Tag: mayonnaise

Categories
Salads The Book

201. Caesar Salad p.136

I can’t find the recipe online.

Caesar salad is pretty much always good. The only way to really truly mess it up is to use wilted, or flavorless lettuce. I’ve seen it done, I had a chicken Caesar at a Boston Pizza that was an insult to the whole concept of food, but generally they’re a safe bet, with a chance of being tasty. Growing up my dad made Caesar dressing regularly for a few years, then stopped despite our protests. He’ll make it very occasionally now, but I can’t get a straight answer as to why the Caesar train dried up. His Caesar was excellent, but my mother in law’s is among the best I’ve ever had, and she’s always happy to make one. She just sent me the recipe today, and we’ll be trying it out. I’ll let you know how mine works out in the comments. The Book’s recipe doesn’t hold a candle to either of those versions.

The recipe starts with making croûtons from firm white sandwich bread, toasting them for 10 minutes at 350, then tossing them with a mashed garlic, olive oil, and salt, then toasting for a few minutes more. The dressing is olive oil, egg yolks, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and minced and mashed anchovy. You toss romaine with the dressing, grate Parmigiano-Reggiano on top, and add the croûtons, along with salt and pepper, then toss again and serve.

The Good: The croûtons were very tasty indeed. 5 slices of bread worth of croûtons were tossed with 4 tablespoons of garlic oil, so each and every croûton got a good soaking of delicious delicious oil. I used nice crisp romaine hearts, and good cheese so we were well on our way to a very nice salad.

The Bad: The dressing for this salad was lackluster, in fact I probably wouldn’t have guessed that it was supposed to be a Caesar dressing. It was nearer to a vinaigrette tossed with a bunch of cheese. I think it’s a problem of technique, the recipe asks you to whisk together the oil, egg yolks, acids, and flavourings in a small bowl, in no specific order.  Those ingredients are otherwise known as mayonnaise if you whisk vigorously and add the oil to the other stuff in a very slow stream. As written the dressing was thin, but a better emulsion would have given the salad that creamy coating texture that makes Caesar great. The proportions were generally good, but there was too much Worcestershire for my taste, I’d cut the given 1 teaspoon down to 1/2 teaspoon, or even just a few dashes. The other weird aspect of the recipe is that all the garlic is in the croûtons, and none in the dressing. The traditional table-side Caesar preparation in a restaurant has the waiter rubbing the bowl with a garlic clove, that then gets mashed into the dressing. I decided to do something of the same thing and tossed my croûtons with their garlic oil in the bowl I eventually used for the salad. I think leaving all the garlic on the croûtons would have been a mistake. Finally, despite vigorous mincing of the anchovies, there were still a few clumps of salty fish in the final dressing. Not a problem for my sister or me, but my dining companion was not pleased.

The Verdict: I wasn’t optimistic about this salad as I was making it. It didn’t really look right, and tasting the dressing on it’s own I was overpowered by the Worcestershire. Once it was all together it was actually a pretty good salad, just not what I’d ordinarily think of as a Caesar. The lack of texture in the dressing just weirded me out, although all of the basic flavours were there. That said, I went back for seconds of this kinda-sorta-Caesar salad, and my sister who took the rest of lunch the next day said it had improved with age (here’s for hearty romaine that still fine 16 hours after being dressed). Almost all Caesars are good Caesars, and this one tasted just fine, but it was far from the best of my life.

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

151. Deviled Eggs p.27


The recipe

The next few recipes are from a cocktail party we held in honour of a friend’s thesis defense. We invited her to celebrate her accomplishment, and be called Doctor a lot, at an intimate soirée at our place. I was planning a menu around her favourite dishes, and counting on eight to ten people. The day before the party, I was informed that it was going to be more like thirty, and possibly up to fifty people, and that I knew almost none of them. My first reaction was to start dusting.

