Well, Bagna Cauda is not the prettiest dish in the world.
[ID: Three images of the bagna cauda I cooked this morning. The first image shows a saucepan full of olive oil with visible cloves of garlic and anchovy fillets in the oil. The second image shows the oil about halfway into the process; some cloves are still visible but the anchovies have become a dark paste at the bottom of the pan. The third image shows a bowl of the strained oil, bright gold, with a little brown residue at the bottom.]
I first encountered it, amusingly, in the recent “Around The World In 80 Days” television adaptation, but I’ve been intrigued by it ever since, and I’ve put it in a couple of scenes in the Shivadhverse, so I thought I should probably try making it, since there aren’t a lot of Piedmontese Italian restaurants in Chicago.
The recipe instructed me to blanch 60g of fresh sliced garlic, drain water, add 100g of anchovy fillets and 120ml of olive oil, and cook on the lowest possible heat for about an hour, “stirring and smashing” occasionally to blend the garlic and anchovies into the oil. You’re not supposed to strain it, as I did, but the anchovy flavor was so strong I didn’t want to leave them in the oil. Next time, half the anchovies and twice the garlic, I think.
Also I forgot what a giant pain in the ass peeling and slicing garlic is, even when you know all the tricks. It’s been years since I cooked with anything other than roasted garlic, and I think next time I might just roast the garlic and then dump it into the oil. I roast garlic every few months anyway, I’ll just double the recipe.
It’s pretty tasty and I cook with olive oil a LOT, but usually not infused (it smokes too much at too low a temperature). It’s going to take me a century to eat that much infused oil. I might try baking a nice loaf of rosemary bread with some of it and see how that comes out.
