duck-shaped pain

Things that will make you less surly: My part of the project worked perfectly. Ha ha ha.

Of course, this all lead to unpleasant conversation: "So, do you think you could postpone your trip a bit?"

No way. Sorry.

Even though I'm highly irritated at this point, at least my coat is glossy. On Sunday, I steamed some artichokes for dinner. What facilitated this is that they were on sale -- artichokes in my part of the country during the winter run about $3 apiece. Artichokes always seem sort of extravagant anyway, since the ratio of 'choke detritus that piles up during the meal to the amount of actual edible flesh on one is fairly high. I decided to up the extravagance, though, by making aioli to go with it.

It could have been easier. I've seen instructions here and there that assured me that it could be made in the blender. But they were all strangely absent when I got it in my head that making mayonnaise was how I wanted to spend my afternoon. I could only find one recipe for it, one that radiated scorn for anyone who would even think of doing it any way other than by hand. [1]

So that's how I did it. Mashed up some garlic and salt with the pestle. Added two raw egg yolks. Stirred. Then came the time-consuming part: adding nearly two cups of olive oil to the mixture, a tablespoon at a time. I added. And I stirred, gently. You don't want to overexcite the eggs. But you also don't want to go too slowly. Halfway though the seemingly endless process of adding and mixing, I noticed that the glop in my bowl was turning into something. And I also thought about how people must have fallen to their knees and wept the first time they bought mayonnaise in a jar. [2] No more stirring for us, they thought.

Finally, I had all the oil mixed in and the glop properly emulsified, which amazed me, having read many accounts of first-time mayonnaise failure. I looked at it, laying there in the bowl, all thick and pale yellow. It didn't seem like something that had required 45 minutes of stirring. But it did.

But, you ask, how did it taste?

Amazing. It was really rich and extremely garlicky. It was as far from the white stuff you spread on sandwiches as my house is from Antartica. [3] It could be the King of Condiments, if it weren't for the fact it's so time intensive and that it goes bad in about a day. It make my artichokes happy, though.

Despite the creamy goodness of the real thing, there are still reasons to occasionally visit the dark side, to open up a jar of Best Foods every now and then -- I bet aioli makes really crappy fry sauce.

[1] The official blender-hating explanation given? It makes your oil turn bitter. I'm sure this is a minute difference, noticeably only to people with hair-trigger palates.

[2] So now I'm wondering, if mayonnaise is made with egg yolks, why is mayonnaise in jars white? I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. I'm sure it involves

[3] Bad simile, I know. It's all I could think of at the moment. I apologize.

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