Most of the time I’m pretty relaxed about the state of the apartment, and the mounting pile of dishes bothers me not at all. The second I hear that company’s coming though, I start channeling my mother. I worked myself up into a right state, gave up on the food, and decided that the best I could do would be to provide an empty and clean space for these hoards to descend upon. Then I thought that even if I wasn’t providing any food, I should really have ice, lemons, and limes on hand. From there I sold myself on baking a congratulatory cake, and decided reprising a couple of the great appetizers from The Project wouldn’t be too hard. The day of I convinced myself that adding a (soon to be blogged) dip would be in the realm of the reasonable. Once the guests had arrived I remembered that we had eggs in the fridge, and couldn’t think of a good reason not to devil them. I spent a good chunk of the evening in the kitchen cooking, but that worked out well as it wasn’t really my party. My dining companion and our newest doctor of philosophy entertained the twenty or so people who showed up, and I catered in the background.

This was a by the book deviled egg recipe, no fancy flourishes, just straight to business. First you hard boil a bunch of eggs, cool them, peel them, and halve them lengthwise, then you remove the yolks mash them up with mayo, Dijon, and cayenne, and pipe them back into the waiting egg whites. You may then garnish with smoked paprika and fresh chives.

Since this was a last minute hors d’oeuvre, I decided to skip the pretty star tip, and just pipe them with a ziplock minus a corner. Chives are lovely with deviled eggs, but the vegetable drawer had run dry, so no chives for you. All in all these were some pretty messy slapdash deviled eggs on my part, but they were devoured before anyone had a chance to notice. As is almost always the case with deviled eggs, they didn’t garner much praise, but they disappeared. If I’d asked people to tell me what they ate, they’d probably have forgotten to mention the eggs, but there was a peculiarly disappointed look that crossed the faces of our guests when they scanned the table and found the tray empty.

Are deviled eggs hopelessly outdated? probably, but who cares? They’re awesome, and I know I’m pleased to see a plate of these on a buffet table. The recipe was very standard, but totally solid. It’s very comforting to know that with a dozen eggs and a jar of mayonnaise I can put out a universal crowd pleaser with only slightly more effort than making an egg salad sandwich.

Categories
Fish and Shellfish The Book

143. Fried Oysters Rémoulade p.329


The instructions for the oyster’s don’t appear online, but the rémoualde is the same one used in this recipe.

I tried a fried oyster for the first time about six months ago at a very posh restaurant. It was brought out as an unexpected treat between courses, and served with a fiery salsa. It had a crackling exterior that gave way with a burst of the the ocean, and revealed a delicately chewy, and still mostly raw oyster. We ate some wonderful food that night, but I think the impromptu oyster was my favourite part. I was hoping to match that experience with this recipe. In then end I didn’t quite succeed, but it’s a strong base for further experimentation.

For this recipe shucked oysters are dredged in a mixture of milk and egg, then coated with crushed saltine crackers. The oysters are deep fried for a couple of minutes, and served on their shells and topped with a rémoulade. The rémoulade is a simple mixture of mayonnaise, mustard, tomato paste, minced shallot, dill pickles, and scallion, with a dash of Worchestershire sauce, old bay seasoning, minced parsley, sugar, red wine vinegar, and a pinch of cayenne.

The rémoulade is absolutely excellent, and I’ll hear no word against it. It draws in a broad spectrum of ingredients, and covers its bases. It’s creamy, acidic, herbaceous, arromatic, and just a little bit spicy. It would be an ideal counterpoint to many simply flavoured seafood dishes. The use of Old Bay seasoning was intriguing. The Book doesn’t often call for prepared spices, particularly not a proprietary blend like Old Bay. I’d never tried the stuff before, and never seen it in stores here. Alton Brown is apparently in love with it, and I’d been interested to find out what the fuss was about. I was lucky to be cooking at my parent’s place, as it turned out my mother had a container in her pantry. Speculating on how old it was, would have been looking a gift horse in the mouth. I wasn’t blown away by Old Bay, but it certainly wasn’t bad. I was expecting it to be like those flavoured salts Food Network stars like to sell, but it seems to be more of an herb and spice blend. It was a worthwhile experience, but I’m not sure I’ll add it as a pantry staple.

