Oh, you fancy, huh?

Yea, I decided to get fancy for you.  So fancy in fact, that I made you something that requires a French accent to say and uses over-priced, organic ingredients from Whole Foods… that fancy.  It all started when mi madre asked me to make an appetizer for Thanksgiving.  Simple, right?  Ha.  It began simply enough… with a craving for grilled cheese.  Sounds easy enough, so easy, that I felt like I should probably fancy them up a bit.  Well “fancy it up a bit,” ended up meaning peeling 140 garlic cloves by hand at midnight when I still had to finish my laundry, pack for the weekend, and get up to go to work the next morning.  Story of my life.

You know what, though?  It was worth it.  Garlic confit is sent straight from heaven and meant for just about everything you put in your mouth besides your desert and your toothbrush.  If you’re not out of your mind, like me, you can make a smaller batch.

Garlic Confit 

Ingredients:

4 C. Olive Oil
4 C. Garlic Cloves

Instructions:

Ice water. It’s that simple.

Then you break apart like 6 garlic heads into like a gazillion cloves.  It’s 140, but at 140, it might as well be a gazillion.

Sanity Check: At this point I SHOULD have thought to myself… “Hmmm, I don’t need very much of this…” NOPE!  Full steam ahead!

Get your water boiling.

Then put your unpeeled garlic into a sieve and blanche it in your boiling water for 30 seconds.

To keep the garlic from cooking any further, put the sieve in your ice water and allow the garlic to cool.

Here’s what will keep you up all night… the blanching makes the garlic easier to peel (which you need to do now), but if there are 140 of those little buggers, you’re going to need to get comfy.

As I’ve demonstrated here- pour yourself a glass of wine.

There’s just nothing prettier than a big pile o’ garlic!

Back in the pot it goes!

… as does the olive oil…

This should hang out on a low boil, around 200 degrees, for an hour on your stove.

Your house will smell like garlic.  This smelled AMAZING to me.  But you should know, your roommates will not be pleased.  You’ve been warned.

Remove any remaining peels that have floated to the top during the boiling, but other than that, you’re done!

Your garlic will be soft and spreadable, the olive oil will be saturated with garlic flavor, and thus you should add this to everything.  Every.  Thing.  I added this to homemade hummus, made arugala and garlic confit sandwichs, basted chicken, made a pasta sauce… the list could go on and on.  Save the combo for 10 days in the refrigerator.  After 10 days you should think about trashing the cloves, but you can save the remaining olive oil and keep using that!

Mangia!