Roasted Garlic Paste

Roasted Garlic Paste
From: SmartAleq
Also includes a tip on how to use the garlic paste in onion soup.

You may stand upwind in awe of me for I am Allium Woman! I bought a HUGE bag (like 5-6 lbs for 6.99, w00t!) of peeled garlic cloves from the local veggie stand. In order to use up that huge bag I tossed those cloves in olive oil, tossed them into baking pans, sprinkled them with a bit of kosher salt and baked them, stirring them around every ten minutes or so to make sure they didn't stick. Then I shoveled them into the Magic Bullet thingie and turned them all into a sticky melty garlicky paste suitable for dipping ice cream into... Well, maybe not that but I definitely dipped some baguette into it. I have a lot of it in the fridge but the majority of it is in ice cube trays in the freezer. I'm going to make a whole shitload of 2 tablespoon or so ice cubes of frozen roasted garlic that can be easily chucked into hot pasta or nuked back to squishiness.

Then, since the house already smelled like that I made onion soup for dinner--well, allium soup, really, since I used Walla Walla sweet onions, shallots and leeks in a peppery beef stock--I also added a dollop of the roasted garlic paste toward the end of the simmering time. The croutons were slices of baguette soaked in the leftover oil the garlic was roasting in then baked crispy, then smeared with roast garlic and baked a while longer. Floated croutons in soup, topped with shredded gruyere and slid under the broiler for a minute to bubble up. I feel as though I shouldn't speak directly to anyone until I've chewed a large bouquet of parsley but I don't care, it was faaaaabulous!