Fluffy Garlic Toum for Vegetarian Vampire Hunters
52 Weeks of Cooking, Week 8: Garlic and the Vampire
“You are much braver than you think.”
― Bree Paulsen, Garlic and the Vampire
I love a bit of kitchen magic.
When homemade bread dough rises perfectly in the oven, or slimy aquafaba whips up to fluffy vegan meringue, or butter emerges from shaken heavy cream, I feel gleeful and accomplished. It worked! I took simple ingredients, applied the right techniques and presto-chango they transformed into something completely different and delicious. That is magic. I’m a wizard, Larry.
This week’s recipe is some more kitchen magic. The theme was Bulbs and I went with my favorite — garlic — to make fluffy garlic toum. I’ll share the spell/recipe below. I paired the toum with a magical graphic novel for kids, Garlic and the Vampire.
The book
I loved the illustrations in this graphic novel and the comfy world that Paulsen creates. Created by Witch Agnes to help out in the garden, Garlic and her other vegetable friends spend their days gardening and selling their wares to humans at the market. Garlic doesn't feel very strong, brave or smart — she sleeps late and constantly trips over things and causes upset. But when a vampire moves into the castle on the hill, Garlic is deputized to take him down. After all, if there's one thing vampires are afraid of, it's garlic. The story is cute, offering easy to digest lessons for young readers on the harmful nature of prejudice and wrong first impressions.
The food
I’m not sure if the vegetables in this book eat vegetables, but they do grow, harvest and sell them to people (and vampires) in their village. So even though the main character is a garlic bulb, I think she would be okay with me eating garlic.
That’s good, because this recipe for toum uses three whole heads of raw garlic.
Make sure the garlic is fresh — this ensures the best-tasting toum. You’ll also need salt, fresh lemon juice, cold water and neutral vegetable oil, like canola.
First, the most time-consuming and messy part of the recipe. Separate all the cloves. Then cut each in half and remove any green parts and the garlic germ. The germ is the little sprout in the middle of the clove, and it can make the garlic taste bitter and sharp. This removal process takes a while and makes your hands smell like garlic, so settle in with an audiobook and wash your hands well afterwards.
Next, add the cloves and salt to a food processor and pulse until the garlic becomes a paste. Add a tablespoon of lemon juice and pulse until slightly fluffy.
Then, while the food processor is running, drizzle in 1/2 cup of oil. Do this slowly, so the garlic paste emulsifies with the oil.
From there, alternate adding the rest of the lemon juice and the cold water, with adding the oil, 1/2 a cup at a time, until you’ve used it all. Drizzle in the ingredients slowly, while the food processor is running, so the toum doesn’t split. If it does, Serious Eats has tips on how to bring it back together again.
Amazingly, the combo of oil + garlic + lemon juice + salt and lots of mixing transforms the raw ingredients into a light, fluffy, garlicky dip. Toum has the texture of custard or mayo, without any eggs. It’s magic.
But how does it taste?
The verdict? If you love garlic, you’ll love toum and I did. It’s great on grilled meats, vegetables and as a dip for pita chips.
Fresh toum is very sharp and garlicky, but the flavors mellow the longer it sits in the fridge. I’m also told you can blanch the garlic cloves before you process them to tone down the sharpness, or mix the finished toum with other dips. My fiance preferred to mix the toum with spinach-feta dip for a milder flavor.
This recipe makes a ton of toum, but the dip will last for about a month in the fridge and it has lots of uses. Spread it on homemade sourdough and toast it, and you have instant garlic bread. I’m also excited to try it as a replacement for mayo in grilled cheese.
Next week: Paraguay