44 Clove Garlic Soup

Nearly two years ago, several months after I started reading my favorite food blog, Smitten Kitchen, Deb wrote up a post featuring this tantalizing recipe. 44 cloves of garlic? Are you shitting me? Can one person eat something so garlicky and not explode. Well, yes they can. Quite happily as it turns out. I've wanted to try it since then and have kept it in the back of my mind. Well, something called to me recently and I decided it was time to whip this up.

I've roasted garlic maybe twice before with decent results. This time was not exactly bad, but it wasn't great. I think it was a mixture of the added oil and the lid on my glass dish, but the garlic ended up soft and gummy. Getting it out of the paper shell was no small feat. Actually, I resorted to something like squeezing huge, fragrant zits. Really. It was weird and it felt a little too personal.

Overall, the soup was very good. However, with so much garlic, after a few sips the back of your throat starts to burn a little. Since I wasn't really in a soup mood after that first night, and I didn't want it to go to waste, I tried turning it into a risotto. This was just the ticket. It used up the rest of my rice and orzo plus all of the soup, so I was very happy. About 1 cup of rice-ish mixture, sauteed in butter until golden brown, then he rest of my 2 1/2 cups of soup, some wine, some chicken stock, and even some milk. Quite of bit of stirring later and we have a very garlicky, yet still manageable dish. I proud of myself for all this frugality I'm practicing by not letting everything die in my refrigerator.