This is a post I have long been aching to write.
It is not what one might expect.
Some very few readers of this blog, who actually cook, may be befuddled. That's fine.
You may have been schooled or trained or swayed by accounts of the way to prepare garlic cloves for cooking in various dishes.
Nowadays, everyone treats it as gospel that they should remove the garlic clove skin a certain particular way.
You can find this technique in almost every current book or video, including even Briwa's. Robin Ellis, himself a very good published cook, cooking instructor, as well as a famous actor, follows Marcella in this, I have no doubt.
I just want to discuss, at some length, this method, and describe the drawbacks with it. Try to bear with me for a moment.
So, what technique am I critical of? it is this: most chefs now teach their students to remove the skins of garlic cloves by smashing each of them gently (or quite roughly, I have seen both styles) with the flat of their large chef's knife, after which it is known that the skins can be easily removed....
What does this easy and quick process and skin removal also inadvertently do?
It crushes the oil and juice of the garlic clove out onto the skin, and also onto the cutting board and onto the knife. iI does not leave this oil or juice in the clove itself which they then either slice, or crush in a garlic press.
What happens to that large proportion of garlic oil and juice from a now partially crushed but fully peeled clove of garlic?
It is now unceremoniously discarded, reeking with good oil and juice, with the removed peel!
Granted, some North Italian and French cooks don't want the strong taste of garlic in their sometimes delicate confections.
They often then slice rather than crush the already crushed peeled cloves, to underscore their distaste for the strength of the vegetable they have emasculated.
Anyway, you can imagine what my suggestions to remedy this sad commentary and sad story might be.
Let's just imagine, for a moment that you are an 800 pound gorilla. You dug up an onion, in the jungle. You want, for some reason, to remove its skin, before devouring it.
For this reason, incidentally, because, say, you have some reason (whatever it might be) to remove the onion skin, some professor at BU, or Harvard, wants to legislate for you your human rights.
What do you do, about the skin? Just what Marcella Hazan does, but with your flat palm.
Of course, you succeed, the peel is removed. After all you are an 800 pound gorilla!
Imagine the result, onion juice and oil everywhere...
But you have proven that you are human!
You might thereby, were you a lucky ape, gain entree into the salons of certain primates of Park Avenue.
This post is dedicated to Randy Fertel.
