garlic confit - les halles

Man this is easy. I'm talking easy as ABC, 123 and pie. In fact, I can't believe I'm even doing a blog post about it. Still interested in making this garlic confit for dummies? Read on my friends...

Garlic confit is a great condiment and known as a "lifesaver" in Chef Keller's ad hoc. It has a sweet, creamy and nutty flavor acting as a perfect accompaniment to many dishes. Chicken or fish? Why yes! I'll have some garlic confit with that. Perfect for salad dressings, pasta or heck - I just spread it on a piece of toast! Seeing the trend here? You can use this on pretty much anything.

(unpeeled garlic cloves, thyme, salt, olive oil)

Most of the recipes that you find online or in books (like say...that ad hoc cookbook that you have over there. You DO have a copy already...right?) call for cooking the garlic in olive oil on the stove until the garlic becomes tender and fragrant. The aroma is the great thing about vegetables. It acts as a timer - it tells you when it's ready. When that fragrant smell permeates throughout your kitchen (or room in my case) it's time for you to get off your ass and check how it's doing. If you use the stove top method, you have an additional bonus - you get garlic infused oil. Awesome right?

(it actually looks like a head of garlic...no?)

Tony's method is easy. You wrap everything in aluminum foil, toss it in a 350 degrees F oven for 30 minutes and let it cool down before squeezing out essentially liquid gold. The Les Halles cookbook adds a sprig of thyme to the recipe and it adds a subtle, somewhat fresh aroma to the garlic confit. For this method, use a tablespoon of oil per head of garlic.

(just squeeze it out...it's not rocket science)

If you bought a container full of already peeled garlic from your Asian grocery (it's a lot of damn garlic, enough to get a Frenchman excited), it's a great way to use some of that up. Your garlic confit in oil will last up to 1 week in the fridge but I seriously doubt it'll last that long. So what are you waiting for? Throw some garlic in the oven and finish watching tonight's Top Chef! It'll be done by the time this episode is done!

(garlic confit aftermath)