Do you like garlic?

Our guests attending our cooking classes in Puglia are always surprised at the fact that in the Pugliese cuisine we use garlic in a very delicate way.

Our guests' usual comment after the first bite is: "mmmh...but I don't taste garlic in my food!". And we use to reply that if it did taste like garlic, than it would not be authentic Italian food (at least not from Puglia!).

I and Marika are big fans of garlic! We like it because of its flavor and most of all, its health benefits. During our cooking classes Marika loves explaining how good and healthy garlic is for cholestorol, blood pressure, digestion etc.
We use it in many successful recipes. However, it is true that we use it in a very delicate way, without letting garlic cover our food.

Most of the times we sweat a whole garlic clove in olive oil and then we remove it after a few minutes before adding the other ingredients.

Very rarely we use garlic, if we are already using onion in a recipe.

Lastly, if we need to use garlic (as in our famous veal meatballs), we prefer to chop it with a knife instead of crushing it.