Today's recipe is a slight twist on the good old garlic bread. This time I decided to make garlic breads using roasted garlic. Roasting the garlic takes away that bitter harshness that raw garlic has, it's much more soft and sweet. I think it's perfect for slightly more subtle garlic bread that don't just scream "I'm a garlic bread and you will repel people for a week after eating me" but instead tempt you to devour multiple of these tasty breads and savour the soft undertones of garlic and still be able to go to work the next morning.
Roasting the garlic can be done ahead of time, even the day before. I made these for a dinner party recently, and I prepared the garlic butter in the morning, and before dinner all I needed to do was butter slices of bread, cut some mozzarella on top and bake them until golden brown. I haven't added any quantities to the recipe, as one garlic makes plenty of garlic butter (you can keep it in the fridge in a sealed jar for a few days), so you can make as many garlic breads as you need really.
Roast garlic and mozzarella bread:
1 whole garlic
about 100 g butter
slices of bread of your choice (I used a cheese bread for extra cheesiness)
thinly slized mozzarella (or grated would work as well)
The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Wrap the garlic in foil and roast for an hour. Let cool completely. Separate the cloves of garlic. By squeezing the garlic clove, the puree-like roasted flesh will come out of the skin (your hands will have a lovely scent of garlic after doing this, if this doesn't appeal to you, just wear disposable gloves) and mix the garlic with butter. If you use unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt. You can keep the butter in a tightly sealed jar in the fridge for a few days.
When you want to make your bread, preheat oven to 230 degrees. Cut slices of bread of choice and smear with butter (more or less depending on your taste). Top with a slice of mozzarella. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes until golden brown. Serve immediately.
The verdict:
I made these for a dinner party and they all disappeared very quickly. I think that's all I need to say. Are they health food? Of course not. Are they good? Oh yes. Perfect to serve with a tasty soup or as a starter.
You know how Pinterest is full of chicken recipes? When you browse your feed, all you get is chicken recipes. Or is it just me? But why is it that when you go looking for chicken recipes you can't find a single one of them? It's like shopping. If you go for a browse, you find the most amazing things. But just try to go out there looking for a pair of black trousers and you are guaranteed to find nothing. I actually had to look up "chicken recipes" on the find function in Pinterest to find something worth making. And boy am I glad I did. I stumbled upon this recipe from Spicy Southern Kitchen, and it is amazing. Without trying to brag, I'm usually a decent cook and most of what I cook goes down without a problem. But this was just out of this world good!! I was actually going to post another recipe today, but that one got re-scheduled because I just had to share this. That is how good it is!
This recipe is dedicated to by Bestie. I think she would love this. She is a pastaholic. And she really doesn't like onions. I usually never cook anything without onions, so I really notice if they aren't there. It's like a cooking ritual, starting by chopping up that onion and sauteeing it. But this time it was garlic and the wonderful flavour of sun-dried tomatoes that were the stars of this show. As usual, the picture doesn't do the food justice.
Chicken in sun-dried tomato sauce (serves 4):
1 tbsp butter
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp flour
3/4 cups chicken stock
4-5 chopped sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup double cream
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 to 1/2 tsp crushed red peppers
black pepper
2-3 tbsp of oil from the sun-dried tomatoes
4 chicken breasts
cooked pasta
1 cup peas or sweetcorn
The howto:
Finely chop the garlic clove. Melt the butter in a frying pan, cook the garlic until it starts to soften. Add the flour and mix, cook for a minute or so. Add 1/2 cup of the broth, a little bit at a time and mixing thoroughly to avoid any lumps. Add the finely chopped tomatoes, double cream, thyme and peppers and cook for a few minutes. Set aside in a bowl or small saucepan. Clean the pan, add the sun-dried tomato oil and cook the chicken breasts until cooked through (but make sure not to over-cook to avoid them becoming rubbery). Remove the chicken from the pan, add the remaining 1/4 cup of chicken stock, and scrape all the browned goodies from the pan to dissolve in the stock. Add the sauce and mix. Return the chicken to the pan, mix everything and cook until everything is heated thoroughly. Serve with pasta and peas or sweetcorn.
