Cooking with Black Garlic
Cooking with new and interesting ingredients is something that secretly excites me. Sometimes things get a little mundane and you end up expecting flavors before the final product is even off of the stove. Let’s be honest, we all can agree we like (good) surprises.
I love savory food. Especially when using bold and daring flavors such as garlic, citrus and exotic spices. Something I’ve never tried (but always wanted to cook with) is black garlic. Black garlic is typically sweeter than regular garlic. Fermented and aged for a month under high temperatures (which is where it receives it’s darker color) the process makes the garlic super jelly like. It contains nearly 2x the antioxidants as regular garlic. Is nearly odor free and can be snacked on (trust me I ate two cloves immediately lol). Also, did I mention it has a shelf life of up to 6months, score!
The perks definitely caught my attention, but locating it was the tricky part. Finally, a grocery store gem in Los Angeles called Melissa’s had it and I almost lost it! When it came next day ground and carefully packaged I ran to the grocery store to see what I could make to pull the full buttery sweet profile from it; a white fish, was the perfect idea. I decided to pair it with a cajun crab mash and steamed asparagus. Although this sounds fancy it’s a pretty simple meal and quite inexpensive. Promise.
So lets get to it!
Ingredients: (serves 3-4)
- 4 filets of white fish (I used cod)
- 1lb of crab (king crab)
- 1/2 white potatoes
- 1 bunch of asparagus
- fresh Italian parsley
- fresh dill
- 1 cup of milk
- 1 stick of salted butter
- spices: cajun pepper, salt, onion powder, blackening spice, red pepper flakes, italian seasoning, turmeric.
Directions:
- Boil water for your potatoes, this is the lengthiest process and it only takes 20min total cooking time. See already off to a good start!
- While your water/ potatoes are boiling, start to take the crab meat of out of the shell, do not cook as you will towards the end. (if the shells are too hard run them under warm water to soften them).
- In a sauté pan place black garlic and a table spoon of butter coating the entire surface of the pan on medium heat. Once heated and melted, place you fish filets to cook. Sprinkle the top with onion powder, pepper, salt and red pepper flakes. Add a 1/2 cup of water and cover, fish cooks fairly fast so try not to over heat or dry it out.
- Back to your mash! Empty the water from your potatoes. To ensure they’re ready, stick a fork in it. If it goes through easily then they are ready to be mashed. In the same pan add your milk, 1/3-1/2 stick of butter, crab, cajun spice, pepper and salt. mix ingredients well over medium low heat and let simmer stirring occasionally.
- In a small sauté pan combine water and a small amount of olive oil set to boil and add you asparagus to steam with a few dashes of italian seasoning. This shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes. To know they’re ready they will become bright green and have a crisp soft texture, not a crunch.
- For the sauce I used the rest of the butter, melted, wisked in 1/4 cup of milk, 1/4 cup of flour and 1 table spoon of tumeric. I placed the sauce in the freezer to thicken, should be ready to go in about a minute or two once the place is done. This sauce compliments the sweet buttery flavor of the fish and creates the perfect addition to the cajun spiced crab mash.
Street and Spice 