To get tender whole cloves of mild garlic to add to dishes, you can roast them, blanch them, deep fry them, and my favorite way: confit them. The French verb confire means to preserve. Originally, confiture meant fruit preserved by poaching slowly in sugar syrup. Over time and by extension, it has come to refer to meat and other non-fruit items preserved by gentle poaching in fat. The resulting confit is stored away from oxygen under fat and if it is cured with salt before being cooked, it will last a very long time without spoiling. Now of course, we all have refrigerators and we no longer confit meat to preserve it, but because we are in love with its flavor and texture.
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| Peeling Garlic |
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| Garlic (rear pan) Under Olive Oil, Ready for the Oven |
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| Garlic (rear pan) Confitted for Two Hours |
I hate to even call this a recipe for garlic confit, because there really is no recipe. After peeling the garlic (the annoying, but necessary part), place it in an ovenproof container and cover it in fat. At the restaurant, we would have used duck fat from the very many ducks that we processed weekly. At home, however, I used olive oil, extra virgin at that. There is no need to use extra virgin olive oil for confit, but I wanted to be able to use the resulting garlic-flavored oil to season future dishes.
The idea is to poach slowly, so I set my oven at 250 degrees, very slow. Cook until the garlic is soft, but still holds together, about two hours.
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