jaunthie | The garlic harvest is in

It was about time anyway, but when I heard that *rain* was forecast for Sunday, I made sure to dig up my garlic crop late Saturday afternoon (after a lovely tea with humilitas, LawyerLady, and

hiker_chick - we have to keep up the tradition!). I harvested about 45 heads of garlic, and I'm sure some wound up left in the ground (I've never yet managed to get all the garlic up. It's like potatoes; plant it once, and you'll always have an odd plant or two come up for years afterwards). I cleaned all the heads for drying and storing on Sunday, and naturally found that some of them weren't good candidates for storage. So I took advantage of the surplus of garlic and the cooler weather (it *did* rain!) to make soup, using some of the market-basket bounty that really needed to be used anyway. The soup was really, really yummy.

Twice-Cooked Garlic Soup:

approximately 40 cloves of garlic, peeled

1 small onion, sliced in half

1 boneless skinless chicken breast

2 boneless skinless chicken thighs

remnants of 1 can of lite coconut milk (about 1/2 can or less)

1 lime

fireball sauce (or any pepper-sauce equivalent

1 bunch fresh basil

4 small potatoes (1 inch diameter or less)

2 small beets

2 carrots

2 stalks of celery

1 mini-onion (or 3 shallots if you have them)

1 bunch kale

olive oil

1 box Pacific Foods veggie broth

1 box Pacific Foods chicken broth

five-spice powder

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Scrub potatoes and beets. Line a square Pyrex pan with foil and spray with non-stick spray. Arrange garlic cloves and onion in the pan; sprinkle liberally with olive oil. Place pan, potatoes, and beets in oven and set the timer for 15 minutes.

Spray a 9x13 Pyrex pan with nonstick spray and place trimmed boneless skinless chicken in pan, arranging so that there is one layer of chicken across entire pan. Coat chicken liberally with fireball sauce, the zest from 1 lime, and splash on some coconut milk. Mix/spread with a back of a spoon so that all pieces are equally covered. When the timer goes off, place chicken pan on lower rack in oven. Shake the onion/garlic pan to re-coat pieces in oil and flip the onion if necessary; return pan to oven. Set the timer for another 15 minutes.

In a sautee pan, heat a splash of olive oil. Sautee chopped baby onion, carrots, celery, and kale until onion is golden brown and kale is soft. Transfer contents to a large Cuisinart bowl. Add the bunch of basil and puree.

When the timer goes off again, remove the garlic/onion pan and shake contents again to coat. Make sure garlic is not burning (mine was just starting to turn golden; needed more time). Return pan to oven and set timer for another 10-15 minutes. Watch garlic/onion carefully in these last minutes to make sure it doesn't burn. When the garlic has turned golden brown and soft, remove pan from oven. Check to see if the potatoes and beets are done (they should be); remove them from oven. Leave chicken in for another 5 minutes; turn off oven.

Transfer beets, garlic, and onion to Cuisinart bowl; puree. Add a little veggie stock and/or coconut milk to loosen if the puree is too thick to chop well. Transfer puree to soup pot and add veggie broth, chicken broth, and any remaining coconut milk. Heat to simmer. Chop cooked chicken and add to soup. Add a liberal dash of five-spice powder, salt and pepper to taste. Just before serving, slice potatoes crosswise to form crouton-shapes. Ladle soup into bowls and top each bowl with three potato-croutons. Serves a lot of garlic lovers.

All in all I'm quite pleased with my improvised recipe. I invited Mom over to share the soup, and she thought it was very good, too - which is praise well worth the having, she being the queen supreme soup-maker.

But don't try making this if you don't like garlic!