My Mayo Will Make Your Mayo Sad. With Sadness.

I've had problems with mayonnaise. For years I did just what Julia Child told me and no problems. Then I moved and because of stuff I didn't have space for my blender. Now I can't follow JC's instructions. I know there are many ways to make mayo, and I have been told that the food processor works just fine. I beg to differ. I tried making an herbed mayo sauce and it split and I added an egg and tried again and it still split and I just threw it out. 

Things that make mayo:

Whisks
Blenders
Stick Blenders

I'm now using my stick blender, it works great, just use a small bowl. 

I was talking with some chefy type people and they were saying they have trouble getting their mayo not to split and I asked if they were measuring their oil. They were. This is fine, if you also measure your egg yolk. Eggs are not exactly the same and they vary from chicken to chicken and egg to egg. This means that you can't say two yolks to a cup of oil and have mayo come out. I actually have no idea what the ratio is supposed to be, I do it like JC said to, I add oil until it's done. So, if you want to measure, look up the amount of yolk you should have to oil, come on, it's the future, and you can go dance in the field. 

Today, I decided to pasteurize some eggs, as my theory is that the mayo will be good for longer. Sous vide, not hard, you poach them at like 135 or so for about 2 hours. While this was going on, I decided that I would make an infused oil. Infused oils cook for about an hour around 120-130 so I figured this was fine. 

Real quick, let's talk food safety. It's not something to sniff at. Listen up. Raw eggs can be dangerous to some people. And that information is private to those people (age, medical conditions, ect.), so you don't know who they are. I mean you might, if you look at that 2 year old and then offer him a deviled egg you made with your own mayo and then think, huh. If you plan to serve your homemade egg based salad dressing or mayo, pasteurize your eggs. Also, when you make oil infusions there is the chance that you can get botulism from them. You know the stories for people who died from eating the beans? That's not messing around. So, minimize risk. Wash your herbs and dry them (you know, oil doesn't get along with water), garlic needs to be used with caution and the result not kept around for long periods of time, or frozen; keep in the fridge. That being said I've made non sous vide oils with low heat before from fresh herbs and had no problems. I'm not having problems now. I don't want to scare you, I want you to be cautious. I blanch my garlic before use, and you should too, also it makes it easy to peel. 

Between these two things I have made a topping for my various foods (I like a Mexi egg omelette in the morning and this will keep me from wishing I had sour cream).

So let's get to it. 

You can tell he's pasteurized because he's marked. 

Sous Vide Pasteurized Eggs

Follow your sous vide instructions and heat the thing up to 135 and set the timer for 2 hours. Add the eggs in the shell. I put mine in a little bag with some water around them and attached them to the edge of the pot to make them easy to pull out. Remove, ice bath, mark. 

The Most Mexican Spiced Mayo

3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 jalapeno, diced
1/3 bunch cilantro chopped (stems too)
3 tsp Mexican oregano
2 tsp Ground cumin (I didn't have it but whole cumin is better just toast it in a pan first)
About 1/3-1/2 cup avocado oil

Avocado oil
1 lime
1 tsp the plainest mustard you can get
salt
1 pasteurized egg

Put the garlic, jalapeno, cilantro, oregano and cumin in a bag suited for sous viding. I use seal a meal for these as you don't want ANY air in the bag. Add the spices and oil, shake everything to the bottom and seal.

In the same pot as the eggs add your packet at the last  hour of cooking. Make sure it's submerged, I use magnets. 

When time's up remove and set aside while you fuss with the eggs. 

Open and pour into a fine sieve over a bowl and press the remains to get all the oil. Throw out the remnants. 

The Mayo

Depending on how you are doing it, you might need to adjust the instructions. I will give them for a stick blender. 

In a small bowl put your pasteurized egg, the juice of 1/2 - 1 lime (it depends on the size, my lime was huge and I ended up making more mayo than I wanted, looking for about 1 Tbs, 2 Tbs if you want it more like an aioli), a little salt and mustard in the bowl. Add about 2 Tbs of oil and start blending. In a slow steady stream add the flavored oil until you are out. Those little bits at the bottom, add those too. Add avocado oil until it turns into mayo. You can tell because it's not foamy and it gets a little thicker. Just stop and check it, does it feel like mayo? Remember that your mayo will firm up in the fridge a bit.  Also homemade mayo is thinner than commercial mayo. It also has less calories.

Now make me a sandwich! And don't skimp on the mayo.

I gnocchi all about it.

There was a time in my life when I was not a good cook. Hard to believe, I know. I had moved out of my parent's house, and while I had many a baking skills and could follow a recipe, I would not have classified myself as a good cook. Not to say that I was bad, average, perhaps?

