The joy of confit
Last week I talked about preparing things beforehand to help make quick meals later. Today I want to talk about garlic. I love garlic and use it with almost everything. A few years ago I found an old cookbook in a secondhand books store in Sydney and the author of the book did not like garlic (gasp) and added at most half a clove to a recipe. I can't even fathom. I'm from the camp that says you should double any amount of garlic in any recipe.
Since we use garlic with almost everything, and it is always a bugger to peel, we tried a few things to make this easier. For example, you can soak garlic cloves in water overnight, which will make them easier to peel. But my favourite time-saving method is to make confit garlic.
Confit comes from French and literally means to preserve. Confit is a preservation technique to help you prep ahead to build a well-stocked pantry, lower your cooking time, and allow you to enjoy particular flavours even when that vegetable is not in season. Mostly these days it means slow cooking in fat to prolong shelf life. When we confit garlic, the cloves are poached in oil and they transform into sweet and tender morsels. We also get an extra bonus of garlic-infused olive oil 😄
I first made confit garlic in July last year and we loved it so much that we have made confit garlic every week or second week since. It saves us time cooking (and peeling!) and it tastes so good.
Today is Father's Day in Australia. In our family, one tradition is to have liquorice on Father's Day. So first of all, happy Father's Day to all the dads here. And second, if you have a Father's Day tradition, let us know what's yours is.
Here are this week’s recipe suggestions for you to try:
Thai spicy pumpkin coconut soup by our friend Irena Macri
Miso pork and eggplant stir fry — we replaced the pork for tofu when we made this
Super green machine smoothie: baby spinach leaves, banana, honey, yoghurt, and milk of your choice
Confit garlic
3-4 garlic heads
Olive oil
How to make?
Separate the cloves and cut the bottom off (you can keep the cut stem for veggie stock).
Place in a bowl and cover with boiling hot water and leave for a minute, then rinse in cold water until the water is cool enough to touch. This will make it very easy to peel the cloves.
Place the peeled cloves in a small sauce pan, cover with olive oil, and turn on the heat to very low. Let it simmer for about 30 minutes.
Remove from the heat and cool down before transferring the garlic and oil to a jar and refrigerating.
How to use?
We replace garlic in almost any recipe with confit garlic. We only use fresh garlic in recipes that particular call for it, like some Vietnamese and Thai salads.
We also use confit garlic to make garlic pizzas. Just smoosh them to a paste and spread over a pizza base with a little of the garlic oil.
Our meal plan from last week can be found at: https://foodfamily.app/public/meal_plans/f7f04ef5-c19f-478d-8c49-4cc974ce492f
Once again, please let us know if you make any of these recipes, how you found them, what you changed, or just drop us an email to say hi.
Thanks and see you next week,
Elle, Lachlan, M, Ginger, and Edward