Eat Arkansas

If you're not a fan of garlic, you might initially be put off by such a dish as Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, but trust me, it's not your normal garlic dish. By roasting the garlic, it becomes soft and sweet and loses the vast majority of its harshness.

I made this dish (along with a garlicy side dish, caramelized brussel sprouts with garlic, not pictured here) as a Saturday night dinner, and it was superb. The chicken was fantastically moist and held up well to the garlic. Furthermore, the sauce that I made from the chicken-roasting juices (chicken broth and white wine and herbs) and mashed garlic cloves was hands down some of the best sauce I've ever tasted, including those fancy things churned out at restaurants. Usually I don't go for lots of sauce on my meat, but my husband and I continually drowned our chicken in this wonderful sauce as we munched on our dinner (including the non-chicken portions of the dinner).

Did I actually count all those garlic cloves? Well, honestly, no, but I did use 2 more heads of garlic than the recipe called for, so I figured I must have been pretty close. The recipe itself is more complex than a beginner can probably handle, requiring multiple steps, but it is well, well-worth it. For all you garlic lovers out there, this is definitely something to try, and I recommend inviting over some non-garlic loving friends to show them the sweeter side of misunderstood ingredient.