The oysters in this recipe had some problems. I heated the oil to 375, and began the frying process. The recipe says they should cook for one-and-a-half to two minutes, but after about 45 seconds they were getting quite dark. By the time I got the oysters out they were much closer to mahogany than golden. The previous oyster recipe called for large oysters, so it was my fault when they overcooked, this one just calls for oysters in general. We have no way of knowing what size of oysters they tested this recipe on, but they must have been larger than mine. When there’s such wild variation in the sizes and cooking times of oysters, it’s pretty bad form not to give some indication of how that will affect the recipe. My oysters came out overcooked on the outside, which wasn’t a big deal, but they were cooked all the way through and mostly dried out on the inside. The fine texture of the oyster was lost, and replaced by chewiness. They still had good flavour, and the coating was nicely crisp. I’d certainly try oysters like this again, but I’d be sure to get them out of the oil significantly earlier.

These would work well at a cocktail party, or as a first course. The book suggests that they could be a main course as well, but I think they were a bit too rich to make a meal of. This recipe had its problems, but overall they were very enjoyable. With a little tweaking of the oysters and cooking time I think they could have been fantastic.

Categories
Sauces and Salsas The Book

135. Green Mayonnaise p.887


The recipe

This mayo is meant to accompany the Poached Salmon in Aspic. I wasn’t quite sure why an aspic covered fish, served with aspic on the side, needed a mayonnaise as well. My guests didn’t eat much of this mayo with the salmon, possibly because I didn’t make it obvious enough that they were meant to be served together, but I suspect it was because no one really felt it was lacking in mayo. If it had just been a poached salmon, a nice sauce would be appreciated, but it seemed out of place with the aspic.

The recipe is dead simple. I started with a cup of yesterday’s recipe for plain mayonnaise. I ran parsley, chives, tarragon, and dill through the food processor with lemon juice and half the mayo. I omitted the optional chervil. Once it was smooth, I added the rest of the mayo, and stuck it in the fridge to come together for a couple of hours.

It tasted very much like mayonnaise with a bunch of herbs puréed into it. Fresh herbs are almost always nice, and they added all sorts of flavour to the mayo. Tarragon and dill aren’t subtle, so it was fairly bold. The additional lemon juice and water from the herbs thinned it out a lot, so it was more of a drizzling than a spreading mayo. As I said, it didn’t do much for the salmon, so I was left with a lot of this. I couldn’t really think of many other uses though. I tried sandwiches, I tried serving it with grilled chicken, and I put some on asparagus. In all cases it was just fine, but I would have preferred plain old mayo, or perhaps an aïoli. Simply grilled or poached fish would be a natural use for this, which I wouldn’t mind trying it at some point, and if it were thicker it could be quite interesting with French fries.

I’m sure there’s a dish out there just begging for a drizzle of green mayonnaise, but I haven’t found it yet.

Categories
Sauces and Salsas The Book

134. Mayonnaise p.886


Surprisingly there’s no recipe on Epicurious for plain old mayonnaise.

This is The Book’s basic mayonnaise recipe, there are 7 other dressed up mayonnaises which use this recipe as a starting point, so I’ll be making it a bunch of times. As with most of the basic recipes in the book, it’s solid, but not exciting. However, that’s not a bad thing. I made the mayo recipe from the ’76 edition of The Joy of Cooking, and it was a disaster. Joy is often considered the home cook’s go to source for no-fail basic recipes, and you’d think they’d have a rock solid mayo method, but no. Mayonnaise is made by whisking an egg yolk with oil a drop at a time to get an emulsion started, then pouring in a staggering amount of oil in a slow stream while whisking madly. Once the mayo is thickened and the emulsion is no longer at risk of breaking, you can add extra flavourings. The crazy Joy method would have you add mustard, salt, cayenne, lemon juice, and confectioners sugar before you start the emulsion at all. The mustard is a common addition because it helps the emulsion form, but adding the lemon juice is just stupidity. The acid fights the emulsion you’re working so hard to build, why would you put it in there? I whisked for about 20 minutes before I could get a thin soupy consistency. It was an OK salad dressing, but a horrific mayo. The Book’s method is much more logical, and worked very well.

