How We Treat Garlic At Cafe Capriccio

As I have indicated previously, restaurant cooks cannot tolerate wasted motion or redundant movements and must proceed with their work swiftly and in proper sequence. Wasted seconds accumulate over the course of a busy evening and can cause disastrous problems related to precise timing requirements for great food to be served at its best. For example, poor timing, or lack of coordination, can affect a single dish like certain delicate cream sauces which quickly reach perfection and are ruined if left unattended or held too long. In addition, it is always necessary for restaurant cooks to serve a variety of dishes simultaneously to diners at a single table. If the risotto is ready but the steak is not, we have a problem and so do our guests.

In this context, good restaurant cooks constantly strive to develop cooking techniques which simplify their work and expedite their tasks. Since all cooks face the same problems, there are many commercial products, such as artificial flavorings, which reduce steps and time in food preparation. My attitude about these products is that if they are good, use them. I, for example, use plenty of canned chicken broth which is low in salt and, together with other ingredients such as wine and herbs, is perfectly adequate for many preparations. Unfortunately, many commercial products, like the so called sauce bases commonly used, taste unnatural and should be avoided.

All processed garlic products are, in my experience, undesirable and carry a kind of rancid taste I associate with fresh garlic past its prime. These products include all of the dried preparations labeled "minced" garlic, garlic salt, and dried chopped garlic. I raise this because there seems to be a growing tendency to use dried garlic preparations instead of natural garlic -- alas, to the detriment of every food influenced by them.

In all Italian kitchens, indeed all Mediterranean kitchens, garlic is an indispensable commodity. And the way in which garlic is used by cooks in particular kitchens often defines the overriding taste or signature of the cuisine with which those chefs and kitchens are associated. 

There is, for example, a decades-old Italian restaurant near Albany wherein the chef uses whole cloves of garlic fried in oil until brown in virtually all of his preparations. Everything, even the restaurant itself, is redolent of burned garlic. Blindfolded, one would know immediately that he is either in the man's restaurant, or in his home. Such is the pervasive influence of burned garlic.


Our practice of preparing sauces to order, including tomato sauces, presents a problem with the use of garlic which is essential in most of them. The problem is that if we were to begin each sauce by sauteeing the garlic in olive oil before adding any other ingredients, the time and attention required would be prohibitive. This may seem trivial, but it is not. If, for example, we were to prepare fifty sauces to order during an evening, each with garlic, and if we sauteed garlic for one minute each time, almost one hour would be spent on this task alone. Tending the garlic would thus consume twenty or twenty five percent of the sauce maker's attention, leaving too little time to perform all of the remaining functions.

We address this problem in the following way which to the best of my knowledge is unique and may be of interest to restaurant cooks. As part of our basic preparation routine at the beginning of each evening we peel and chop a quantity of garlic we expect to use during the evening. We then saute the entire quantity in olive oil, slowly, for a few minutes. Just before the garlic begins to turn color we remove it, and the oil in which it is sauteed, to a stainless steel container where it is kept for the evening. As the chef needs garlic, he or she simply ladles it into the sauce with as much olive oil as necessary. Garlic prepared in this fashion will last a couple of days if covered with olive oil. 

At home it is not necessary to prepare garlic in this way, and the recipes from our books do not recommend it. In a restaurant, however, this may be a useful technique, and at Cafe Capriccio it is essential. In all circumstances I would advise against using garlic which has turned any shade of gold or brown, notwithstanding others' recommendations. This advice may be a matter of personal taste, but I would be remiss if I did not include it.

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