French or Japanese? Aïgo Bouïdo - Garlic Soup

This soup took a couple incarnations to be something we liked. Like most of the soups we've tried from Julia Child's "The Way to Cook", the recipes turned out to be great bases for other flavors. In this case, you really can use just a couple heads of garlic, papers included, to make a slightly garlicy soup base. It turns out very thin, however. The addition of the egg yolk/mayonnaise at the end was not enough.

Miso paste, however, and another head of fresh garlic, sliced, made this a great soup. A VERY GARLIC soup. As a Japanese soup, it's a great beginning - we haven't thought yet about how to keep it French and vegetarian, but for the record, here's how we made the Japanese style.

Aïgo Bouïdo
modified and twisted from Juila Child's "The Way to Cook"

• 2 large heads of fresh garlic, cloves separated, unpeeled and smashed
• 2 quarts water
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 2 whole cloves
• 1/4 tsp sage
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 1 medium Turkish bay leaf
• 6 sprigs parsley
• 3 Tbl fruity olive oil

1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.
2. Bring to a boil, and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes.
3. Fish out the cloves of garlic, if you like, and purée those separately.
4. Strain remaining stock, and use for the following recipe or something else that will be French. :)

Japanese version

• 4 cups Aïgo Bouïdo recipe
• 2 Tbl light miso paste
• 2 cloves to 1 head garlic, peeled and sliced
• 1/2 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp tamari
  
• 1 Tbl plum sauce
• sliced scallions, wakame, etc.

Combine and simmer for ~10 minutes to allow flavors to mingle and to blunt the edge of the fresh garlic. Serve immediately.