Harsh and Sweet: Double Garlic Cheesy Bread

Sometimes I forget the power of simple ingredients. I get wrapped up in hybrid varieties of greens or purple cauliflower or six blends of curry and don’t concentrate on highlighting one single flavor. Enter garlic.

In all my years of manipulating food, I’ve never roasted garlic. I like that raw, biting garlic flavor instead of the mellow, sweet roasted nature. But while roasting tomatoes for soup, I threw a head of garlic into the oven.

Bennett likes how garlic softens after a long time in high heat and bonus points – it’s easily spreadable.

I cut off just a nip of the top, exposing the garlic while leaving the cloves in its house. I already tore off the papery outer skin. Before wrapping the entire head in aluminum, I slathered oil on the garlic’s cut side. It sat in a 400° oven for about 35-40 minutes.

After resting for a few minutes, I squeezed 5 cloves into a bowl and mashed them with goat cheese, olive oil, salt and pepper. Once everything all creamed together, I stirred in chopped parsley.

Now this tasted fine on its own. But because I need more of that harsh garlicness, I used the bits I cut off and rubbed them on toasted rosemary bread, which is a pretty cool technique because the garlic just melts into the bread.

I then quickly spread the goat cheese mixture on the bread and served with tomato soup.