EpiCurious Generations

Inspiration:  Thanks to Little Spice Jar for this one! When a family member loves Nutella and it's their birthday and the universe puts a picture of this fabulous recipe on your Pinterest feed,  you really have to go with it! Turns out this was a great hit and really easy to make.   Check out this fabulous recipe for a giant Nutella Stuffed Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie at  Little Spice Jar !  Great alternative to a birthday cake and so very good.

I t seems that the subject of blanching garlic has come up recently for me several times and I have been recommending what I learned in cooking school for this process, i.e. bringing the peeled cloves to boiling, in water, up to 3 times (cover cloves with water, bring to a boil, strain and repeat 2 more times).  Each time the cloves are boiled, their flavour will mellow. I blanch garlic in order to remove the bitterness and potent bite of it when it is raw.  This is especially useful in recipes like gaspacho, hummus, aioli, as I find the taste of raw garlic tends to overpower the more delicate flavours of the other ingredients. This is really a question of preference and if you like garlic, then by all means, go ahead and use it raw to your hearts content.  For me,  garlic is good but in small doses and I find myself now using blanched or pickled garlic scapes  from Québec (fleur d'ail) more and more in many recipes that call for regular garlic....