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Arts & Entertainment

The Seasonal Chef: Roasted Garlic from a Hummus Maestro

A Recipe from Kulushkat Falafel Chef Andrew Rowley

Coming up on it's two-month mark, Kulushkät Gourmet Falafel is beginning to find its footing. Arena workers in hard hats duck off Flatbush into the Dean Street storefront at lunch time to order a chicken pita, and Park Slope and Prospect Heights households are catching on to the availability of high quality hummus platters for delivery.

Kulushkät means "shut up and eat," and the incredible hummus offers little incentive to do anything else, but the owners are quite chatty if you care to look up from your meal.

"My dad's a garlic farmer upstate," chef-owner Andrew Rowley shares, offering his recipe for whole heads of roasted garlic. This recipe, a variant of the succulent tan topping on the roasted garlic hummus platter at the restaurant, is therefor "very close to my heart."

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When I wonder aloud whether eight heads of roasted garlic might overwhelm a home cook, Rowley smiles. "We put garlic on everything, it never occurred to us to have too much garlic." Rowley suggests serving the soft roasted cloves with pasta, on a bagel with cream cheese, as an accompaniment to cheese and crackers (goat cheese is a favorite), and of course, as a topping for hummus. Nonetheless, I scaled the recipe down to four heads, and did end up pressing dinner guests to take some home with them, so feel free to halve the recipe again if you didn't grow up on a garlic farm.

That said, it doesn't hurt to seek out a garlic farmer at the Greenmarket before making this recipe. Rowley opines that the dish is best with garlic two to three weeks past harvest, so get chatty at Grand Army Plaza next Saturday for the best results. Then, shut up and eat: once roasted, the soft, savory cloves are both sweet and pungent, with a mellow yet noticeable bite to them that keeps things interesting.

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Roasted Garlic

4 bulbs hard neck garlic, top 1/3 peeled
2 teaspoons stewed tomatoes (Rowley makes his own by simmering half a tomato with a tablespoon of diced sweet onion)
2 fresh basil leaves
1/2 teaspoon vegetable or chicken "Better than Bouillon" mixed with 3/4 cup hot water
1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350˚. Place the heads of garlic in a ceramic garlic roaster, small, oven-proof saucepan or boat made of doubled heavy-duty aluminum foil. Add the remaining ingredients to the pan. Bake until the garlic is tan and very soft, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Let cool briefly before squeezing the bulbs out onto crackers or toast.

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