Foolproof Mayonnaise – There is a God!

 

 

I don’t know how many times Pierre has had to listen to me wax poetic about Flo, her chicken eggs and the virtues of organic, cage-free eggs. I’m telling you – these babies are the real deal. They have beautiful brown (and sometimes pink or green) shells with crimson yolks that make the best omelette ever. Just looking at them makes me happy. I *heart* these eggs.

I wouldn’t obsess over these eggs so much if Pierre would just build me my chicken coop already.

Just about every week, my friend Flo comes to Ann Arbor and leaves me her fresh, farm eggs that she gets from the chickens she lovingly raises on her property in Hillsdale, Michigan. She keeps a separate residence near central campus in Ann Arbor. So every week or so, I’ll stop by her residence there and open the lid of a wooden box she keeps on the front porch where I’ll find my eggs all neatly packaged in cartons that she’s wrapped like precious cargo in tissue paper. I take my eggs out, leave my payment in the box and shut the lid. Life is good.

But things take a downward turn when I try to make mayonnaise. Despite my efforts to follow exactly Julia Child’s or Jaques Pepin’s recipes for mayonnaise, my numerous attempts failed miserably. You have no idea how gloomy and downright suicidal I felt after wasting yolk after yolk of Flo’s eggs. Total heartache. I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong. I did everything the recipes instructed me to do. But this is what it would always look like:

 

 

As you can see, it’s not a smooth mayonnaise, but more like a thick, nastified egg drop soup. Ewww.

In my search for a reliable mayonnaise recipe, I came across expat Makiko’s food blog Just Hungry. Go there for beautiful and healthy Japanese food and stay for her knowledge, wit and overall amazing-ness. (She has detailed recipes for making soy milk and tofu!) Most notably, she also has a recipe for foolproof mayonnaise, with thorough instructions and step by step photos that you can find here. Hmmm…could she be Jen’s long-lost twin?

I followed her recipe precisely and voilà, mayonnaise. My life now has meaning. And, another bonus: it took less than 20 minutes from start to finish. Sweeeet.

Edit: I think I may have over-beat the mayonnaise a bit, I didn’t add enough lemon juice,so it was slightly stiffer than I would’ve liked.

 

 

What to do with this manna from poultry heaven? How about mixing it with some chopped shallots, cornichons and a few capers to make a quick tartar sauce? We served ours with a salad of Tantré Farms baby greens and poached chicken breast.

 

 

Bon appétit!