On Sun, 7 Mar 2010 09:46:33 -0500, blake murphy wrote:

> i don't know what the end result would be like, but the instructions didn't
> seem to be all that poorly written. i must be missing something.
"1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add garlic and cook 30 seconds.
Drain and rinse with cool water. Peel garlic.

"2. Bring 1 qt. water to a boil. Add salt and garlic. Bring back to
a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until garlic is tender when tested
with a fork, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain and let cool."

Why bring more fresh, cool water to a boil when you just had a pot
of perfectly usable boiling water they told you to dump down the
drain just 2 minutes ago? That is so un-green.

Salting the water is pointless. The salt water will not be
penetrating the garlic. And even if it did, you're going to be
wrapping this with, uh - hello? - pancetta! According to it's own
nutritional analysis, just three of these wrapped cloves has 1371mg
of sodium. 3/5ths of the USRDA in 3 little bites.

When you add 18 cloves of warm garlic and salt to a quart of boiling
water, there is no need to "bring back to a boil", then "reduce heat
and simmer" as the water will still be 210-212F (at sea level).
Just toss in the garlic and salt and reduce the heat.

15 minutes at 200+ degrees (leeching the flavor out of the garlic),
and then 15 minutes at 375F in the oven makes for mushy, tasteless
garlic. The extremely salty pancetta (made even saltier by broiling
way too long) will be the only thing you taste.

(And of course, the picture is not representative of the recipe.
Which is always a given. But that was not part of my gripe).

Had I needed to find a use for garlic and pancetta, I would have
roasted the garlic, squoosh it out mix with an equal weight of cream
cheese, mash with salt and pepper, spread gently on slices of raw
Citterio brand pancetta and roll it up (Boars Head pancetta is too
stringy, can't be eaten raw, and costs twice as much at Citterio).

I'll pit my roll-ups against those cloves of garlic any day without
having tried either recipe.

-sw