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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

another mayo triumph

Oh, I wander and stray and have wild adventures with other condiments, but I always come back to mayonnaise. What better way to use the eggs you're getting from the backyard flock in your life?

I finally quit messing around and used the Cuisinart like Julia Child CLEARLY SAID I SHOULD about A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. And I used almond oil, not olive oil. The problem with olive oil I examined in an earlier post: it has too strong an olive tang: it overwhelms your mayonnaise.

Since I was planning to use this stuff as salad dressing, I quit mixing in oil when it got the right consistency. My plan is to use the resultant "salad cream" as a base for a variety of delicious dressings. As is, it tastes exactly like the store mayonnaise that has the royal blue lid and used to have lemons on the label before they changed the label and now it's all white space with like a red onion and some other mess on it. (Mistake! Contact the Obama campaign, you mayo morons: maybe now that he's won they can loan out the outerspace genius agitprop savant who came up with the sun sign. That's the only way you can bail your mayonnaise out now that you've wrecked it on the NewCoke rocks.) My mayo is maybe a tiny bit better than that stuff, but I haven't tasted the two of them right together, and my slight preference for mine may be psychological, because I know it's made with almond oil not soybean oil.

Because it's willing to taste like traditional store mayo, my almond-oil mayo base is perfect just as it is for when I make a bacon lettuce and tomato salad; obviously a garlic-ey aioli would be Wrong For America in that situation. When I want aioli, though, I just throw whatever I haven't used on the BLT salad back in the cuisinart with a pressed clove of garlic. When I want thousand island (which is never), I whizz it up with some ketchup. When I want "ranch" (also never), I throw in whatever they put in "ranch." Ramen noodle flavor pacs?

Woooooo! I am so golden right now!

Unless I'm not.

Because maybe it's at the accessorizing stage when trouble enters paradise because maybe it curdles?

But all that trauma is in the future, though: for now, the potential mayo problems that had me crippled with fear (curdling, tasting like olive diesel, being an off-putting green color, being a pain in the ass to try to make) are vanquished. And that makes this? Another mayo triumph.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mayo branding tidbit: I would usually keep this one buried in the vault of the subconscious with the rest of the useless information acquired over the years but...-Hellman's- Mayonaise is known as -Best Foods- west of the Rockies. Each name has the blue shield behind it on the jar label... We have a jar of the stuff made with canola oil here in AZ... I think that(Commercial jingle) "Bring out the Hellman's, and bring out the best!" still sounds better than the 'Best Foods' variation, if there even is one; maybe because I am used east coast version. I remember mayo sandwiches on white bread back in the day which then evolved to mayo and cucumber sandwiches... OK, I will stop blabbering now...Do you have any Grey Poupon?

Nom, nom, nom! said...

I am so not a fan of Hellman's. I vastly prefer Kraft. But I do love that jingle. Howcome they rebranded for the cowpokes? In Utah there is this brand called Western Family. I saw a lot of Western Family stuff in the grocery stores when I was there. It's just normal stuff, but except for: it's all HUGE. If you get a can of Western Family chili, it's like the size of an oil drum. A roll of paper towels takes up half the trunk space of a regular sedan. So everyone has to drive a Sequoia, just to cart their Western Family crap around. This is happening because it's Utah. Everything is totally crazy there, and I am not going to say why, but there is a South Park episode that explains it. Normally I would consider it a breech of blag ethics to recommend anyone watch a South Park episode, but in an emergency case, like where somebody might be thinking of endangering their health by trying to understand Mormonism I get pretty "by any means necessary."

Amy said...

I don't know why Hellman's is Best Foods in Utah, but it extends to other things as well. There is some ice cream that has a different name too.

I feel the need to say that not everyone in Utah purchases Western Family items. And we don't all send money for Prop 8. And some of us voted for Obama. Really. I'm serious.

Nom, nom, nom! said...

Possibly true, I suppose. But when a purchase of a Western Family item is made, who has made that telling purchase? A Utahnian! Every time!!! Makes you think, doesn't it?

Amy said...

I hesitate to mention this because of your expertise and all, but according to the Western Family website, they have locations in cities like Seattle and countries like Canada. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Amy said...

Oh, and it's 'Utahan'.

Nom, nom, nom! said...

Oh, sure, sure, Western Family may spackle up a bunch of their little decoy operations in other localities, but we all know what they're up to, and we know it's Utahan in essence. A Western Family purchase in Toledo sends the purchaser into a long, dark Utah of the soul, after which, be he/she Utahan to begin with or no, he'll/she'll be Utahan shortly.

Utahan...

...uh-oh:

Utahan contains the word, "aha!"

Chilling!