Thanksgiving Dinner: Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

I'm a skins-on kind of gal.

My mom has a great pet peeve.  She hates it when my siblings and I order food at a restaurant that we could easily make at home.  I loved ordering macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes.  I had the palate of a 7 year-old ('cause I was).

As we grew older, we learned to make the foods that had caused my mom so much exasperation at restaurants.  My brother learned to make some awesome mac and cheese.  I remember one summer, he stumbled out of his room, having not eaten in three days (he'd been reading all the J. R. R. Tolkien books in succession).  He'd knock everything out of his way and make enough mac and cheese to feed Bangladesh.  Then he'd eat it all and disappear again (to read some more).

My sister and I learned to make some super-garlicky mashed potatoes.  We even had mashed potato cook-offs to the sheer detriment of our familial relationships.  I believe our house was once divided by a meridian of mashed potato preferences.

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
makes 4 servings
12 cloves of garlic (This isn't a typo.  If you didn't love garlic, you wouldn't be making this recipe, so man up.)
olive oil
1 kg or roughly 2 pounds potatoes
salt and pepper
6 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup heavy cream
a few healthy shakes of paprika

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Lay the garlic cloves in a mound on a sheet of foil.  Drizzle with olive oil.  Then gather up the oil to make a foil pouch.  It should look like a foil head of garlic.  Roast the garlic in the oven for 25 minutes or until the garlic cloves are completely tender when pierced with a fork.  Let the garlic cool a bit then mashed them up using a wooden spoon.

If you like skins, scrub the potatoes clean and leave them on.  If not peel them.  Either way, start the potatoes out in a pot of cold, salted water.  Bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork.  Strain the potatoes and mash with a fork or potato masher.

Throw the butter, cream, and roasted garlic into the mashed potatoes and mash them all together.  Season with salt and pepper and stir.  Sprinkle on some paprika.  Serve immediately.