Black Garlic

I first read about black garlic through Vosges, the wonderfully eclectic chocolate company who makes candy bars with white chocolate and dried black olives. They offer a package combining different cheeses to pair with chocolate, along with different accompaniments for the cheeses. One of them was Black Garlic, which they described as a fermented version of regular garlic. As someone who loves garlic and fermenting foods, I decided that this was something I needed to acquire.

And it really is a delicacy! Black garlic trades its bite for a savory, umami-like sweetness, like the robust flavor of molasses. It also softens into a mashable, jelly-esque consistency, like a warm gum drop. Carla and I ate a few cloves on their own, then decided to try it as a spread on bread with olive oil. As you can see from the picture, black garlic tapenade isn't the most aesthetically pleasing thing in the world. It sort of looks like we spread toast with a pureed piece of burned toast. But it was tasty!


There was a good amount of the glaze leftover, so I made a side of long-grained rice to help soak up the rich broth. As a whole, I thought the dish came out great. It was also a full-flavored dish, one that was perfect for winter. That's something you don't always get with fish or mollusks, unless they're smoked and covered in a heavy cream sauce. One thing about black garlic is that you need to use much more of it than normal garlic, as the overall flavor has mellowed. Over the course of a day (including our snacking) we went through about two heads of black garlic. But no garlic breath!