The verdict:
This is without a doubt one of the best chicken recipes ever! I just wanted to eat the sauce with a spoon straight from the pan. Double cream tends to do that... But it's worth every single calorie, I promise you. By a fluke I managed to cook the chicken to perfection, it was cooked through but very moist and juicy. And did I mention the sauce? Garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and just a pinch of heat from the red peppers. Trust me, you have to try this! The sooner the better. I may just make another batch this weekend again. Unless Pinterest pops up with another chicken recipe I want to try. But I find it hard to believe anything can be better than this!
I'm sure you are all familiar with this dilemma. You find a great recipe, but it contains ingredients you don't usually use. However, the recipe looks so great you just have to run off to the grocery store, buying jars of x, y and z. You open all your little jars and cook whatever wonderful thing you were craving. After cooking that recipe, all those jars get pushed to the back of the fridge and won't get used again. Six months later you find them when you are doing a deep cleaning of your fridge, and realise there is mould in every colour of the rainbow growing in your jars.
Last week I made a batch of one of my favourite soup, Moroccan chickpea soup. So I opened a new jar of Harissa paste. And almost showed the jar into the back of the fridge. Then I decided this time I will be using up all that Harissa, not letting it go to waste. After all, it's quite a small jar, so I figured it can't take too many different dishes to use it all up.
I got this recipe from Best Friend, as we were exchanging recipes over lunch. The recipe is from BBC Good Food although I did add some roasted garlic to the recipe. Roasted garlic is absolutely amazing. I know using a whole garlic sounds like too much, but the flavour gets really rounded and much milder after roasting. So you can easily add a whole garlic to the soup. I originally got the idea of combining cauliflower and garlic from this amazing roasted cauliflower soup featured at Avocado Pesto. And it's such a great combo. So I thought it would be nice in this soup as well. The soup is very quick and easy to prepare, perfect to cook on a weeknight after coming home from the gym. Chuck the garlic in the oven and the cauliflower in the pot, let it all cook while taking a shower, and then hit it up with the old blender after drying your hair and dressing in your favourite jammies. Slouch on the couch, watch an episode of Downton Abbey and enjoy a big bowl of hot soup. Maybe with a glass of white wine.
Moroccan spiced cauliflower & almond soup (serves 4):
1 garlic
1 large cauliflower (I used 1.5 medium sized ones)
2 tbsp olive oil plus a drizzle for the garlic
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp cumin
1/2 tbsp coriander
1 tbsp Harissa paste
1 l vegetable or chicken stock (I used chicken)
50 g toasted flaked almonds
One serving contains 223 kcal (15 g fat, 17 g total carbs, 7.6 g protein).
The howto:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Cut the top off the garlic, drizzle with oil and wrap in aluminium foil. Roast for 30-35 minutes, or until soft. Or if you are lazy, do as me, just toss a whole garlic onto a roasting tray, no oil or foil. Meanwhile, separate the cauliflower into florets, and prepare the broth (i.e. turn on the kettle, and mix the hot water with a chicken stock cube). Heat the oil in a soup pot, add spices and Harissa paste and cook for two minutes. Add cauliflower, almonds and stock, and cook until cauliflower is soft, about 20 minutes. When the garlic is done, let it cool until cool enough to handle, and use a fork to remove the garlic cloves from the shells. Add the garlic to the soup and blend to desired consistency. Serve with some Harissa and almond flakes on top.
The verdict:
This soup is a bit more spicy than I would usually like, but in a good way. It not spicy enough to hurt my mouth, but it has a bit of a kick. It's great and warming when you sit in your apartment and look out the window at the rain pouring down outside. The garlic goes great with the kick from the Harissa and the smooth mellow flavour of the cauliflower. Almonds were the part of this recipe that I felt a bit ambiguous about as I'm not a huge fan of almonds in general. But in this recipe the almonds really work well, they make a great contrast with the garlic and Harissa. I think this soup would be great served with a drollop of sour cream or yoghurt, or maybe cheesy garlic bread. I had it with rye bread which was also a great combo, especially when I popped the bits of the rye bread into the soup so that they got all soft and mushy.
This recipe will definitely be a strong contender for favourite cauliflower soup as I'm really into Harissa right now. I don't like really spicy foods especially if they have heat from chilli as I just don't like the flavour of chilli, I like my spicy foods to be a bit on the sweet side. But in Harissa it works perfectly as the chilli is combined with sweeter flavours such as sweet pepper and tomato. So although I will remain a food wimp until the day I die, at least I have found one recipe that lets me pretend I like spicy food.
