Tessa Kiros

Garlic Bread

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Preparation info

  • Difficulty

    Easy

  • Serves

    6–8

Appears in

top 1000Falling Cloudberries

Falling Cloudberries

By Tessa Kiros

Published 2004

This takes me back many years to one of my favourite restaurants in South Africa. It was a standard everywhere, I think — a good rack of ribs, this bread and then tiny scoops of vanilla ice cream that had been dipped in chocolate. This quantity will make a generous amount of garlic butter, but you can press any leftover into a long roll in baking paper, twist the sides like a large sweet wrapper and freeze it. Cut off slices to serve with your pan-fried fillet steaks, barbecued sirloin steaks or pan-fried chicken breasts.

Ingredients

  • 8 large garlic cloves
  • 150 g (5½ oz) butter, softened
  • 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
  • 1 long baguette

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4). Chop the garlic very finely, then add a little salt and squash it with the flat of the knife until it is almost a purée. Mix very thoroughly with the butter and parsley.

Cut the baguette in half to make it more manageable. Slice the baguette slightly on the diagonal, without cutting all the way through. Using a teaspoon, spread some butter into each cavity, taking care that the slices don’t break off and separate from the loaf. Both sides should be generously buttered.

Wrap the baguette in foil and bake for 20 minutes or so, until the garlic butter has melted completely and the bread is quite crispy. If the bread seems soft, you can open the foil for a few minutes to crisp it up, depending on the type of bread you use. Serve immediately.

(If you don’t want to eat the bread immediately, wrap it in foil before baking and keep it in the freezer. When ready to serve, put it straight from the freezer into the hot oven and bake it for a little longer than specified.)

© 2004 All rights reserved. Published by Murdoch Books.