WE ate dinner on the back porch four times last week -- only partly because I've been making aioli, though that probably could be considered reason enough.
Essentially, aioli is nothing more than raw garlic pounded with a little salt and a couple egg yolks into a sticky paste, with just enough olive oil beaten in to make it creamy. It is absolutely delicious, in an elemental, breathtaking sort of way that is perhaps best appreciated out of doors.
On its home turf in Provence, aioli is the quintessential summer sauce and the centerpiece of numerous street fairs which, as Richard Olney relates in "Simple French Food," often culminate in an orgiastic aioli monstre, "the entire population turning out to pile plates high with boiled salt cod, potatoes, carrots, green beans, artichokes, chick-peas, beets, hard-boiled eggs, snails, squid stew and huge globs of garlic mayonnaise, liberally moistened with the local rose."
While everything Olney describes sounds quite delicious, there's a difference between Southern France and Southern California.
And that got me thinking: If I were to make a Californian monster aioli, what would it be like?
Delicious visions danced through my head: Meats, seafood, vegetables -- what wouldn't go well with a really good aioli?
But before I could begin playing with any monster menus, I knew that I had a chore to attend to. I had to learn to make aioli -- a really good aioli, that is.
I've been making aioli for years and every once in a while, when all the stars were in alignment, everything would work according to plan.
I'd pound the garlic to a paste in my big, Thai granite mortar and pestle. Then I'd use the pestle to smear in the egg yolks. Then I'd stir in the oil and lemon juice.
Voila: a golden, creamy mayonnaise, sweet and pungent from garlic and with a slight fruitiness from the olive oil.
More often, though, about halfway through the process I'd wind up with something that looked like badly scrambled eggs. The mayonnaise had broken beyond repair, the eggs and the oil separating into a greasy mess.
When that happened, the only cure was the blender: Whip up a whole egg, then slowly pour the broken mayonnaise into it. This is a sure-fire fix, almost guaranteed.
The only problem is that the high speed of the blender beats in so much air that you wind up with an aioli that is pale and fluffy rather than golden and creamy. The flavor is pretty good, but it lacks the finesse of the handmade. (The same thing can happen if you whisk too vigorously.)
