Is garlic a spice? well, probably not but I had to put this somewhere it was easy to find, so just for today garlic is a spice!

You can put garlic in just about anything, although most people would draw the line at desserts, and you can even use it as a vegetable by cooking whole cloves, peeled or unpeeled, and simply serving them as they are. Done properly they have a lovely creamy, nutty flavor that is nothing like the raw smell you get on your hands from peeling them. But here I want to talk about using them as a flavoring.

Personally I never crush garlic in the conventional sense, using a crusher. I chop it. I may bruise it first by thumping it under the flat of a knife blade, but I find the crushers remove too much of the clove and also a good deal of the juice. Well cooked, garlic loses its texture anyway and will blend in easily with your food. In stews there is absolutely no reason why you should not use whole cloves in much the same way as you would use whole baby onions, to which garlic is closely related.

If you have trouble peeling garlic, by the way, there is an easy method. Simply press each clove under your thumb until you hear a distinct ‘crack’. The skin will then just fall away.

photo credit: timsackton

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