Garlic Supper Club: Appetizers & Drinks
Here are the recipes for the opening round of the Supper Club meal we hosted two Saturdays ago.
Vodka with Blood Orange Juice
Ketel 1 [not charged to Supper Club tab]
Stirrings Blood Orange Juice Martini Mix
xhollydayx really wanted to have some sort of cocktail with blood orange juice. She was imagining some sort of vampire connection - blood & garlic. Unfortunately, we are apparently in the wrong season for blood orange juice, as none of the stores we tried had any of it or even blood oranges that we could have juiced. We were resigned to using some sort of citrus juice, but when we made our final stop at Rozi's Wine House she happened to notice a large bottle of it on the shelf. My wife expertly mixed it with vodka and served them up in the martini glasses that gieves was kind enough to lend us for the evening. The resulting drink was quite sweet with a pleasant kick.
Roasted Garlic
One head of garlic.
Olive oil.
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Peel away the outer layers of the garlic bulb skin, leaving the skins of the individual cloves intact. Using a knife, cut off 1/4 to a 1/2 inch of the top of cloves, exposing the individual cloves of garlic.
3. Place the garlic heads in a baking pan; muffin pans work well for this purpose. Drizzle a couple teaspoons of olive oil over each head, using your fingers to make sure the garlic head is well coated. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 400°F for 30-35 minutes, or until the cloves feel soft when pressed.
4. Allow the garlic to cool enough so you can touch it without burning yourself. Use a small small knife cut the skin slightly around each clove. Use a cocktail fork or your fingers to pull or squeeze the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins.
There are a host of recipes online for this; we used this one. Be careful squeezing the garlic out of the wrapper; juice can spray everywhere, and it stains.
In any event, we made a triple batch (3 heads of garlic) in our small corning ware as a starter. I feel that 30-35 minutes was a little too long; 25 was plenty. It tasted delicious, with the nutty flavor that roasted garlic has.
Roasted Garlic Sourdough Bread
Purchased from Michelle's Bakery at the West Side Market. We used two loaves and served them without adornment. They had entire cloves of garlic scattered throughout them.
Black Mountain Cheese
We purchased one pound of this cheese from The Cheese Shop, our favorite purveyors of cheese. It was divided on to three plates and spread around the table. Earlier taste tests had shown that this soft cheddar cheese had a definite tinge of garlic, although when paired with the bread and roasted garlic the flavor was nigh overwhelmed and hard to detect. It was still very good.
Heads of Garlic Used So Far: Three.
The cheese, roasted garlic and bread paired together very nicely and more than served to fill the time until the soup course was ready to serve. More on that tomorrow.
EDIT - Courtesy of gieves, we have now have photos! Every dish heading should be a photo link; let me know if I screwed it up.
Vodka with Blood Orange Juice
Ketel 1 [not charged to Supper Club tab]
Stirrings Blood Orange Juice Martini Mix
xhollydayx really wanted to have some sort of cocktail with blood orange juice. She was imagining some sort of vampire connection - blood & garlic. Unfortunately, we are apparently in the wrong season for blood orange juice, as none of the stores we tried had any of it or even blood oranges that we could have juiced. We were resigned to using some sort of citrus juice, but when we made our final stop at Rozi's Wine House she happened to notice a large bottle of it on the shelf. My wife expertly mixed it with vodka and served them up in the martini glasses that gieves was kind enough to lend us for the evening. The resulting drink was quite sweet with a pleasant kick.
Roasted Garlic
One head of garlic.
Olive oil.
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Peel away the outer layers of the garlic bulb skin, leaving the skins of the individual cloves intact. Using a knife, cut off 1/4 to a 1/2 inch of the top of cloves, exposing the individual cloves of garlic.
3. Place the garlic heads in a baking pan; muffin pans work well for this purpose. Drizzle a couple teaspoons of olive oil over each head, using your fingers to make sure the garlic head is well coated. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 400°F for 30-35 minutes, or until the cloves feel soft when pressed.
4. Allow the garlic to cool enough so you can touch it without burning yourself. Use a small small knife cut the skin slightly around each clove. Use a cocktail fork or your fingers to pull or squeeze the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins.
There are a host of recipes online for this; we used this one. Be careful squeezing the garlic out of the wrapper; juice can spray everywhere, and it stains.
In any event, we made a triple batch (3 heads of garlic) in our small corning ware as a starter. I feel that 30-35 minutes was a little too long; 25 was plenty. It tasted delicious, with the nutty flavor that roasted garlic has.
Roasted Garlic Sourdough Bread
Purchased from Michelle's Bakery at the West Side Market. We used two loaves and served them without adornment. They had entire cloves of garlic scattered throughout them.
Black Mountain Cheese
We purchased one pound of this cheese from The Cheese Shop, our favorite purveyors of cheese. It was divided on to three plates and spread around the table. Earlier taste tests had shown that this soft cheddar cheese had a definite tinge of garlic, although when paired with the bread and roasted garlic the flavor was nigh overwhelmed and hard to detect. It was still very good.
Heads of Garlic Used So Far: Three.
The cheese, roasted garlic and bread paired together very nicely and more than served to fill the time until the soup course was ready to serve. More on that tomorrow.
EDIT - Courtesy of gieves, we have now have photos! Every dish heading should be a photo link; let me know if I screwed it up.