burning from the bottom.

And that’s pretty much it. The fire-roasted chiles give this dish a nice background burn. If you’re a real chile-head, you can also add a Jalapeño or Serrano chile for an added foreground burn. Yow!

I’m still playing with this recipe, so you may hear more from me about this.