Black garlic

Has a wonderfully concentrated flavour: liquorice-allsort-meets-balsamic-wine-gum. The cloves start off as regular white garlic cloves which are then treated over a long period and allowed to ferment. If white garlic can be harsh (and make your breath smell), then these black cloves are the very opposite: mellow, sweet and umami-rich. I’ve used them in Ottolenghi SIMPLE to take the bitter edge off some Brussels sprouts (here) and add their mellowness to an already-comforting brown rice dish (here), but play around with other recipes. Try adding a thinly sliced clove or two to your pizza before it gets baked, for example, or stirring it through a risotto.