As Anthony Bourdain wrote: "Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago and garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting. Please, treat your garlic with respect. Sliver it for pasta, like you saw in Goodfellas; don't burn it. Smash it with the flat of your knife blade if you like, but don't put it through a press. I don't know what that junk is that squeezes out the end of those things, but it ain't garlic."
Or, as Elizabeth David wrote in her essay "Garlic Presses are Utterly Useless":
"I regard garlic presses as both ridiculous and pathetic, their effect being precisely the reverse of what people who buy them believe will be the case. Squeezing the juice out of garlic doesn't reduce its potency, it concentrates it, and intensifies the smell. I have often wondered how it is that people who have once used one of these diabolical instruments don't notice this and forthwith throw the thing into the dustbin."
After the holidays, I discovered another use of garlic, a whole head for two servings, long simmered until mild:
Cure-All Garlic Soup
Water down chicken broth by adding one cup of water to three cups broth in a medium saucepan. Add a generous pinch of saffron, a scant pinch of paprika (the sweet and smoked kind is best), and one bay leaf. Add the peeled cloves from one head of garlic. Simmer for at least an hour.
Puree the whole mixture (minus the bay leaf, which you should throw away) and then put this thin, cloudy white broth back into the pot. Poach one or two eggs per serving in this mixture. Poach for about three minutes, so that the yolk is just set but mostly runny. Break the yolk in the bowl and stir around, thickening the soup.
This soup will cure you of any ailment or malaise, any heartbreak or sniffles, and at the last lick of the spoon may give you a momentary delusion of being super-powered.
*note: salt generously
