BLOGS

Aye, aye aioli

Blog: Nosh On

A few weeks ago, I was watching "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel. Anthony Bourdain was in Provence, France, relaxing on a picturesque cottage patio in mid-summer surrounded by warmth of friends and, well, the sun. The scene was one of such tranquility, such peacefulness, oh I wished I was there.

Then, they got out the mortar and pestle, the garlic, the olive oil. It was almost tortuous. The graying French mother proceeded to made aioli. She only used garlic, salt and olive oil. I was intrigued. I thought "I have a mortar and pestle, garlic, salt and olive oil. I can make aioli just like the people from Provence."

This weekend, I tried. And I failed. Apparently, I'm not French and don't have French magical powers. So, I turned my eyes to the heavens and called upon Julia. I grabbed her "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (geez, that's a long title), turned to the sauces section and found aioli. She says to use an egg yolk — this was expressly left out by the French people, though I think they lie — and white bread. I know, weird. I didn't use the bread, because I didn't have any and thought it was strange, but I added the yolk. It didn't work. I'm pretty sure the yolk came too late in the game.

My next step was to call upon the kitchen god number one: Food Processor. Despite my offerings, Food Processor god failed me. My sauce was broken, all runny and oily. Looking for more inspiration, and probably an entire start-over, I opened up my computer and asked Google god to give me David Lebovitz's recipe for aioli. His was what I should have started with. The method was pretty much what I knew about making homemade mayonnaise, but with garlic added. I still wanted to save my 45-minutes of mortar and pestle work so clicked on his link for a video of how to fix broken mayo. It was a revelation.

The man in the video used kitchen god number two: Stand Mixer. "Of course! Of course! This should work," thought I. And it did. I bow to Stand Mixer god now and confess my everlasting devotion to it and the art of aioli.

My husband, Brian, and I ate our aioli with seared tuna steaks and artichokes, feeling very Californian as we ate a bulgur salad with it.

Ah summertime, or the illusion of it.