{"id":871,"date":"2014-08-17T11:56:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T16:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pcandres.com\/?p=627"},"modified":"2015-11-06T11:08:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T17:08:33","slug":"nine-heads-are-better-than-one-garlic-soup-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=871","title":{"rendered":"Nine Heads Are Better Than One: Garlic Soup"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none\"><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fthesoupblog.com%2F%3Fp%3D871&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=true&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;width=450&amp;height=30\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width: 450px; height: 30px;\"><\/iframe><\/div><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1093\" style=\"width: 316px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1093\" href=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?attachment_id=1093\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1093\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1093   \" title=\"Garlic Heads\" src=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Garlic-Heads-774x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"306\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Garlic-Heads-774x1024.jpg 774w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Garlic-Heads-75x100.jpg 75w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Garlic-Heads-226x300.jpg 226w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Garlic-Heads.jpg 1031w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 306px) 100vw, 306px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1093\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heads Up!<\/p><\/div>\n<p>My wife, the girls and I were in the San Bernardino Mountains last week, enjoying a little time with the California branch of the family. That means that this week\u2019s soup blog is coming to you from the road.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>My brother and sister-in-law\u2019s backyard to be precise, as I am currently locked out of their house sitting on their back stoop.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Prior to this debacle, however, my family all drove up for a few days at Crestline and Lake Gregory. This trip led the girls to pick up fishing rods for the first time and, thanks to some ham-handed parenting on my part, grapple with the existential questions of eating what they caught.<\/p>\n<p>I launched into this speech about how American Indians had been grateful to the animals they killed for food and that they didn\u2019t kill for sport.\u00a0 You know, just the kind of thing a pre-teen contemplates on a daily basis\u2026in their nightmares.<\/p>\n<p>Nice work, Dad!<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know what drove me to go all Native American on them, with the whole reverence for life and the requisite respect due all living things.\u00a0 In retrospect it seems a little forced.\u00a0 I am admittedly kind to most mammals and birds, but I am not particularly tolerant or respectful of insects.<\/p>\n<p>I guess I draw the line at fish.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of hours before dinner, when I traumatized at least one of my daughters with my impromptu diatribe, I\u2019d decided to create a soup to accompany the five beautiful rainbow trout they and their cousins took out of the lake. Limited though the choices were at the local supermarket, I settled on a vegetarian option that stood in contrast to odds with my later carnivorous (piscivorous?) rant\u2014garlic soup.<\/p>\n<p>Not that I really knew what garlic soup was when I started.\u00a0 I just figured if I roasted enough garlic, I would mute the sharpness of the raw garlic enough to make a pound and a half of the stuff more or less palatable. I also assumed I would develop plenty of soup base in the process.<\/p>\n<p>Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n<p>For years I have been making garlic flavored oil by putting several cloves into a cup measure full of olive oil and roasting them in the oven until the cloves are soft and the oil has a fabulous garlic flavor.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s just how I started my garlic soup, except that instead of 10-15 cloves, I used 9 heads of garlic broken up into a quart of oil.<\/p>\n<p>Upon roasting the garlic becomes really soft and the sharpness of the raw cloves mellows into something much fuller and richer. If you haven\u2019t had it before, try one of the roasted cloves by itself after it cools enough to squeeze out of its peel. It opens up a whole new landscape for cooking with garlic.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s another great thing about roasting garlic. You don\u2019t peel it until it\u2019s done cooking, when it slips out of the peel like one of those gel-filled mobius tubes you find at aquariums.\u00a0 The ones with only one side that rolls in and around itself as it slips through your hands like a flopping fish.<\/p>\n<p>Onward with the soup.<\/p>\n<p>After cooking the cloves for about an hour, I strained them out of the oil and let them cool enough so I could squeeze them out of their peels.\u00a0 Then I added them to the stock with the parsley and cream cheese, brought the soup to a boil and reduced it to a simmer for another 15-20 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Then it was nothing more than pureeing the mixture with an immersion blender, adjusting the seasoning, adding the noodles and boiling then for another 8-12 minutes (depending on what kind of pasta you use) and it was done.<\/p>\n<p>Not only that, you\u2019ve also got a good quart of garlic oil left over for salad dressing, bread dipping, veggie cooking, \u2026 You name it.<\/p>\n<p>As for the soup, it came out very garlicky.\u00a0 Big surprise there.\u00a0 It tasted great too.\u00a0 The soup was also well-received by my family\u2014wife, kids, brothers, sisters, mom, dad, et al.\u00a0 Well, most of them.<\/p>\n<p>Not that you can take anything your family says at face value.<\/p>\n<p>Just look at the nonsense my daughter\u2019s father says to her.<\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Garlic Soup<br \/>\n<\/strong>(serves 6-8)<br \/>\n1.4 lbs garlic (8-9 heads)<br \/>\n1 quart, oil<br \/>\n3 quarts vegetable stock<br \/>\n2 cups parsley, chopped<br \/>\n8 ounces cream cheese<br \/>\n8 ounces, pasta<br \/>\nSalt &amp; pepper, to taste<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F.<\/li>\n<li>Break apart the garlic heads, immerse them in the oil      in an oven safe pot and place in the oven to cook for about an hour.<\/li>\n<li>Remove pot from oven and take the garlic out of the oil with a slotted spoon to cool (and to keep it from overcooking), then squeeze out the roasted cloves.<\/li>\n<li>Add the garlic, parsley and cream cheese (According to my mom, goat cheese is a good alternative to cream cheese) to the stock,      bring the mixture to a boil, and reduce it to a simmer for another 15-20      minutes before pureeing with an immersion blender.<\/li>\n<li>Add pasta (We used long flat egg noodles which looked      great but were hard to eat without making a mess. I recommend something      more bite sized.) and cook for 8-12 minutes depending on what pasta you      use.<\/li>\n<li>Serve warm garnished with parmesan cheese if you like.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><em>Image Credit: Heads of Garlic image borrowed (with attribution) from the ClipArt file in MS Word.\u00a0 It\u2019s a nice picture, but it ain\u2019t mine and I admit it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>What\u2019s your favorite garlic recipe?\u00a0 What\u2019s your pet peeve about garlic?\u00a0 Mine is burned garlic.\u00a0 Especially the smell. Put your thoughts in the comments section. I\u2019ll be reading <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and<\/span> responding.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; My wife, the girls and I were in the San Bernardino Mountains last week, enjoying a little time with the California branch of the family. That means that this week\u2019s soup blog is coming to you from the road. &nbsp; My brother and sister-in-law\u2019s backyard to be precise, as I am currently locked out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,61,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheese","category-garlic","category-vegetarian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1174,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/1174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}