Oh, my. Peeling forty cloves of garlic…does that distress you? I’m wandering the aisles at A Southern Season, our local gourmet everything store, where I get the distinct feeling that American cooks don’t want to touch the stinking rose. I find at least 14 peelers and presses, all of which are intended to keep our fingers ever from coming in contact with garlic’s sulphurous cloves.
It’s not hard to peel garlic. You can strip 40 cloves in 10 minutes or less simply by cracking the outer husk with the flat side of a chef’s knife or by pressing the cloves with the heel of your hand. I tend to do the latter, but then I love the pungent smell of garlic and don’t mind it clinging to my fingers. In this recipe raw cloves become sweet and nutty, a near miraculous transformation that requires four hours in a slow oven, giving you plenty of time to go out for coffee, plant some basil and call your brother in Singapore. (Hmmm, it’s three in the morning there. Better not.)
John Thorne’s recipe for Poulet aux Quarantes Gousses d”Ail comes from the Winter 1990 issue of his newsletter, Simple Cooking. For upwards of 20 years, John has been the most original voice in American food writing: opinionated, wry, ruminative, with a brilliant grasp of the way a dish should be made—inspiration born, no doubt, of dogged days at the stove. I became an avid reader when he was holed up in a cabin in Maine, publishing elegantly written and meticulously researched pamphlets such as A Treatise on Onion Soup and Just Another Bowl of Texas Red. As you might suspect, he’s man of lusty appetites with a predilection for down home hearty food. You won’t find recipes for Roasted Monkfish with Pink Grapefruit, Pea Shoots, and Foie Gras in his pages--look for straightforward fare like Cheddarwurst and Potato Soup instead.
As for Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, John traces the peregrinations of this peasant dish through France and Spain to its likely origins in Catalonia—where he also discovers pistache de mouton, leg of mutton prepared with 50 cloves of garlic. He has sensibly tweaked traditional recipes, reducing the olive oil (stewing hens were once leaner), eliminating the flour and paste seal (aluminum foil works really well) and lowering the temperature to produce “very tender, juicy chicken, well-permeated with garlic essence.”
And if you are still dismayed by the notion of peeling so much garlic, he offers this elegant rationale:
“Finally, we are of two minds about peeling the cloves. It is more work for the cook to do this and less fun for the eater, but they are such appealing little morsels, sans chemise…and how else can you get a whole forkful of them? Like already shelled pistachio nuts, this may seem altogether too much of a good thing. But this is a matter of taste, even morals, rather than of technique.”
To serve four
Ingredients:
3-1/2 to 4 pound chicken, cut into serving pieces
Salt and pepper
40 cloves of garlic (about 4 heads)
1 to 2 tablespoons fruity olive oil
A bouquet garni of several sprigs of parsley and a branch of thyme
Chapons [crusts] of country bread, toasted in olive oil
Method:
Preheat oven to 200F. Season the pieces of chicken with salt and pepper. Examine the cloves of garlic. If they are fresh and firm—and if you care to—use them unpeeled. Otherwise, peel them carefully discarding any soft or moldy ones and cutting away any brown spots and assertive green sprouts. Choose a flameproof casserole with a well-fitting lid, just large enough to hold the chicken pieces comfortably. Heat the olive oil in it over medium-high heat and, when it is hot, quickly brown the chicken pieces on all sides. Do this in batches, removing each piece to a platter as soon as it is done. When all the pieces have been browned, put the garlic cloves into the hot oil and sauté these, stirring constantly, for two or three minutes, until they soften begin to brown a little at the edges.
Remove the casserole from the heat and return the chicken pieces, stirring so that they and the garlic cloves are well mixed. Work the bouquet garni down among them, cover the pot tightly with foil, and press on the lid. Cook for four hours. The chicken will be meltingly tender and suffused with the garlic. Serve with fried crusts of bread, which are to be spread with the soft garlic.
Editor’s Note: John is currently offering a set of available back issues of Simple Cooking for $172, a bargain for collectors and anyone who loves to read great food writing. New subscriptions and his most recent book, Home Body, can also be ordered from www.outlawcook.com.
Much of his writing has been collected in three earlier books, all of which are available from www.amazon.com: Simple Cooking; Serious Pig: An American Cook in Search of His Roots; and Pot on the Fire: Further Confessions of a Renegade Cook.