aioli and baguette

[topaz]

20. Make aioli from scratch (no cheating with Hellman's).

It works, bitches:



It did not turn out to be painless.  I followed the recipe in the Silver Palate cookbook, which calls for two egg yolks and 1½ cups of oil.  I dutifully poured the oil into the running food processor in a hair-thin stream.  Right up until the very end it was unbelievably perfect.  After pouring the last of the oil and admiring my emulsified darling as it whipped around the bowl, I turned away for a moment to attend to the asparagus.  When I turned back, it had fallen apart and collapsed into a curdly, soupy slop.

Julia Child insists that a turned mayonnaise can be fixed by whipping an egg yolk and emulsifying the failed stuff back into it.  I did that, but about halfway through I could tell it wasn't going to finish, and in a few seconds there was nothing left.

Then I read that ¾ cup is the maximum amount of oil you can use per egg yolk.  If you have never made a mayonnaise before, Julia confides, it is best to start with ½ cup.  Oh.  Well, then.

So I threw it out and started from scratch with three egg yolks instead of two, and gosh if it didn't, like, work.  Damn.

The most amusing part is that it isn't even that good.  After the first failed batch I got thinking that maybe I put in too much lemon juice, or mustard, or something that just made it a little too hard to hold together.  So the second time I cut way back on all of those ingredients -- which of course are the things that actually make the aioli taste like something.

So what I ended up with is a sauce that tastes like .... 1½ cups of extra-virgin olive oil.  And a little raw garlic.  Yeah.  Even I can't get enthusiastic about that.

But really, I barely even care.  Because now I can make my own aioli.  My new emulsifying technique is UNSTOPPABLE!

As a bonus, I even made pain l'ancienne out of The Bread Baker's Apprentice:



And yes, it tasted as good as it looks. Oh yes. Victory is mine, and it is hot and crusty.

Comments

[coraline]

really, even as much as i love olive oil, i learned my lesson about using it making mayonaise -- really, you want a neutral-flavored oil, with maybe a splash of olive in it. and yeah, go easy on the raw garlic -- a little goes a long way.
but you can make a fantastic curry mayonaise for curry potato salad or chicken salad, or flavor it with a lot of dill and some mustard for a fantastic sauce on fish... home-made mayo is the shit.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I think the recipe I was using called for half olive oil and half peanut oil. Which made me say: omgwtf?? Peanut oil?

Maybe next time I'll use canola as the base and try 25% of regular olive oil (not extra virgin).

Lemon garlic aioli! Baha!

[coraline]

yeah, i'll often use canola -- i think peanut might be fine as well, since it's not really all that strongly flavored.

[cutieperson]

this.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

and yeah, go easy on the raw garlic -- a little goes a long way.

Have you met Tim?

(Garlic! peanut butter! peanut butter! garlic!)

[coraline]

i love me some raw garlic too, but it seems like it goes a longer way than you'd expect in the mayonaise. and one can always add more later :)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

It really really does. I was too lazy by half to do the roasted garlic aioli that was suggested, but maybe I will next time.

AlliYUMMM.