Graffiti for Butterflies:

Monarchs regularly pass through wide swathes of human settlement as they migrate each year from wintering sites in Mexico to summering grounds in the United States and Canada. GFB is the equivalent of a fast-food sign on a highway, advertising rest stops (waystations) to monarchs traveling through the area.

Warren Ellis (yes, that Warren Ellis, the one who would end his emails with “Luckily, you have me here to correct your thinking and elevate you from the evolutionary shitpit you currently wallow in. Thank God for me.”) has a little mailing list called Bad Signal. I now present to you a recent email from the list, endearingly titled Fuck Off To The Epicure Restaurant, Then.

So people keep asking, and I’m not typing it out every single bloody time, so maybe this’ll hold you:

You take a whole head of garlic, also known as a whole bulb of garlic.

You draw off a big length of tinfoil, twice as much as you think you’d need to make a large pocket or bag to contain the bulb. And you fold it in half. And then you fold it in half again to make your double-walled tinfoil sack, wrapping the edges together to seal it. Leaving the top open, of course.

Saw the top off your bulb, to just expose the tops of the cloves inside. Chuck it in the bag.

Throw a glass of white wine or sparkling wine (I often use champagne) on top. NOTE: do not cook with any alcohol that you wouldn’t be happy to drink on its own. NOTE: some of you would drink paintstripper out of a dead soldier’s arse. Imagine what an actual human would consider drinkable and act accordingly.

You may also throw in herbs to taste — I often throw a twig of rosemary in there.

(This, by the way, is why you want to be growing herbs on a windowsill.)

Wrap up the top of the bag tightly, because now it’s full of booze and you don’t want it to leak out.

Throw it in a hot oven for 90 minutes — less if you want it less creamy and with more of its garlic bite.

What’s a hot oven? No less than 190 degrees C, 375 degrees F, gas mark 5.

This goes well with lamb: you can throw lamb in the oven at the same temperature by the following sum: 30 mins per pound/450g + an extra 30 mins at the end. So if you’ve got two pounds of lamb in there, that’s 90 minutes. Instead of burying it under a sauce, try pulling the cooked meat apart with forks until it’s shredded, and then shower it with pomegranate seeds.

Serve with an inexpensive Merlot from Chile, which have been terrific for the last three years or so, and then leave me alone.

– W