I have always been a huge fan of garlic. It’s an awesome ingredient that provides a remarkable amount of flavour given its size… it is small but strong! Obviously it’s more potent when raw, and when used for something like pesto or hummus, you need only a tiny bit. After cooking garlic, however, it loses most of it’s kick and becomes much more mellow. So, if you’re making a pasta sauce for example, you might want a decent amount - 3 or 4 cloves perhaps - to sweat with olive oil for the base of the sauce. Roasting garlic increases the mellowing effect even more, and gives it an amazing deep flavour. This is my favourite way to prepare garlic, and it’s perfect for making soup.

Serves 4

Ingredients

  • 500 ml brown chicken stock
  • 1 large onion
  • 300 ml double cream
  • 8 bulbs garlic
  • sea salt
  • 1 bunch chives
  • olive oil
  • cracked black pepper
  • 1 sprig rosemary
  • 1 potato, about 50 g

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 170C. Add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a roasting tray and get it hot. Reserve 3 cloves for the garnish later, then cut the tops off the bulbs of garlic so the tips of the cloves are poking out, then add to the roasting tray along with the rosemary and roast for about 45 minutes until the garlic is completely soft and oozing out of its skins.

  2. Meanwhile finely slice the onion and sweat in a medium pot with olive oil, and a pinch of sea salt. Cook over a medium heat for about 25 minutes until the onion is soft, sweet and slightly caramelised. Peel the potato and finely slice it. Add to the pot and continue to cook, stirring occasionally. Squeeze the garlic out of its skins and add the soft pulp to the pot along with the cream and brown chicken stock. Simmer gently for 20 minutes, then pour everything into a food processor and blend until completely puréed and silky smooth. If it’s a little too thick, add a splash of chicken stock.

  3. To garnish the soup, finely slice the 3 reserved garlic cloves with a sharp knife (or a mandolin, if you have one) and sauté in a little olive oil until they are lightly coloured. Be careful as they will taste bitter if you let them get too dark. Scatter these over the soup along with some finely chopped chives.