Garlic-Mashed Potato Knishes

Fat, fragrant cloves of garlic, six or seven at a time, were often sautéed whole with foods in my mother’s kitchen. No one bothered to fish them out before serving—whoever unearthed the little treasures from a pile of chicken was as much to be envied as the one who landed the wishbone.

As a teenager, I was smugly pleased to read that some food savant dubbed garlic “the ketchup of the intellectuals,” gratified that I had been nurtured since babyhood to stand with Camus and Huysmanns.