Читать книгу The Dolce Vita Diaries - Cathy Rogers - Страница 15

Ingredients for cold infusions

Rosemary—a big sprig

Dried chilli—one large one or several small

Black peppercorns—a small handful

Garlic—a whole bulb

We’ve worked out two ways to infuse the oil. The first is what we call warm infusion, where we gently heat the flavourings in a saucepan of oil for maybe an hour. Then there is cold infusion, where we leave the flavouring in the olive oil for a couple of weeks—the flavour slowly ebbs out in a more natural way. Things like lemon rind or basil, which contain water, go mouldy if you cold infuse them. But on the other hand, when we heat up the oil the result is a bit bland because the volatile aromatic flavour compounds are destroyed.

Our success stories so far have been cold-infused dried chillies, rosemary and roasted garlic (we nuke the dastardly bacteria with a good roasting).

Get creative and mix up whatever ingredients take your fancy. You will need a variety of glass bottles, corks and funnels. You are best off sterilizing the bottles beforehand—10 minutes in boiled water will do the job.

Simply put your flavourings into a bottle and then fill with olive oil so that they are covered and there are no air bubbles.

To roast the garlic, preheat the oven to 190° C /gas mark 5, wrap the whole, unpeeled bulb tightly in kitchen foil and roast for about 40 minutes or until the cloves are soft. Once the bulb is cooled down a bit, pull off individual cloves and shove as many of them down the neck of the bottle as you can. Then fill and cover with oil.