Roasted Garlic (Page 935)

• Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 -- 8pm
• Location: Somerville, MA
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matt
• Dining Companions: Ana and Matty
• Recipe Rating: B

I picked this recipe to go with dinner last Tuesday because the oven wasn't going to be used during our dinner preparations so I figured we might as well roast some garlic! It's a bit hard to grade this recipe. For the most part roasted garlic is roasted garlic. It was good. It wasn't terribly exciting, but I enjoyed eating it on sliced baguette. My only real complaint is that the use of olive oil didn't make a lot of sense. Normally I would cut off the top third of the head of garlic before pouring the oil over. This recipe left the head intact, so when the oil was poured over it mostly just dripped off the outside of the garlic cloves. It would have been better had more of the oil reached the garlic. For that reason I prefer the method of cutting off the top of the head of garlic before roasting.

My first year at MIT I spent my January break out at Stanford. I wanted to surprise my friends, so I only told Emilee that I was coming. My first afternoon in town I headed to Elliot's house. Aside from being an ex-boyfriend he has long been a close friend and I was anxious to surprise him. His room was empty but his door was unlocked, so I wandered in. I left a Post-It on his computer monitor:
“I’m here. I’ll be eating at 6pm.”
At 6:05, Elliot waltzed in to Bangkok Cuisine and sat down next to me. Without my name, or the restaurant, he had found me. I think that’s why I loved him: I always felt found when I was with him.

At Stanford I had a default restaurant. And a default coffee shop. A default thinking spot. A default bar. Maybe that means I was boring, but I think it just means that I settled there. I settled here too, I think. But my defaults aren't so clear... Maybe that's not true. Maybe they are just different. I certainly have a default grocery store here. A default butcher. A default spice store. A default ice cream shop...