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I'm currently down with some kind of sinus issue, so I may be feeling more salty than I have any right to, but here I am up at 4 in the morning, and getting pressed about garlic. What am I talking about? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnZ_70XyVAk So I was watching these three Italian chefs get pressed (lol) about garlic going into carbonara. I understand the one argument of "authentic is bullshit, just make food that tastes good." In fact, it's one of the cornerstones of how I teach cooking: take what the recipe is, and adapt it to what you have on hand to make it work. I know of Indian mothers in the midwest who noticed that the oven is a rather handy tool to have, the crockpot is an easy way to long-stew meats, and that they don't have to do everything painstakingly by hand like their grandmothers did, so they buy a drat food processor. I've seen some odd versions of classic Indian dishes that could (and did!) quite cheerfully pass in a church potluck. I know we all make fun of the midwest, but there are plenty of people who just enjoy good tasting food, and I think we should let them live their best lives. I'm rambling. Point is, I'm not one to sit on a throne of authenticity and tell someone that you /must/ make a thing a certain way. However, I am a proponent of not everything goes in everything. There's a concept in South Indian food that you don't add like with like. So if I add yoghurt to something, adding ghee would be considered gross. If you watch the video, the Italian dudes were getting /really/ pressed when Babish made fresh pasta with eggs. "You can't do eggs on eggs!" It's the same with how I was taught to combine things. If you're buttering your bread for a sandwich, you don't put the cheese directly onto the buttered bread. You add a layer of sliced onion atop the buttered bread, and then you're good to go with the cheese. It's why, for the longest time, when I was still eating dairy, I'd order my grilled cheese with sliced tomato in the middle. Something about the buttered bread, and cheese in the middle just made me deeply uncomfortable. So when I see things like, "Oh, I like _________ with everything," I do tend to get a bit pressed. Butter does /not/ make everything better. There are times when you want to taste the thing as it is, and let it be that thing. If I've spent the past hour, perfectly toasting the spices, stewing the tomato, chopping the cilantro, grinding my spice mix, frying the whole spices, boiling daal, shelling, soaking, and separating out the tamarind pulp, crushing black pepper in the mortar and pestle, and crafting a lovely, fragrant, beautiful rasam, to be served over rice that's just this side of mushy, to be mixed with the rasam to make this creamy tasting lovely comforting dish, I'd want you to enjoy it as is. I'd be horrified if you decided that "butter makes everything better" and threw a lump of butter in there. If I made some slapdash version with lemon juice instead of fresh tamarind pulp (and not the first pressing, but the third), barely cooked tomato instead of properly stewed, curry leaves instead of cilantro, and a quick tarka with store bought spice blend? Go nuts. Throw on whatever you like. At that point, it's on par with ramen, and nobody cares. The point is, no, you shouldn't add garlic to all the things. No, you shouldn't add Sriracha to everything. Sometimes, it's OK to let a food be what it is, and balance it out with the other things you're eating. There's been this constant thing about "just triple the garlic". And I get it. A lot of recipes are written with a homeopathic amount of spices that one adds from the jar you've had since the Nixon era. But sometimes, a recipe calls for one clove of garlic, because you're not meant to be bludgeoned over the head with garlic. The garlic is not meant to be the focus. AND I LIKE GARLIC! I will frequently add it in two stages. First to the oil, so I get that toasty, roasty garlic taste. Then, midway through cooking, I'll add a bit (and I really do mean a bit; we're talking maybe a half clove or so) of raw chopped garlic, so I get that sharp, pungent taste. The combination of the two harmonises nicely, in my opinion. But there are many many dishes to which garlic doesn't quite "go", if that makes sense. I was chatting with a friend about making a green beans dish we make in South India. It's finely chopped green beans (you cut them into circles, not long pieces), mustard seed, urad daal, asafoetida, and coconut (optional). I like to use peanut oil, but my sister-in-law prefers the taste of sesame oil. My mother and aunt like to add dried red chilies to the tarka, but they like things on the spicier side. My sister-in-law will add whole dried red chilies to the tarka, but that's because my brother also likes really spicy, and he enjoys eating the fried red chilie with the rest of his meal. But basically, that's the