Right so I have teased thee muchly with claims to the best garlic bread in existence. I must admit, up until a while back I too was a patron of the icky prepackaged overbuttered trash that one buys in shops. Have I mentioned that the true nature of proper cooking has only been revealed to me in the last few years? Now I’m hooked. Hooked! I am addicted to cooking. I need to start up an over-cooking anonymous meeting.  ‘

Hi. Hi I’m Sarah and I have a problem. I need to feed people. I really do.

Here, I made cookies for the meeting.’

Anyway, on with this! I had occasionally tried making me some garlic butter with crappy garlic paste, and that was half-arsed so I gave up. However, I made a trip to Carluccio’s (YUM food, the spinach yolky for 11 euro is savage. Crap. Have reverted to Sligospeak. I shall rephrase: The delicious dish containing spinach amongst other items is simply beautiful darlings) before Christmas there, and on a whim, ordered some garlic bread. And it came out, and I took a piece and bit into it. And my life changed. It really did. This garlic bread was amazing. I mean it had that spiciness of good garlic, a rich butteryness, and the ciabatta balanced it all out perfectly. So I was converted. I am now, my dear people, a convert.

The next day, after I woke up from garlic bread dreams, I set out to make some of this garlic bread. I picked up a ciabatta from the bakery, grabbed a few cloves of garlic, and set to work. I chopped the garlic meticulously, it was fiiiine! As in I diced it fine, I am not attracted to garlic like that. And here’s how you do it. Grab yourself a loaf of good ciabatta, a few cloves of garlic, some fresh parsley and some fresh chives, and a good chunk of butter. Real butter. Byebye diets. (I don’t believe in ‘Diets’ anyway, just in moderation. Unless it’s chocolate)

So I started by cutting the ciabatta in half lengthways – you can do it in slices either, personal preference edit. I lightly toasted the crust side under the grill.

Then I turned it round, burnt both hands, and got my finely chopped garlic and sprinkled it onto the bread. I popped that back in under the grill for about a minute or two and started slicing my butter in really thin slices. I also finely chopped my parsley and snipped a few chives in tiny little bitty pieces (I love chives. Love). I slid back out the bread, scattered the herbs on, and places thin slices of butter over the whole lot. Here’s the thing, as butter melts, it soaks through the bread, and brings all that garlic goodness with it. Yeah. It’s bloody amazing. It really is.

(I confess, it’s not ciabatta, cos I had none)

This one, however, was made with 2 day old home-made onion bread. It was amazing:

Toast until just brown and yummy looking and enjoy. Enjoy a lot. I insist on that.