In this recipe an egg yolk is whisked together with Dijon and salt, then 3/4 of a cup of oil are added first by drops then in a slow stream. Once the mixture starts to thicken to the point that it’s getting difficult to whisk, and the emulsion is solid, you add a bit of white wine vinegar, and lemon juice. Then the remainder of the oil is added in a stream, and salt and white pepper are stirred in.

The mayo wasn’t quite as thick as I would have liked. You’d be better applying this with a spoon than a knife. But, it was silky smooth, and nicely glossy. I might have cut 1/2 a teaspoon of liquid somewhere to keep the mayo thicker. The flavour was pretty good, it had the eggy richness I look for in a mayonnaise, with a little bite from the vinegar and lemon juice, and a background body from the mustard. It was very nice spread on a sandwich, and quite a bit better than the the stuff that comes from a jar.

My only real complaint was the instruction to use either olive oil or vegetable oil in the recipe without further specification. Depending on your olive oil it can have a very pronounced taste, which is great for some applications, but it can make for a very weirdly flavoured mayonnaise. I made mayo at my brother’s place a few weeks back, and the only oil he had was olive, that mayo was edible, but none of us liked it much. It lacked the  mellow feeling I’m looking for in mayo, all of those grassy spicy flavours I enjoy in good olive oil where just unpleasant and distracting when they were so amplified. If you’re going to use all olive oil, I’d recommend using very mildly flavoured oil, preferably not extra virgin. I think the best tactic is to use a small amount of good olive oil for flavour, and then use a flavourless oil for the rest of it (canola, or grapeseed would be my first choices, using about 1 part olive oil to 3 parts other oil).

Mayonnaise is quite easy to make, and homemade has a definite edge over the store bought kind. I’ve always been disturbed by the fact that Hellman’s is made with real eggs, but keeps for months. Without all of the shelf-stable preservatives this mayo will only keep for two days. Since it’s really not much trouble to make, and it tastes better than the miracles of food science on the grocery shelf, I’ve been getting into the habit of making my own. This recipe uses a solid method, and it’s a jumping off point for a lot of interesting variations. It won’t blow your mind, and I’ve had better homemade mayo, but it’s worth trying at least once.

Categories
Sandwiches & Pizzas The Book

119. Turkey Wraps with Chipotle Mayonnaise p.189

I can’t find an online version of this recipe, but it was good enough to earn a 5 mushroom ratings so I’ll give it to you here.

FOR PICKLED ONION
1 red onion (6 ounces), sliced crosswise 1/4 inch thick
1/2 cup cider vinegar
3/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
FOR CHIPOTLE MAYONNAISE
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped canned chipotle chiles in adobo, including some adobo sauce
1/4 cup mayonnaise
FOR ASSEMBLING WRAPS
4 (8-inch) flour tortillas, preferably whole wheat
1/4 pound sliced or shredded roast turkey or chicken
3/4 cup tender pea shoots or shredded lettuce leaves
salt and freshly ground pepper

MAKE THE PICKLED ONION:
blanch onion in a 1 1/2 quart saucepan of boiling water for 1 minute: drain. Return onion to pan, add vinegar, water, and salt, and bring back to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 1 minute. Transfer mixture to a heatproof bowl. Cool, uncovered, then refrigerate until cold, covered, about 2 hours.
MAKE THE CHIPOTLE MAYONNAISE:
blend chipotle and mayonnaise in a blender of food processor until smooth.
MAKE THE WRAPS:
Toast tortillas directly on (gas or electric) burners over moderate heat, turning over and rotating until slightly puffed and browned in spots, 40 to 60 seconds.
Spread 1 tablespoon chipotle mayonnaise on each tortilla. Arrange one quarter of turkey and pea shoots across middle of each tortilla and top with some drained pickled onion. Season with salt and pepper and roll up wraps.

