Aioli

Saffron Aioli.  Photo by Rob Robitaille

Well, I am back after a short summer that I felt needed to be enjoyed as much as possible.  To be honest, I realized that I don't have a huge following of people in a world with numerous food blogs and I kind of pulled back from the whole blogging thing.  But then I started reading the blog of Johnny B. Truant, and basically learned that you need to quit worrying about stuff and just do it.  Maybe this blog will never have a huge following, but if I worry about that, I won't do it, as I haven't for the past couple months.  So, sometimes you have to just say fuck it and try to be as awesome as you can be.  Like Johnny says, no one is going to give you the gift of awesome, you have to make it yourself by doing awesome things.  This is my attempt at being as awesome as I can.  I digress.  On with food talk.

Aioli is one of those things that people often times have never heard of, yet have probably eaten several times, usually going by the moniker of something something spiced mayo, and usually one of those somethings in garlic.  In its most basic form, aioli is mayonnaise seasoned with garlic.  Ta-da!  Usually a lot of garlic.  I have found that a little garlic goes a long way, but as with most things, tastes vary.  The fun thing about aioli is that it is one of the basic French sauces, and not unlike many French sauces, is based on another sauce.  Feel free to make your own mayo for this, but I am perfectly happy with a good quality store bought mayo.  Once you have aioli, you can be imaginative and add what you like to tailor it to a specific application.  In the above example, I added a nice pinch of saffron to some aioli and stirred it every few minutes over the course of an hour so that the saffron infused into it and turned it a beautiful golden yellow color.

Another great thing about aioli is that, unless you make your own mayo, you don't even need to remember any real proportions, just don't burn it with garlic.  Now, aioli isn't for every type of food.  Obviously, it adds a silky mayo texture and mouth feel, but it also adds garlic, so it is a bit of a double whammy, so you need to be careful.  That being said, it goes well with fish, some times chicken, eggs, and many vegetables like potatoes and asparagus.

Here are a few of my favorites and how I use them:

• Plain old aioli - fish, potatoes, asparagus
• Creole spiced aioli - corned beef, believe it or not
• Saffron aioli - fish, potatoes, deviled eggs, Tortilla Espanola, salmon cakes
• Ponzu* aioli - pan seared salmon, deviled eggs, salmon cakes
• Wasabi aioli - pan seared salmon or tuna, deep fried chicken wings
• Dill aioli - salmon, and salmon quiche
• Green peppercorn and caper aioli - salmon cakes

As for the list above, the recipe is in the name. Just add the accompaniment to taste and let stand for about an hour.  Don't worry, if you use good mayo that has been properly stored within the proper time frame, you won't grow a colony of  people killing bacteria in an hour, although the fear-mongering news media would probably have you believe that now that they are tired about talking about whether eggs are good or bad for you, or if you should wash your chicken.  But that is another post.

* Ponzu is a wonderful Japanese sauce that looks like thin soy sauce.  The flavor is hard to describe without going into each ingredient that makes up ponzu, which many times does not help the situation as those ingredients are just as strictly Japanese as ponzu itself.  Just think of it as a light, yet full bodied sauce, faintly reminiscent of a thin soy sauce, but less harsh and salty with a slightly acidic citrus note.  You typically see it served with tataki (see my duck tataki post).