Feel the Clove

Here's a huge pet peeve of mine. Why does every single trained cook on the planet overcook garlic? What's up with that? You've got geniuses with friggin' DEGREES in cooking. They haven't heard of Al Dente? They think he's just about pasta?

Let me tell you how to cook garlic. There's nobody else here who's going to tell you, obviously.

Step one. Get over your 20th century idea that microwave ovens aren't real ovens. I could go on and on about the molecular resonance frequency of H-2-O and how heat is heat AND IT ISN'T NUCLEAR RADIATION and so forth and none of it would ever sink in BUT THE BOTTOM LINE is GET OVER THE IGNORANCE.

There's no better way to cook garlic than this: put an entire head, or bulb, if you prefer to call it that, and stick it in your modern microwavicular oven set on high and "zap" it AS IS unskinned in any way for between 20 and 30 seconds, depending on the size of the head. Little head, 20 seconds, big head, 30 seconds. Unless it's Elephant Garlic, in which case figure it out yourself, I don't eat elephant.

Step two. There's no step two. Separate the cloves, peel them, and eat them. You're done. You'll notice they aren't mushy, the way they are in every restaurant. You'll notice they still have some snap when you bite into them. There's your Al Dente. And the burn isn't completely gone, it's just manageable.

While I'm on the subject a recent study has announced that garlic doesn't really lower cholesterol. The so-called scientists who authored this study based it on an experiment in which they fed a whole bunch of people the equivalent of six cloves of garlic a week. (One a day with a day off "for rest.")

Oh PLEASE. Any serious garlic eater can tell you one clove a day is nothing. It takes a head (or bulb, if you prefer) to really clean your pipes, if you know what I mean, and if you've had a head a day, you know what I mean. These scientists clearly know nothing of the kind, if they think a lousy clove a day is going to make a dent in your grease deposits.

One final observation. If you have difficulty eating garlic, because of its bite, I'll bet it never occurred to you to mince it up and mix it with your raspberry Jello. That would help.