Garlic and Oil
Comments from the author:
I have a thing about garlic. I love to use it in cooking and I also love to store it in oil.
Having been slighty greedy whilst out shopping, I realised that I had way too much Garlic in the house!
Only one thing for it - the Girlie and I sat down to store it in olive oil!
There's nothing too technical involved - all you have to do is peel the cloves and put them in glass jars and then top the jars up with olive oil.
I get most of my glass jars from Vide-Greniers - somehow, their age adds to the charm.
Generally I half fill the jar with garlic cloves, add a few peppercorns and then top up with olive oil. The oil doesn't have to be expensive - it will absorb the garlic taste and, as a result, its quality will improve.
Instead of olive oil, using vinegar is also very good - pickled garlic is an excellent aperitif before a spicy meal.
Below is a gallery of images of the finished products - some of the photos were tastefully posed by the Girlie, who likes that sort of thing!
To see any of the images at a higher resolution, just click on the thumbnail. To close the larger image, click on the X in the top right-hand corner.
The Gallery
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As you may be able to see from the photos, I've added fresh rosemary, thyme and basil to many of the jars - I also added some black olives to one of the jars.
Peppers, as well!
I also took the opportunity to harvest the small chilli peppers that were ready and stored these in olive oil, as well.
This makes the peppers less powerful but gives you a great, spicy olive oil to use in a vinagrette!
After a few months of being stored in olive oil - the peppers become sweet enough to be sliced into a salad or onto a steak.
Flavoured Olive Oil
I also made up a few jugs of flavoured oils for general usage in the kitchen or at the table.
These contained less garlic but more herbs - give them a few months and they'll be blooming luvverly!
Doing this turns a cheap olive oil into something realy quite special - you'd pay a fortune for it in the shops and, as long as you can grown your own herbs and buy the garlic when it is cheap - should only cost you pennies.
These contained less garlic but more herbs - give them a few months and they'll be blooming luvverly!
Epilogue
The garlic that is stored in the olive oil changes as time goes by.
After about a month, the garlic uses some of its pungency and is very useful for your cooking (where you want the meat or fish to retain its original taste rather than being smothered by the taste of garlic.)
After two months - the garlic has mellowed to the extent that it can be used raw (in slivers, on top of a steak, perhaps) or grated into a salad.
After three months, the garlic is tame enough to eat raw - and very nice it is too!
It doesn't seem to change much after three months but hey, in my house it's quite rare that it even lasts that long!
Of course, an important benefit of this process is that the oil takes on a beautiful garlicy (and herb) taste. It's almost worth going through the process for this, in itself.
Try the vinegar and oil that you have stored the garlic in, as a basis for a vinagarette to die for!
