Roast garlic & walnut paste

Ingredients 3 bulbs garlic, 200g walnuts, olive oil.

Preparation: 30 minutes

The ability to produce different flavours from one ingredient merely by cooking it a different way is one of the great joys of cooking for me. Garlic when roasted produces a creamy, almost sweet puree and it is that which forms the basis of this luscious paste which I'm going to feature in a number of recipes in the coming weeks.

1) Roast the garlic in the oven for 20 minutes, then squeeze out the jelly-like cloves from the skin. Crush through a garlic press to release the pureed garlic.

2) Finely chop the walnuts or pulse in a blender and add to the garlic. Stir through a good glug of olive oil, season and set aside. I like to keep it in a kilner jar in the fridge.