long and short of that dish. The green beans are such a pain in the rear end to prepare (topping and tailing them, then painstakingly chopping those fuckers crosswise, and evenly becomes a chore not relished by many) that the dish itself comes together in zero time. You heat the oil in a skillet, and do a bog standard tarka. Mustard seeds in, they pop. Add urad daal. Add the asafoetida. Add green beans. Stir. Salt lightly. While that's going, nuke a bit of frozen coconut (basically every Indian housewife buys frozen grated coconut because nobody ever uses a full one anymore). When the green beans are done cooking 2 minutes later, add the coconut. My sister-in-law and mother both like their green beans cooked until soft, so they go for like 5 minutes rather than my 2. But the point is, once you've done all that, you're pretty much set. My friend asked me, "Yes, but what masalas do you put?" Typically, in North Indian food, a dish is enhanced by some kind of mixed spice. You lightly toast a few spices, and then grind it with ginger, garlic, onion, tomato, or any other various combinations, and add it to the frying onions. Or, you lightly toast some spices, grind them to a powder, and finish the dish with it. Or, you lightly toast some spices, crush them, and finish the dish. OR, you add some pre-ground spices to whatever's cooking on the stove. The point is, to a Northerner, they're waiting for that thing that finishes everything. Much like literally everyone in that video, they're waiting for "OK so when do I add the garlic?" And in the case of the green beans (and apparently the carbonara), you never add it.
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Mar 10, 2019 09:34
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 14:25 |
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Conversely, people tend to think you have to add things to garlic. Wrong. You can just eat garlic. If you have sinus issues try eating garlic. It burns (if you eat it raw, I mean) so you'll have to adjust to that, but it's delicious. If you're wimpy you can roast it first, but I don't think that will help out with your sinuses.
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Mar 10, 2019 13:19
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The flip side is that garlic is one of the few aromatics that is available literally everywhere, even in frozen wastelands like Antarctica and the Midwest, and it tends to be dirt cheap. Unless you're in Antarctica.
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Mar 10, 2019 14:28
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dino. posted:But sometimes, a recipe calls for one clove of garlic, because you're not meant to be bludgeoned over the head with garlic. The garlic is not meant to be the focus. They're... not good.
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Mar 10, 2019 14:43
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i put 1 clove of garlic in a pot of leek and potato soup once and it ruined it 
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Mar 10, 2019 15:09
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I'm not eating a raw garlic. I'm not congested, just dripping. So I can breathe just fine, but have to blow my nose a lot. It hasn't been this bad since coke weekends. Cripes. @Coasterphreak: It is, as is onion. Thank gently caress for onion. There's a ton of TamBram stuff that doesn't call for it, and that's fine, but when a dish does call for it, I'm all in. In the suburban hellscapes that have the options of Walmart (which is the GOOD option) or some weird off the highway dodgy petrol station that has (for some reason) what looks to be a full on grocery store attached (and in one case, an Indian buffet; was the best Indian food I'd ever had outside of India. Was some mom and pop couple that owned, ran, and lived in that place.), I can generally get onion. "But if you want like that fancy green onions we'll have to go to Walmart. Isn't it just garnish anyway? I don't mind if it's not pretty."  And if it's /a/ grocery store (and not connected to the petrol station), they'll generally have some sort of seasoning that you can use. I used to think you can't overdo onion. Whooof. I don't know what I was thinking, but those potatoes were Not. Good. @Whalley: We did this with mashed potatoes. I was with a "more is more" type friend. Everything was sorted. They were fluffy, and creamy, and ever so good. I already had some stamppot greens in the fridge for leftovers breakfast. "Hey Dino how much garlic do you add?" "As much as you like." "OK." That was Not. Good.
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Mar 10, 2019 15:35
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dino. posted:I'm not eating a raw garlic. I'm not congested, just dripping. So I can breathe just fine, but have to blow my nose a lot. It hasn't been this bad since coke weekends. Cripes. Raspberry Zinger Tea and sudafed my friend.
