I forgot to eat yesterday. Seriously. I was so engrossed with coding a search crawler to work with MySQL (abandoned) that time just slipped by. So much time slipped by that I didn't realize the oversight until it was already the next morning and by then I was too tired to bother with even pouring a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. So this makes up for that.
I've been consuming a lot of dead cow meat lately and I can pick up the scent of it coming out of my pores. So let that be a warning to you. Watch it. Now I'm craving tofu. Is that weird, or what?
Asparagus. Butter is 20% water. If you get a pan extra hot and throw in a nob of butter, it sizzles to oil and its water content steams simultaneously. If you toss in asparagus at the same moment and clamp on a tightly fitting lid, then the asparagus sears and steams immediately. Give the pan a shake to flatten them out in the pan like logs all nestled together but not stacked, then leave the pan alone for a minute so that all the char occurs along one edge of each asparagus. You end up with the best of both worlds, lightly steamed asparagus finished to perfection with a wonderful and complete char along one edge of each spear. Designer asparagus! Resist the urge to disturb the pan while they're in there burning and rely on your intuition to tell you when to release them from their torture. I took mine out a little too soon, but that's okay. I do like slightly undercooked vegetables. But blacker would have been even better.
How to salvage ruined sauce. I heated leftover sweet aioli in the microwave and didn't watch it carefully. It separated to an unsightly mess. It looked like a baby heaved its milk and biscuits. The ruined sauce can be saved as if nothing unfortunate ever happened, here's how. Break open a new egg yolk into a fresh jar. Whisk the new egg yolk as if starting a whole new mayonnaise, except drizzle in the ruined mayonnaise, aioli, or hollandaise as if it were fresh oil or butter. You will be amazed to see it incorporate smoothly into the new egg as if being reborn. It's fun to watch. In fact it's so fun to watch that it's even worth it to ruin perfectly good sauce just so you can see it fix itself. And Man it is good.
3 comments:
You probably gave out your recipe for aioli somewhere in the archives but I can't seem to find it. Would you mind sharing it again or directing me to the recipe?
I like your asparagus idea and plan to give it a try. I've baked it and its ok but has a dry texture so I bake it even longer until it's crunchy and good in a salad.
Anon,
2 egg yolks
1/2 -3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon mustard
1 pinch salt, 1 grind of pepper
That's mayonnaise
+
1 smashed clove garlic
That's aioli
+
sugar or honey or sweet mirin
herbs
spice
chile pepper
That's something so personal and extraordinary that it has no name.
epicurious, hand whisked.
Emersion blender, oil dumped rather than drizzled.
The always annoying Ramsay
Mayonnaise can be heated over a double boiler to cook the egg for longer storage periods, or in a microwave in pulses. That's where I ruined mine.
Presently I prefer the emersion blender with a beater attachment, and drizzle the oil. It's more fun.
Review: Add garlic to regular mayonnaise and BANG you've got aioli. Add imported vinegar, grain mustard, saffron, honey, and POW you've got aioli supreme.
Thank you very much!
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