Black Gold: Recipes
For centuries, black garlic has been a key ingredient in Japanese, Korean and Chinese life, as part of their cuisine but also as medicine.
It’s not a special variety of garlic, it’s a slow, months-long process where whole bulbs of garlic are held at a specific temperature and humidity and transformed into sweet molasses-like cloves as black as coal. It’s an umami bomb that elevates the taste of anything you serve it with.
I love using it in seafood, meat and chicken dishes, and it’s also perfect on a cheese platter. These recipes use the whole cloves, paste and black garlic honey.
Soba Noodles with Oyster Mushrooms, Eggplant and Sunflower Seeds, Black Garlic and Ginger Dressing
Serves 4
Soba are a Japanese buckwheat noodle that are commonly served cold in salads. Most contain wheat flour as well as buckwheat, but if you search you’ll find some that are 100% buckwheat and therefore gluten free. I found some at Belmondos in Noosa, along with punnets of organic sunflower sprouts.
Ingredients:
- 200gm soba noodles
- 200gm oyster mushrooms
- 1 medium eggplant, cut into 5mm slices
- 2tbs vegetable oil
- ½ cup sunflower seeds
- 30ml soy sauce
- 100gm sunflower sprouts
Dressing:
- 1 tbs black garlic paste
- 1 tsp ginger, grated
- 1 tbs sesame oil
- 1 tbs brown sugar
- 50ml soy sauce
- 30ml rice vinegar
Method:
- Cook the soba noodles according to the instructions on the packet (they all tend to be a bit different) then rinse under cold water and drain well.
- Tear or chop the mushrooms and fry in a little oil in a hot frying pan until soft and lightly coloured.
- Lay the eggplant slices out on a baking tray lined with baking paper, brush with oil and bake in a hot oven until lightly coloured and soft. Cool and slice into strips.
- Dry roast the sunflower seeds in a frying pan, stirring frequently until they become lightly coloured. Pour in the soy sauce and stir through and leave in the pan to come to room temperature.
- They should become crunchy as they soak up the soy and cool.
- Whisk together the dressing ingredients until well combined.
- Mix the noodles, mushrooms, eggplant, sunflower seeds and sprouts and dressing together gently and transfer to a serving bowl.
Miso Glazed Sardines with Pickled Cucumber and Daikon, Black Garlic and Sesame
Serves 4
Ingredients:
- 500gm fresh sardine fillets
- 2tbs miso
- ¼ cup hot water
- 250gm daikon, peeled and julienned
- 250gm continental cucumber, julienned
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ cup rice vinegar
- ½ cup castor sugar
- 8 cloves black garlic, sliced
- 1 tsp sesame seeds, toasted
Method:
- Mix the daikon and cucumber with the teaspoon of salt and leave for 15 minutes.
- Whisk together the vinegar and sugar until the sugar has dissolved.
- Gently squeeze any excess moisture out of the daikon and cucumber and pour over the vinegar mixture.
- Leave to pickle for 1 hour.
- Lay the sardine fillets out on a baking tray covered with baking paper. Thin the miso out with hot water and brush over the sardines.
- Bake in a hot oven (200C) for 10 minutes.
- Carefully transfer the sardine fillets to a serving platter and top with the pickled vegetables, black garlic slices and sesame seeds.
Korean-Style BBQ Pork Ribs with Black Garlic Honey and Kimchi
Serves 4
These ribs are handy for entertaining as they can be precooked the day before, refrigerated and then finished off on the BBQ. We are lucky enough to have two excellent producers of naturally fermented kimchi here on the coast, The Fermentier and Nourishing Wholefoods. It’s the perfect accompaniment to these ribs and is great for your gut health.
Ingredients:
- 1.5kg pork spare rib racks
- ½ cup soy sauce
- ½ cup mirin
- 1/3 cup black garlic honey
- 2 tbs sesame oil
- 2 whole star anise
- 1 tbs ginger, grated
- 1 tsp cracked black pepper
- 2 shallots, finely sliced
- ¾ cup kimchi
- steamed jasmine rice
Method:
- Whisk together the soy, mirin, honey, sesame oil, star anise, ginger and pepper and pour over the racks (they’re easier to fit in a tray and handle if you cut the racks in half first).
- Cover and refrigerate overnight.
- Put the racks into a baking tray and pour over all of the marinating liquid.
- Cover with a lid or aluminium foil and cook in the oven for two hours at 140C.
- Pour off the cooking liquid to a small saucepan and boil until thick and syrupy.
- Refrigerate the ribs until cold.
- Brush the reduced cooking liquid all over the ribs, then cook on a hot BBQ until caramelised all over and heated through.
- Cut the racks into individual ribs and arrange on a platter. Scatter over the shallots and serve with a dish of kimchi and rice on the side.