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Mar 10, 2019 20:23
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Or black tea, whiskey, and honey. Hot toddies are a cure-all. As a born and bred Midwesterner, I will never get over all the people who've never been here and think that all we know how to cook is Hot Dish.  I mean, yes, sometimes comfort food is ground beef and cream of mushroom soup based, but that's all recipes mostly born out of poverty in our grandparents' day.
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Mar 10, 2019 21:07
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I went to Minneapolis and had some of the most imaginative, delicious vegan food I’ve had. And I’ve taken vegan food trips to Toronto, New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Montreal, and many more that I’ve lost count of. Lockport, IL has a raw vegan place that does out of this world food, and I hate eating raw. Honestly, the flyover states would never be a choice for me to live in, but I’m more than happy to eat there. Heck, even that Texas caviar that shows up at literally every summer potluck is vegan and soooo good. I’ve had versions with black eyed peas, black beans, bell peppers of various types rather than tomato, and loved all of them.
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Mar 11, 2019 00:53
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I once put an entire head of garlic into a bowl of mashed potatoes. In my defense, I was like twelve.
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Mar 11, 2019 11:16
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Coasterphreak posted:I once put an entire head of garlic into a bowl of mashed potatoes. Good lord. Threw it out, or made soup?
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Mar 11, 2019 19:40
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I put entire cloves into pasta I make for the family. I also use way to much hotsauce and chilis when I cook. I'll either reek of garlic or I'm covered in snot running down my face because I'm an idiot and dumped a bottle of El Yucka sauce in some rice. My taste buds are hosed.
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Mar 11, 2019 20:55
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ShortyMR.CAT posted:I put entire cloves into pasta I make for the family. I also use way to much hotsauce and chilis when I cook. I'll either reek of garlic or I'm covered in snot running down my face because I'm an idiot and dumped a bottle of El Yucka sauce in some rice. My taste buds are hosed. Eeek. The family doesn’t complain do they?
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Mar 12, 2019 16:09
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I will say that once I got my first container of asafoetida, I found myself rethinking how I used garlic. I had that described to me as "an Indian garlic alternative" and it's super not that but the way it pumps up every other spice made me literally sit down and reconsider how I use fragrant spices in general - which turned into realizing half the dishes I was making, I was drowning out the flavors I wanted and replacing them with nothing but garlic/chilies/etc. Now I'm still using garlic all the fuckin' time, but if I'm not loving up a batch of pickles I'm at least doing it intentionally as an assisting flavor. Or I'm just straight up making something like garlic soup.
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Mar 12, 2019 16:28
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kenji taught me that it's FINE to put a whole head of garlic into something as long as you crush some of it, slice some of it and mince some of it and add it in stages to build a layered garlic flavor
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Mar 12, 2019 17:32
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dino. posted:Eeek. The family doesn’t complain do they? Yes, yes they do. I'm much more subdued when I cook for other people, but when I'm alone in the kitchen? All hell breaks loose. Get ready for the spiciest, garlicy, lasagna you'll ever have. Also onions, a whole onion in every dish.
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Mar 12, 2019 17:59
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Thats a nice speech but Im still putting extra garlic in
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Mar 12, 2019 23:01
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I add double the garlic to anything that needs garlic. And secret aardvark to anything else.
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Mar 13, 2019 02:22
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I'm not saying don't cook the way you want to! Please, by all means, do! This was the fevered postings of a seriously hosed up brain. But I do get the point that adding X to everything doesn't always work out. For years, I was very in that kitchen sink phase, where if it didn't have garlic, onion, ginger, curry leaf, turmeric, cumin, coriander, mustard seed, and asafoetida, it was a fail of a recipe. But then I saw that the dishes were starting to taste very same-y. If you're doing one thing and that's the whole dish? Throw the kitchen sink at it. It's mostly for those meals where you have multiple dishes, where the contrast is nice to have. If I just got done making a lemon rice, I'm not going to serve it with a salad that's heavy in lemon. It'd start heading into taste fatigue territory.
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Mar 13, 2019 03:43
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dino. posted:Good lord. Threw it out, or made soup? It went in the trash, it was completely inedible and I didn't have anywhere near enough cooking skill to figure out how to repurpose it.