I was also a vegetarian; now the world of vegetarians can be very boring. There's only so many types of pasta you can eat, so I decided to branch out one day and try gnocchi. In my innocence I bought some sort of dried gnocchi product. I made a tomato sauce, I'm sure the sauce wasn't bad, followed the package directions and smothered the little nuggets in sauce.

It was horrible. The gnocchi had a weird plastic taste and the consistency of rubber. That was over ten years ago. I wrote gnocchi off as disgusting.

Over the years my food values have changed and it came to my attention that there are more than one country where people eat gnocchi and it's apparently considered a wonderful thing. I decided I had to try again. I was spurred into action by, God only knows what. I suppose it was when I spied these fantastic heirloom potatoes at the Sunday market. This potato farm was growing the most wonderful types of hard to find potatoes. I bought some German Butterballs and went home with my prize. I also picked up some hand forged chevre, yellow beets and a bunch of flowers for my kitchen window.

I knew what I was going to do with those potatoes when I bought them, I was going to make gnocchi, it can't be that hard right?

I poked around on the internet and landed on a good source of how to make gnocchi. Mario Batali. I also looked at a bunch of other recipes, some that claimed they came from Italian grandmothers, and finally I decided to go with the pro. His seemed the most authentic, and he didn't use cheese in his potato pasta. I mashed and riced, and decided I need a potato ricer, not just the standard ricer I have. When I was done, I made a light cheese sauce, fixed a salad and voila! Dinner accomplished. I offered my toils to my husband, who has only had gnocchi once himself at an upscale restaurant.

It was great. So tender, yet soft and the texture was good. The potato flavor was unbelievable, I highly recommend German Butterball potatoes. My husband was impressed, and offered his permission to make these again. Stirred by my initial success I dug deeper and found a lot of people think that gnocchi is really hard to make. I had a conversation with an Italian friend and she sided with me, no they aren't hard to make and are delicious.

Now onto my initial idea. Beet Gnocchi. Yes, that's right, gnocchi made with beets and a chevre sauce. I scoured the interwebs and nerts! Someone else thought of it first. I threw caution into the wind and came up with my own idea. I also invited people over to eat my creation and they liked it. I probably won't do it again, it was messy, it was sticky, and the beet color didn't stay like I wanted it too. And the texture wasn't as good as potato gnocchi. Still, a success under my belt.

This is just another example of how you shouldn't be intimidated because some people are bad cooks. You should fling yourself out there and if you fall on your face, just do what Julia Child suggests and pretend that's what you meant to do.

I have plans to make one more type of gnocchi. As it turns out the French also make a type of gnocchi. This makes sense to me because France and Italy are close together, and the French were probably like "oh, this gnocchi is good, but it could use more butter and eggs." I read the recipe that Julia Child uses (she even calls it gnocchi, a potato pasta), and it uses a pate a choux, the base for eclairs and puff pastry, but mixes in a bunch of eggs, butter and potatoes. It sounds fantastic, and I'm sure it is. I would only make it for a party, as it's sure to be very rich, especially because she serves it with a beurre blanc sauce or something of the sort.

Well I will tell you what to do for beet gnocchi, I would suggest you make a balsamic based sauce Bearnaise for this. I'm sure you can do it, or I will probably do it later.

You must start the day before you want to eat. Even if you use ricotta instead of cottage cheese. Your cheese needs to be very dry for this, no whey at all in the cheese.

Beet Gnocchi

Ingredients:

3 large golden beets - roasted whole
1 lb. boiled Yukon potatoes
2 C. King Arthur all purpose flour
1 lb. fat free organic cottage cheese
1 farm fresh egg
Chicken Stock

Method:

The day before you plan to eat: put a fine mesh strainer in a bowl, line with cheese cloth, dump the cottage cheese into the cheese cloth, wrap the cheese cloth over the top of the cheese. Fill the now empty container with water and place on top of the cheese. Put this in the fridge.

Roast the beets whole. Boil the potatoes whole and when they are done peel both of them, do not let them cool off before you peel them. Finely shred the potatoes and beets until there are no large lumps. The beets may be put through a food processor, but not the potatoes. If you have a potato ricer, that would be ideal.

Put the mashed potato and beet into a bowl. In a food processor place the drained cheese, grind it till it is very fine. Add this to the bowl, stir in the egg, and a bit of salt. If you want you could add a pinch of nutmeg. Add the flour and do the best you can with the mixture, it will not come together into a ball very well. It should be rather soft, but still workable. Flour the working surface well. Divide the mixture into three balls and form each one into a tube. Cut off small sections and set aside on a floured surface.

Bring your chicken stock to a boil. Twenty at a time boil the gnocchi until they float, then boil them another minute or two. Lift out with a slotted spoon and serve immediately.