Garlic Recipes: Garlic Dip, Soup, Ice Cream and More

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Garlic has a long and illustrious history of promoting good health, so you can’t go wrong including this delicious herb in your diet. PHOTO: RICK WEATHERBEE

In my childhood home, garlic was an exotic herb that found its way to us primarily as powder sprinkled modestly over steaks, which were then broiled to a lifeless leather. My mother is a fabulous cook, but in the 1960s, the whole country was flavor-shy, preferring foods like Hot Dog Roll-Ups and pineapple-carrot Jello mold — featuring, inexplicably, neon green lime Jello.

In this regard at least, I’ve outgrown my heritage. I now favor recipes that start out, “Take all the garlic you can find in the neighborhood. Mince ...”

My transition from flavorphobe to garlic maven was gradual — a little garlic bread here, a Caesar salad there. The process received a kick-start years ago when I was a newspaper reporter in New Mexico. A group that called itself the Placitas Garlic Growers’ Consortium invited me to visit them and hear their farm-to-market plans.

The centerpiece of their presentation was an “all-garlic meal” — right down to the the piece de resistance, Garlic Brickle Ice Cream — which might have repelled reporters fainter of stomach but certainly captured my imagination.

What followed was a savory saturnalia, a celebration that satisfied my senses and left me saturated with the pungent scent of this healthful, scrumptious herb.

In other words: I reeked for days.

But it was a good reek — at least to my way of thinking. My husband at the time didn’t see things my way and shunned me until I “got that stench” out of my system. He is no longer with me, but my affection for garlic continues unabated.

I no longer have the menu from that first garlic-suffused meal, but the following are some of my favorite recipes from a variety of sources. I haven’t actually made this garlic ice cream, but once your harvest starts coming in (Planting Garlic), you may have such an abundance you’ll be tempt ed to experiment. Garlic ice cream might never rival Rocky Road, but it will certainly make your dinner guests take notice.

EGGPLANT TAPENADE

Ingredients:

1 medium eggplant
1 can of pitted black olives
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic (or much, much more)
3 or 4 sun-dried tomatoes, rinsed and patted on a paper towel

Instructions:

Pierce eggplant several times with a fork and bake at 350 degrees for at least 45 minutes. When the eggplant is well cooked (it will give slightly when you press on it), remove from the oven and cool. Chop olives lightly in the food processor. Peel the skin from the eggplant and add pulp to the food processor along with the olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. Blend with processor until finely chopped but still minced. Don’t lose your focus or you’ll end up with puréed eggplant goop. Cool and let stand at least an hour. Serve with sliced French bread toast and call it crostini, or just serve with crackers if you don’t want to be high faluting.