The Egg-Files IV: Mayo Clinic

Seems like I just recently did an Egg-Files chapter, but hey, that’s how versatile these things are.  One part thickens, the other foams, and they both taste great when scrambled.  They’re used to make baked goods turn golden, and no meatloaf will bind correctly unless you use one.  This chapter, if you hadn’t guessed is all about mayonnaise.

I was slow to come on board the mayo train as a kid.  Like most tots, I took to ketchup right away, putting it on everything – potatoes, chicken, rice; you name it, it probably got a healthy dose of ketchup.  Like all first loves, they don’t last, and while I still enjoy the stuff, I relegate it to a meatloaf topping and French fry condiment these days.  Mustard quickly took ketchup’s place, and I’m rarely without a bottle of the stuff.  The pleasant burn of the mustard mixed with vinegary goodness is my favorite condiment.  But there was a jar of stuff in the fridge when I was a kid that I never truly appreciated, a creamy white concoction that my mother slathered onto toast for her sandwiches.  Mayonnaise – more accurately, Miracle Whip.  I never liked the stuff, and truthfully, I still don’t.  Miracle Whip is too sweet for my tastes when I want to use a mayonnaise.  I stayed away from the condiment until I tried Hellman’s, which was a bit yellow and didn’t taste at all like Miracle Whip.  No, Hellman’s was the real deal, not a salad dressing, but an honest-to-God mayonnaise.  I’ve got a container of Hellman’s in my fridge right now, and while I don’t often use it, it’s the off-the-shelf mayo I grab, due to its far more complex flavor when compared to Miracle Whip.

Of course, even Hellman’s has to bow before homemade mayo.  This is less a recipe and more of a procedure, but it’s no less difficult.  There’s two recipes in this chapter, but really, they’re both here so you understand the process of making mayo.  Mayonnaise is a suspension of oil and fat, much like a vinaigrette.  Unlike a vinaigrette, which separates after some time, mayo uses the powerful emulsifying agents within the egg yolk and mustard to keep it in suspension.  The first recipe is a standard mayo, while the second is a flavored mayo.  They really only differ in a few places, so I’ll start with the standard mayo.

The first thing to keep in mind when making mayonnaise is that fat and water don’t want to bind together, and this was very obvious to me when I was making this recipe.  The process begins by putting an egg yolk, some salt, some ground mustard, and some sugar in a bowl, and beating it until a foam starts.  Put some vinegar and lemon juice in the egg mixture, then slowly introduce the oil, whisking constantly.  Once about half the oil is in, add the rest of the acid, then keep adding oil, whisking the entire time.  If you do it right, you’ve got mayo.

Unfortunately, I didn’t.  Everything was going fine until I added the rest of the acid, and then the emulsion broke.  Nothing I did could fix it, not even adding some more egg yolk to help bind it together again.  As a result, I had to start over.  Rather than go through this whole process with nothing to show for it, I skipped ahead to the second recipe and stole its thunder – rather than go through the labor intensive process of constant whisking, I put all the non-oil ingredients in a food processor, turned it on, and slowly drizzled the oil into the running machine.  Within two minutes, the sauce came together far faster and far easier than if I had to make the mayo myself.  The takeaway here: we’re in the 21st Century now, so if you have something to do your whisking for you, use it.

I took this to heart when I looked at the second recipe, which is called “party mayonnaise,” but really, it’s supposed to be a chile mayo.  You still have the oil, but you also add a few tablespoons of a flavored oil.  In my case, I chose a sesame-chile oil.  Rather than lemon juice, you use lime juice.  Other than that, it’s almost identical.  Since I didn’t have a food processor where I was making it, I grabbed my immersion blender.  This ended up working perfectly fine, though it was quite hot by the end.  My only complaint is that the sesame-chile oil was mostly sesame by the time everything was done.  I found a good home for my sesame mayo in an Asian-inspired chicken salad, but it was a bit strange in my Southwestern deviled eggs.

Next: Mr. Diddy makes a pastry.

