Recipe: Jean Havoc's "Why Can't I Get A Date?" Triple-Garlic Pasta Jean Havoc's "Why Can't I Get A Date?" Triple-Garlic Pasta
First things first: Jean isn't so dumb that he doesn't realize that eating this before taking a woman out on the town is A Bad Idea. The name came up like this: he made it one time for Breda, who took one whiff (and one bite) and said, "Fuck, man, you eat like this and you wonder why you can't pick up chicks?" And the name stuck. It's one of his favorite things to serve to friends precisely because it gives you unholy dragonbreath. If you all reek of garlic, none of you are likely to be offended by the others.
The genesis of the dish is this: Jean grew up on a farm, with a farm's rotation of chores. Mrs. Havoc declared early in her marriage that, just because she'd borne four sons and no daughters, she was not going to do all the cooking, laundering, mending, canning, and so on -- 'women's tasks' or otherwise. So cooking dinner for the family (and the hired help, and the cousins visiting to help get the apple harvest in, and Uncle Samuel who's here about loaning his bull for stud, and...) made it onto the chore rotation... and young Jean Havoc discovered two things: one, he was pretty good at it -- and two, putting increasing amounts of pungent ingredients in a food is a great way to establish your machismo with your two older brothers and many older cousins.
Epic Flaming Death Stew met its demise at the say-so of his older relatives, but Triple-Garlic Pasta was a surprise hit -- despite calling for more than one head of garlic per person -- and, because it required few and cheap ingredients and not much prep time, it stayed in his repertoire for years after he finally left the farm to join the army. And (lingering machismo here) he has made a point to serve it to all of his co-workers at one time or another, to see how they handle the garlic overload. Mustang privately thinks the dish is misnamed; indeed, with the right kind of girl, Jean could do quite well by serving it to her.
(This is not a garlic dish for the faint-hearted. This is a garlic dish for people who love garlic with an unholy fire; it's kin to those 'Chicken and 40 Garlic' dishes where garlic overload is the whole point. Be warned!)
For 2 servings (scales up well):
2 1/2 heads of garlic
4 tbsp neutral-flavored vegetable oil (don't worry, you won't consume all of it!)
2 tbsp olive oil (this is a good time to use the nice, extra-virgin kind, if you have it)
1/4 cup hard cheese, grated (parmesan and its kin work well, as does myzithra -- or a combination of the two)
black pepper
a splash of liquid (juice of half a lemon or a couple of tablespoons white wine work well, but water is perfectly acceptable in a pinch)
1/2 to 3/4 lb pasta of your choice (the sauce is thick and smooth enough to cling to strand noodles like spaghetti, but Jean favors pastas with interesting shapes, which work well too)
First, roast the garlic. This can be done in advance of cooking -- up to a couple of days before -- and it's not a bad idea to do it along with some other cooking, so you don't have to fire up the oven just for the garlic. Anyway, take two of the heads of garlic and peel off the papery stuff on the outside, but don't break apart the cloves. Then take a knife and whack off about the first, oh, half inch to an inch of the tops -- so you take the point off. Put them on a big-ish piece of foil, drizzle 2 tbsp of the neutral vegetable oil over the top, and pop them in the oven. You can cook them anywhere from 300F to 400F (which is why garlic's nice to roast when you're baking something else at the same time), but if you're just making the garlic, set the oven to 350F. Let it cook for an hour, pull the garlic packet out, and let it cool off.
When the garlic is cool enough to handle (more or less -- depends how picky you are about scorched fingers), squeeze it into a bowl. What'll happen is this: the garlic will come out of the papery clove skins like toothpaste out of a tube. (Nice image, yeah?) You want to squeeze out as much garlic from the two roasted heads as you can. If you get any of the papery bits in the bowl with the smushed roasted garlic, just fish them back out again.
When the garlic is pretty well squeezed out, throw away the husks. Use a fork to mash and stir the garlic until you've got a more or less smooth paste, then add the olive oil (the good stuff this time), the grated hard cheese, and some pepper.
This is a good time to put the water on for the pasta.
Let the garlic mash alone for a bit, and turn your attention to the remaining half-head of garlic. Pry off some cloves (two to four, depending on how plump they are) and slice them fairly thinly. Then, in a small frying pan, heat up the remaining neutral vegetable oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot but not smoking, throw in the slivered garlic, and let it cook, stirring and flipping more or less constantly, until the garlic is a light, toasty brown. Be very careful with this! Toasted garlic tastes great. Burned garlic tastes vile. When it's a nice toasty brown, fish it out with a fork onto some paper towels to drain.
When the pasta water boils, go ahead and cook the pasta.
Now, go back to your bowl of garlic-cheese-oil mush. You're going to add even more garlic -- this is garlic #3, after the roasted garlic heads and the toasted garlic chips -- and this time you're going to add it raw. This is where even the garlic lovers grow faint of heart, because minced raw garlic packs a punch. So go easy the first time. Start with one clove (hell, if you're worried, start with half a clove), mince it good, and taste the mash. If it doesn't sting too much, you might go to two. Probably not more than that, unless you're afraid of vampires. Finally, add the splash of liquid (lemon juice, white wine, water, whatever) and stir really well, until it's all smooth.
Now listen to the radio until the pasta is done.
When the pasta is done, drain it, put it in a serving bowl (or back in the pot, if you're lazy like me), and add the sauce on top. Mix very well. It won't look like very much sauce. Trust me, with this recipe, you don't need very much sauce. Just get everything coated. Top each serving with a smidge more grated cheese, and the garlic chips. (If the garlic chips look too daunting -- and they might -- you can chop 'em up until they're about bacon-bit sized, and top with that instead.)
Serve hot. It's nice with bread or a light salad, and a hearty beer or a red wine that can stand up to it.