Chopping Garlic for Gourmet Pasta with Sausage & Peppers

Video Transcript

"PAMELA BOWMAN: So one of the first and foremost ingredients in a really good pasta is garlic. I love garlic. And to have these neat, new little garlics that are one big, large clove seems to be a little bit of a sweeter garlic, not quite as intense. The flavor is just as impactful but the intensity is not like a regular little clove of garlic, and they're really easy to use. So let's talk about how we're going to cut this garlic. One of the first things I want to do is just basically peel some of the outer skin off, and it's a really pretty piece of garlic. And the reason I'm peeling this off and not just cutting right into it because I'd like you to see how different it is than the other garlic. Let's just cut our bulb bottom, so you can get a good look at it. It's got almost a pretty purple outer skin to it, and it looks kind of like an onion. Let's clean our cutting surface off a little bit here. And first I want to cut the garlic clove in half so that it's easier to handle. It's really important that you've got a flat surface on your cutting board. Get a good grip on your knife and we're going to come up toward the center of the stem - nice, little diagonal pieces - and then we're going to go down toward the root end lengthwise. And behind me, you can probably hear that I've got water already boiling for my pasta. And I'm taking gentle strokes down the garlic just about as far as my fingers will let it and I'm just going to tip it over, chop along the sides. I'm going to discard this little piece and do the same thing on the other side of the bulb. Up the center, up the center, up the center, diagonally, and now down to the bulb end and straight down with my knife, I'm just doing a nice, gentle, slicing motion. Now, that was pretty easy, wasn't it? Let's move on to our onion."