Mayonnaise

Party Mayonnaise

“The Bulb of the Night”

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t appreciate garlic.  It’s always been a great flavor addition to just about anything.  I can’t imagine most Italian dishes without it, and a large number of Asian ones as well.  I’ve always liked the stuff, but I vividly remember the first time I truly fell in love with it.  There was a restaurant that I don’t remember the name of any longer at a mall in town.  We only went there a few times, and I remember nothing of what I ate there.  Nothing, except the bread.  Actually, not the bread, but really, what they brought with the bread.  It was a little earthen jar with a whole head of garlic inside.  It had been roasted, and they said that you were supposed to spread the roasted garlic on the bread.  Young Me was skeptical.  After all, garlic is pungent.  Why would I basically eat this by itself?  It was a backup singer; how could it be a headliner?  Well, despite my misgivings, I tried it.  I spread a softened clove on my hunk of bread with my knife, and took a timid bite.

After the choirs of angels stopped singing, I had a second bite.

So, yes, you could say I love garlic, especially the roasted stuff.  This chapter goes one better and adds chicken to the mix in one of my favorite dishes, Forty Cloves and a Chicken.  It’s a simple peasant dish, but “simple” does not necessarily mean “boring.”  You start by searing a chicken in a pan on all sides to get some good browning, then add a half cup of olive oil, some fresh thyme, and the titular forty cloves of garlic.  That seems like a lot, but really, if you’ve ever had roasted garlic, you know that it’s not nearly enough.  You then cook it in the oven for an hour and a half, remove, let sit for fifteen minutes, then serve straight out of the pan.

It’s as good as you think it would be.

The best part of this chapter?  It comes with its own side dish.  To showcase the different ways garlic can be incorporated in a dish, Alton created a garlicky greens dish that I made with kale.  Again, it’s remarkably easy.  You peel and crush five to seven cloves of garlic, and lightly fry them in some olive oil to create garlic oil.  Pull them out and throw in some sliced garlic to fry.  Once the garlic is golden, remove from heat, add the greens as well as a minced clove of garlic, and toss to coat with the oil.  Once it’s wilted, it’s ready to serve.

This was remarkably simple to make, and remarkably delicious.  It was paired with a loaf of crusty Italian bread to spread the garlic on, not to mention sop up the oil and chicken fat.  This was a decadent feast, and one I’ll definitely be having again.

Next: Uncooked eggs make the best sauce.

Recipes:

40 Cloves and a Chicken

Vlad’s Very Garlicky Greens

The Remaining Third of “Pantry Raid IV: Comb Alone”

I think I need to get a new catchphrase for this blog.  It used to be “I am not a baker,” but my relatively recent successes with angel food cake is making me rethink that particular phrase.  I mean, I’m not going to be able to come up with a bread recipe off the top of my head any time soon, and I don’t think I’ll enjoy baking the same way I enjoy making a stew, but little by little, the mysteries of baking reveal themselves to me, and I’m slowly getting better.

No, if I had to get a new catchphrase, I think it would be “I am not a candymaker,” and I think the reason I say this is the same reason I said it about baking.  Baking and candymaking is all about chemistry, and the reactions that occur when you heat something.  It’s far less forgiving than searing or stewing, since it’s virtually impossible to fix if you screw something up.  And this issue was made incredibly apparent when I attempted the final application in this chapter of the book, something Alton calls Lemony Love Lozenges.  They’re basically honey-lemon candies.  There’s nothing incredibly difficult about the cooking process: you put some sugar, some honey and some water in a pot, and boil for five minutes.  After that, you remove the lid and stick a candy thermometer inside it.  Once the mixture reaches 295 degrees, you cool for five minutes and add the lemon zest.  That is the easy part, and I managed to screw that up as well – I added the zest at the beginning, and as a result, I couldn’t taste any lemon in these guys.  I think it all cooked out.

The hard part, though, is the portioning.  Once this stuff starts to cool, you’re on a timer, so you need to work quickly to portion the honey candies on the waiting parchment paper landing zones.  This sounds simple, but really, it’s not.  I got maybe halfway when the stuff started to solidify in my pan.  I panicked, imagining throwing out a perfectly good pot, but I was able to get it out and throw that stuff out.  I ended up with a bunch of the candies, but honestly, they weren’t lemony enough to cut through the sweetness of the sugar and honey.  It really needed something more to elevate it out of that saccharine zone.  Again, that’s probably my fault, since I cooked out the lemon, but I’d need to do this again to be sure.  If I do, you can bet that I won’t be completely removing this from the heat, but dropping the temperature to my stove’s lowest setting.  That should keep it liquid long enough to do the portioning.

No recipe this time, as this is a book-exclusive.  Yay me.

Next Time: Good Eats takes on Dracula.