I cooked this a while ago, and by happenstance I’m getting to writing it up just before the Americans have their turkey day. If any of you are planning a big turkey feast for thanksgiving this is a wonderful way to use up some of the leftovers. My post Thanksgiving sandwich is a fairly ritualized affair, it must have a mix of white and dark meat, mayo, cranberry sauce, rice and sausage stuffing, and a bit of lettuce, preferably on fresh sliced multi-grain bread, or baguette. But for a post-post thanksgiving sandwich, I think this wrap is the way to go.

Its components are just a little different, and very versatile. The pickled onions were shockingly good. It didn’t seem like they’d be anything special, just some blanched onions with vinegar and salt, but the onions are transformed. The harsh raw onion flavor is mellowed and replaced with the sweet-tart cider vinegar. They lose that mouth-stinging halitosis-causing raw onion edge, but retain their raw flavour, and even have it enhanced by the salt. These picked onions are beautiful too, the red pigment dissolves in the vinegar and dyes them pink. We loved them on these sandwiches, and then we put them on everything else we could think of ’till we ran out. Just writing this makes me want to go whip up another batch.

The chipotle mayonnaise was also a winner. There’s nothing to it, just chipotles in adobo and mayo, but it’s a super versatile topping for pretty much any sandwich. This mayo is so simple, and so good, that I’ve elevated it to the status of fridge staple.

While these wraps are an ideal way to use up a whole roast turkey, you don’t have to limit them to the day after major feasts. I can find turkey breasts at the grocery store pretty frequently these days, and I love them. They’re lean, inexpensive, and more flavorful than chicken breasts. I seasoned the breast with salt and pepper and then grilled it using the same indirect heat technique I used for the Cornish hens. When cooking a whole turkey the breast tends to dry out by the time the thigh is done, but if you’re just grilling a breast you can take it off as soon as it hits 170 F. I did a much better job on this breast than on the Cornish hens. The skin was golden, crisp, and packed with flavour, and the meat was wonderfully moist.

The elements of this sandwich are really strong, and they compliment each other well when combined. Sandwiches are about as humble as food gets, but when some real though it put into their composition they can be a treat. My only real criticism of this sandwich is the recommendation to grill the tortilla over a gas or electric burner. I was pretty skeptical about this working on my electric stove, and guess what? it didn’t. 119_turkey_wraps_with_chipotle_mayonnaise_p189_burned_tortilla.jpgI wonder if they tested this on a gas stove and figured it would work out for electric too? or perhaps I’m missing something. My dining companion just shook her head and sighed while she watched me fill our kitchen with smoke.

This was a very simple wrap, but everything about it was delicious. I saw this recipe coming up in my backlog, and decided I had to have it again. So, last night made a variation with grilled chicken, and I added bacon. I didn’t recreate the wonderful pickled onions and I regret that. This wrap is nothing fancy, but it earned its five mushroom rating.

Categories
Sandwiches & Pizzas The Book

74. Lemon Coleslaw p.193

The recipe

This coleslaw is meant to be served as part of Shredded Pork and Lemon Coelsaw Sandwiches (p.192). I made the slaw on it’s own though. This dish is found in the Sandwiches and Pizzas section of The Book, and this is the first recipe I’ve done from that section. So, let’s open Sandwiches and Pizzas with a coleslaw.

It was a very light, cooling, and fresh slaw. It wasn’t weighed down by a gallon of dressing, and the lemon flavours made the whole dish taste bright and clear. On the other hand, the cabbage retained all of it’s crispness. I like crunchy cabbage in a slaw, but this was going a little too far. My jaw hurt from the effort.

The dish is as simple as you could ask for. Whisk together a bit of sour cream, mayo, lemon zest and juice, water, sugar, salt, and pepper. Stir in sliced cabbage, grated carrots, scallions, and parsley. Let the whole thing sit in the fridge for an hour and serve. The hour in the fridge is supposed to give the sugar and salt in the dressing time to draw moisture out of the veg and wilt them a bit. But, after an hour the cabbage was just a tough as ever.

