“You can save time by buying fresh garlic in bulk and then crush it all in one go with a garlic crusher. Place the crushed garlic in a jar and cover with oil. The garlic will last for months in the fridge and you have a beautiful garlic infused oil to use in your cooking. ”

This is a pretty good way to court a bad case of botulism. The anaerobic enviroment of the oil combined with the inevitable botulism spore on a ground-harvested garlic clove is like the perfect envronment for the spores to grow and produce botulinum toxin. The most recent recommendations from the USDA is to avoid homemade “garlic in olive oil” preparations. If they have been pressure canned to the appropriate degree of heat and length of exposure to heat that *may* be a different matter.

You might get away with it if it’s used pretty quickly, but I’d “just say no” to this one.

That looks like too much oil, but would work. Just heat it med-high until it shimmers–don’t boil it!!

Smash the whole clove and the peel pretty much falls off. You can do this to a whole bulb, storing the individual cloves covered in oil in the fridge.

You can also do a “quick soak” with most beans, including garbanzos – bring the beans and water to a boil, then turn off the heat and let them sit in the water for about an hour. Proceed to cook as instructed.

Frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry, should work as well as fresh with very little nutritional value lost.

I agree with Comment #36 – the original recipe isn’t all that expensive, so just stick with the more authentic flavors. Try leaving out the saffron, but other than that, stick with what works!

Ok, I’m pretty passionate about garlic — sometimes go through 4 or 5 bulbs in a week and there’s only me and the boy. While you can manage to crush a garlic clove with the side of a chef’s knife – or any other hard, flat surface – I’d suggest a garlic press if you really enjoy fresh garlic. With a really good press, you don’t even have to peel the clove – just trim off the hard bottem (where it was connected to the bulb) with a paring knife. Alternately, you can find jars of whole, minced or crushed garlic in many stores. Let the garlic rest about 5 to 10 minutes – supposedly this allows the beneficial compounds to form – but I find it allows the flavor to mellow just a bit.

In fact, I didn’t notice where the garlic went with the revised recipe — so I assume you tossed the powdered garlic in the trash — a perfect thing to do with it!

* your version of the recipe doesn’t say when to add the garlic powder

* you definitely should NOT boil the oil. Especially extra virgin olive oil, which has a lower smoker point than most oils.

I had to laugh out loud at your post. Not at you, mind you, just the confusion with language. He was not substituting cloves for garlic- the reference was to the cloves of garlic. :)

Actual cloves, the spice, would be disastrous in this I agree. :)

Being gluten-free, the only substitution I’d make would be to either omit the breadmash/crumbs or use glute-free bread–but the texture would be very different.

The gas that beans cause are due to oligosaccharides, sugars that are not digested and interact with the bacteria in your intestine.

Soaking helps break done these sugars in addition to cleaning dried beans. Make sure you wash the beans of afterward.

The reason you use baking soda is to ensure a higher pH. A lower pH, or acidic, makes it harder for the beans to absorb water.