(music)
Remember Alice in Wonderland when Alice eats a cookie
and grows about the size of a house?
And then she eats a little piece of carrot and shrinks down about three inches tall.
Finally, she gets her hand on a mushroom,
eats a little bit of that, and comes back to her normal size.
Well, that --
That's garlic flavor.
Stick with me here.
Garlic flavor can be huge and overpowering.
It can also be tiny and muted,
but with careful calibration,
it can be just right.
As cooks, we hold all of the power of the garlic flavor.
Power is great, but only if you know how to yield it.
So, let's get into it
and figure out how to make some insanely good garlic bread.
Close your eyes and smell an intact clove of garlic
and you won't smell anything.
But smash that same clove and it comes to life.
The potent flavor of garlic is only created
when garlic cells are damaged.
Either by chewing, chopping or crushing.
Here's how that works:
When garlic's cells are damaged
an enzyme called alliinase is released.
Alliinase acts on
its sulfur-containing molecule called alliin
converting it to a totally new compound called alliicin,
--that's Elvis Costello's song, but spelled totally differently.