I sliced my cabbage as thinly as I could with a chef’s knife, and ended up with good looking pieces of cabbage. Maybe I sliced it too thickly for the one hour to be sufficient. If I’d used a mandolin to get narrower slices things might have worked out better. Alternately more time would have done the trick. I had some leftovers the next day for lunch and the texture was much better. Some of the freshness of the lemon had faded, but the whole salad had mellowed, and the cabbage still had a crisp bite without causing jaw cramps.

There were a lot of things to like about this slaw, but it needs some refinements. If I were to make it again I’d toss the dressing on to the sliced cabbage the night before, then add the carrots, scallions, parsley and a little refreshing squeeze of lemon an hour before I wanted to serve it. The flavours are really clean, but a bit unidimensional. If I were to make it again I’d add some sliced fennel into the mix. I really appreciated that the recipe allowed the cabbage to be front and centre. So many slaws are downed with goopy dressings in an attempt to hide the fact that you might be eating cabbage, so this was a refreshing change.

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

57. Onion Parmesan Toasts p.34


The recipe

These were remarkably simple little appetizers with some old school flair. It falls into the ancient and proud “stuff on toast” camp of appetizers. The secret to this style of appetizers is to give something either healthy or expensive prime billing in the name, but to make absolutely sure that most of your on-toast topping is creamy, cheesy, fatty, or preferably all three.

Here the role of healthy is played by a sweet onion, cheesy is played by Parmeigiano-Reggiano, and fatty is portrayed by mayonnaise. By volume there are 3/4 of a cup of onion, and a combined 3/4 of a cup of the cheese and mayo. By weight however the creamy fatty team makes up most of the toppings. A bonus rule for old school on-toast appetizers is to avoid unusual spices that might scandalize the croquet ladies. Garlic would be a bit outre, and curry powder is firmly in the province of those bohemian ne’er-do-wells that are tearing this country apart. My dining companion and I brought some guacamole to a family affair a while back, and when my grandmother tried it she said “who made this green stuff? It hurts my mouth”. Here the spices are kept safe and stayed, fresh ground black pepper. Of course pre-ground would be more familiar to the bridge club, but we can modernize a little bit.

I didn’t think I was going to like these all that much, broiled mayonnaise seemed a bit weird, but it really worked. The toasts, cocktail rye of course, crisped up nicely and the topping browned beautifully. I feared that the mayo would break under the heat, but that didn’t’ happen. The onions cooked enough to soften a bit and give off a great deal of flavour, and the cheese turned golden-brown and delicious. These were a fun easy throwback, that was yanked forward into modern times for some very good reasons.

The Book is a celebration of Gourmet Magazine’s 50th anniversary. A lot of the recipes are weighted towards the ’80’s and ’90’s though. It’s nice to see one that very clearly showed up in the earliest issues.

Categories
Sandwiches & Pizzas The Book

17. Grilled Eggplant Sandwiches With Lemon Aioli, Feta, and Mint p.182

the recipe

I sextupled this recipes and brought two sheet pans full to a picnic in the parc. They were devoured within seconds. I’m not sure if this was because they were scrumptious, or if my audience of hungry students wasn’t too discerning. I though these were OK, without being anything special. I think my expectations may have been a bit high. I was hoping for a very Mediterranean result, with feta, olive oil, garlic, lemon, eggplant, and mint. Somehow the mayonnaise in the aioli overwhelmed the other flavours, and the result was a bit bland. The mint did come through nicely.

I didn’t have access to a grill for these so I broiled the eggplant slices. Grilling might have added a nice smokiness, but the problem here didn’t lie in the eggplant. Toasting the buns I put them on would have been nice too. The recipe calls for a baguette, but for feeding a crowd rolls made more sense.

If I made these again I’d up the garlic and lemon juice, and use the best quality feta I could get my hands on. There really isn’t a lot of mayonnaise in here, but I think I’d try to cut it even further (would it still be an aioli? that’s a question for the ages). While this was better in theory than in practice, it wasn’t at all bad. In fact I’d make it again.