Nigel Slater

Parmesan Garlic Bread

Eating rarely comes any better than crunching into a slice of hot, crusty garlic bread. Except when you add freshly grated Parmesan to the garlic butter. The idea here is to get the bread well and truly sodden with garlicky bitter whilst the crust crisps up. The cheese should form thin strings as you tear one piece of bread from the next. This is the sort of food you want (and which is just about possible to produce) when you are having a very, very good time (you know what I mean).

Enough for 4

8 tbsp. garlic butter
3 juicy garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped or crushed
a fistful of chopped parsley, green and lush
½ cup coarsely grated parmesan
a small baguette

Method:
Mash the butter to a cream in a small bowl - you can do it with a pestle and mortar but a china bowl and wooden spoon will work just as well. Mix in the garlic, parsley and grated Parmesan.

Put the baguette on a large piece of silver tin foil and cut deep slashes into it. Try not to cut right through the loaf.

Push lumps of the garlic butter into the cracks. Be generous - your challenge is to get 8 tablespoons to go into one extremely small loaf. Wrap the loaf loosely in the foil and bake in an oven preheated to 425ºF for twenty minutes. Unwrap the foil and bake for a further five minutes, till the bread has gone a little crunchy on top yet is soaked with cheesy, garlicky butter.