This is a lovely end-of-summer vegetarian meal that's perfect for entertaining. Black garlic gets its colour from slow cooking and has a savoury, earthy flavour with a hint of molasses and balsamic. Its umami-rich, sweet flavour is excellent in mayos and aiolis, rubbed as a paste on steaks and chicken or tossed with pasta.
You can buy it in Asian stores. You can also make it at home if you have a spare rice cooker that you can leave on warm for three weeks, although in my experiments I found that the smell, although quite lovely, was too much for me after a while.
The menu is rounded out with a no-cook cold soup and dazzling peach shortcake.
Chilled Cucumber, Watermelon and Tomato Soup