Garlic Weekend

It was the breakthrough.

Back east, one of the few consolations I had each day was Tony's Cottage Inn. Not only did they have some of the tastiest meatballs I ever had in my life (and I savored Tony's food since I was a little kid -- 40 years or more ago) but their salad with house dressing burned itself deep into my psyche. While I was nearly dying of heartbreak back there so much of the summer, I ate at Tony's often, the distinctive taste of the salad -- with chicken, with fried calamari rings -- soothing my stomach and my soul. While all else was going to hell in a rickety wheelbarrow, Tony's flavors remained the same.

Gooooood.

All my teenage and adult life, I'd tried to reproduce that incredibly savory house salad dressing. And failed. I tried a little wine vinegar with oil, salt, and pepper; I tried garlic powder and olive oil and salt (and sometimes a little vinegar); I tried oil and minced Christopher Ranch garlic in a jar with a bit of salt ... nada. Didn't taste the same.

Saturday, on a hunch, I ground up 6 cloves of garlic, covered them with extra light olive oil, added a teaspoon of salt, and added enough water to make about a third of a cup of dressing. Shook it well, and waited for it to steep in the fridge for about an hour and a half ...

I NAILED IT!

Tony's apparently uses freshly crushed, mushed garlic for that incredible taste. I made a salad with it for our every-two-weeks potluck yesterday, and only a few shreds came back, for Alex to taste, and demand that we have it for dinner today.

Well, that was a bit after Bernie came out to observe me readying a "chuck cross rib roast" for the oven. "Could you put some garlic in that?" he asked.

"Sure," I answered, and proceeded to make a slurry of jarred minced garlic and water and inject it into the roast.

I made the new salad dressing and drizzled it over the salad.

Oh, garlic.

No vampires for us, and damn, it all turned out so good.