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Mar 13, 2019 03:57
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I agree that throwing garlic into everything can be a crutch for "I want it to have flavor" that maybe just learning how to properly salt a dish can cover. That said, when you actually want garlic flavor, you can control how face-melting it gets by limiting the amount of allicin created as you process the cloves. Serious Eats has a couple of articles on how pungent and hot garlic gets based on the method used to chop/mince/puree it. https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/01/how-to-mince-chop-garlic-microplane-vs-garlic-press.html ... and then there's a really fun trick for taming the heat of garlic while getting flavor ... blending it, skin-on, in acid (lemon juice in this particular recipe). https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/03/the-food-lab-how-to-make-great-hummus.html
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Mar 13, 2019 19:24
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I envy upbringing in households with lots of spice. I grew up with garlic, admittedly my parents were not scared of garlic, but I still am at a loss with most Indian/SEA spices since I never had them until my brother and I went off to college and brought back desires to eat exotic things like sushi. They've since become a lot better and weirdly enough lean heavily into Thai wrt lemongrass, garlic (lol), and even some chili while I'm obviously ignorant of Thai cuisine. Garlic was what a non-bland dish was once upon a time. I'll never say no to more garlic. I've thrown a head of garlic in mashed potatoes and it would have never occurred to me that it was too much if not for this thread. Now I tend to put hot sauce on everything I can, but there're definitely dishes that it does not help.
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Mar 15, 2019 21:34
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What got me to this point was my big brother. I love him with all my heart, but dear god that man does not know when to stop. There is no such thing as "this is enough". If he's gonna eat something he's enjoying, he's going to overeat that thing he's enjoying. To the point of he's in physical pain afterwards, because he ate entirely too much of it. The same goes for the cooking. If he's gonna add spices to a thing, he's gonna add entirely too many, and in quantities where the spices are adding actual texture to the dish. Yes, the Indians use a lot of spices. But we don't like to overuse them. Some dishes call for one combination, and other dishes call for a different one. Overdo any of them, and you're looking at a disaster. Add too many of the wrong spices, and it's not going to taste like it should. This especially becomes a thing when you're aiming for South Indian food. Some dishes call for only two spices: mustard seed and urad daal. AND NOTHING MORE. Because the other dishes on the menu will have different spices. For example, the potatoes will be the mustard seed and urad daal. The pongal will be cumin seeds and asafoetida. The salad will have no spices at all, and some lime juice. The slow cooked veg will have fenugreek seed. Combine all those dishes together, and you've taken a walk around your masala dabba. But if you follow that "MORE GARLIC" nonsense, you'd have added every spice to every dish, and now everything tastes the same. What's the point?
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Mar 16, 2019 12:46
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dino. posted:
I saw this video several months ago. If you want to wtf a little watch their carbonara recipe video through to the end https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elq1UYbJ-JQ
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Mar 18, 2019 07:17
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I agree with the OP about the proper spices and quantities working best - I've had aloo gobi a few times in mediocre restaurants and it always had lots of sauce and garam masala and so forth, and I liked it okay but it was just kind of generic Indian food. I cooked a version that just had small amounts of ginger/garlic paste, cumin seed, turmeric, coriander and green chiles, ate it with homemade chapatis and it blew my mind that potatoes and cauliflower could taste like that. Also, I'm sick of garlic after stuffing myself with it for years. It may have something to do with the Korean-style pickled sweet garlic I made and then ate ten cloves of last week and then farted out death clouds continuously for eighteen hours.
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Mar 24, 2019 15:45
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Maybe my taste buds are hosed, but I love putting a ton of garlic in every dish 
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Mar 24, 2019 22:47
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My enjoyment of Indian food, and cooking in general, has also evolved toward elegance rather than heavy handedness. I'll use two or three spices in moderation (not 1/4 tsp stuff but I mean the right amount instead of mouthfuls of seeds) and marvel at the flavor, as compared to a few years ago when I'd throw a quarter cup of cumin in some masala or other and call it good. Restraint can be more effective than abandon.
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Apr 3, 2019 07:20
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