To tear at a beautiful, newborn bread and eat it with fat, salty olives, a potent red wine sipped between them, is a meal everlasting in its innocence and sensuality. Here follows the simplest of recipes that pairs the soft creaminess of roasted garlic with the olives for a lush result. The dish asks only a little dalliance in the oven. Roasting the olives plumps them, renders them voluptuously fleshy, tender. And when whole, fat garlic—caramelized in a long, slow roasting—confronts the salt-tinged meat of the warm olives, the whole becomes quietly paradisiacal. As beautiful as it is, stray for a moment from the red wine idea and consider a fusion, instead, with an iced Marsala Superiore Riserva or Marsala Vergine or Marsala Soleras Stravecchio—altogether different wine from the often industrially produced sweet varieties that find their way to the States and are used to make zabaglione or to splash sautéed veal. The crackling, almost dry golden chill of them leaves just a point of sweetness on the tongue.

　　

Ingredients

serves 4 to 6

　　4 very large heads of the freshest garlic (late spring and early summer crop with the violet skins are best)

　　1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus additional for oven-toasting bread

　　1 teaspoon fine sea salt

　　Freshly cracked pepper

　　24 ounces Sicilian, Greek, or Spanish green, black, or purple olives, or a combination thereof, unstoned

　　1/2 cup dry Marsala

　　1 round of pane di semolino di Piana degli Albanesi (page 213) or another crusty, coarse-textured loaf

　　1/2 cup fresh mint leaves

　　

Step 1

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

　　

Step 2

Cut through the heads of garlic at their root ends and separate the cloves, leaving their skins intact. Place the cloves in a ceramic or terra-cotta casserole, add the 1/4 cup olive oil, tossing the cloves in it, coating them well. Sprinkle on the sea salt and grind pepper generously over the garlic cloves, roasting them for 20 minutes. Add the olives and stir them about, combining them with the softening garlic and the oil. Continue the roast for an additional 20 minutes, checking then to see if the garlic is beginning to collapse and the olives have plumped. Pour over the 1/2 cup of dry Marsala, raise the oven temperature to 400 degrees, and roast for 5 more minutes.

　　

Step 3

Having torn the bread into somewhat large and uneven chunks, lay them on an oven sheet, anoint them with oil, and toast the bread along with the olives and garlic for these last 5 minutes. Remove the olives and garlic from the oven, strew them with the mint leaves, and present the dish immediately with the warm, oven-toasted bread and an iced dry Marsala.

　　A Taste of Southern Italy