(Cooking Titan Conspiracy Revealed)
It's white outside today in Boise and the forecasters are predicting an 80% chance of more whiteness tomorrow.
Not the kind of whiteness that coats the trees and lawns in a bright, soft blanket and not any kind of cultural whiteness (though neither are rare in Boise). Today the sky is just a smooth, featureless span of white.
Imagine you are a spider trying to make a break for it across my kitchen floor only to have your scuttle interrupted by an inverted cottage cheese container. But ... we don't generally eat cottage cheese, so maybe it would be a Greek yogurt cup.
That's what the white is like today in Boise. Like someone has trapped the entire Treasure Valley underneath a food-grade plastic tub.
Cozy, huh?
I should probably segue into talking about bright colorful fruits and vegetables or vitamin D supplements about here, but because this is the grand re-opening post of my blog, I want to talk about something instantly accessible.
Namely, garlic.
I'm not going to post a recipe that uses garlic. I'm sure you have already stumbled upon one of those yourself. There are a few of them out there if you Google long and hard enough.
I'm going to complain about an injustice that involves most recipes that include garlic as an ingredient.
The offending recipes generally begin like this:
"In a large sauté pan over medium heat, add the olive oil. When the oil begins to shimmer, add the onions and garlic and cook until they begin to become soft ..." (Taken from Emeril's Spinach Saute with Garlic and Onions.)
Sound familiar?
Julia is famous for starting her recipes out this way too. It's puzzling why this technique purports to result in such success for them and cause such disappointment among us mere mortals.
The fact that the garlic contains more oil than the onion, and that the dice is generally smaller than the onion, causes the garlic to cook much faster -- often burning before the onion is properly softened.
The good news is that the prevention of burned garlic is easy.
1. Saute your chopped onion until it is just about done.
2. Throw in your chopped garlic and continue to saute everything together for thirty seconds (and no longer than a minute).
3.When you can begin to smell the garlic it's time to get it out of the pan or add the other ingredients, depending on your recipe.
3.When you can begin to smell the garlic it's time to get it out of the pan or add the other ingredients, depending on your recipe.
Try this variation next time and you might be surprised how much better your dish is with out the faint bitterness of burned garlic.
