Eastside Road, September 15, 2013—
MEALS ON WHEELS tonight — our wheels. A friend is laid up after shoulder surgery, so we trundled dinner into town to her place, and joined her and her husband for a petit aïoli. Lindsey had prepped red and orange bell peppers, green beans, potatoes, and a couple of kinds of tomatoes, and she broiled four of Franco's sausages, delicious as always.The aïoli itself was up to me. I used a new recipe, and I'm not sold on it. It begins with an entire egg, not just the yolk, and I never was able to whisk it firm enough, though I gave it hundreds, probably thousands of strokes with the whisk.
After adding a cup of olive oil, and whisking in three cloves of garlic minced, then crushed with salt, it still didn't develop the requisite firmness. I gave up and whisked up an egg yolk, then added the aïoli a spoonful at a time. Left to myself I'd have incorporated more oil to develop the right consistency, but I was overruled by my chef.
Oh well. Texture be damned: it tasted just fine. Afterward, ice cream and fresh-picked raspberries. Sorry there's no photo. I forgot.
Soave, Ruffino, 2011; Rosé, Château de Campuget (Costières de Nîmes), 2012 (rather demanding)
2 comments:
I used to suffer via whisking, and mostly failed. Then I discovered how easy aïoli is to make with a food processor. (Cuisinarts for instance have a little hole in the bottom of the liquid feed tube which dribbles oil at the perfect speed.) I suppose I should feel ashamed, but the results are just way better than I ever achieved the old-fashioned way that I refuse to be embarrassed!
I just can't bring myself to go there. I have to confess that my chef stepped in yesterday with her electric egg-beater, insisting that would put more body in this stupid egg-white-infested aïoli, but it didn't really help at all. I've whisked so many mayonnaises and aïolis that my right arm seems to manage. There's a trick: keep your elbow close to your side, and whisk from the wrist as much as from the elbow. (And not at all from the shoulder!) I count, but lose count; I must have counted to 160, by fives, at least twenty times.
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