Sometime in the last decade many restaurants decided that mayonnaise was no longer cool. It was something that you ate at a diner, spread on your turkey club or patty melt. Serving your guests mayo at a serious restaurant started to really hurt your street cred. Places were becoming way too hip to serve people plain old mayonnaise, a condiment of the peasant class. So what they began doing was taking their store-bought pasteurized mayo, mixing all kinds of shit into it and calling it "aioli". I've always had a problem with this. Aioli is a very specific sauce made by emulsifying eggs, raw garlic and oil. If you've traveled to Spain, this is the sauce that you dipped your patatas bravas in, the real deal. Mixing Hellman's with chili powder and lime juice and calling it aioli is like stirring some basil and garlic into ketchup and calling it a marinara. If you're going to serve mayo just call it mayo.
Making your own aioli is ridiculously easy. If you don't have a stick blender a regular one should work just fine. I started by chopping two whole cloves of garlic. If your garlic has a strip of green on the interior it should be removed and trashed. I placed the garlic in a container and added two whole organic eggs. I blended these two things together to puree the garlic a little. I added a teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of sugar. With the blender running I drizzled in a half cup of olive oil and half cup of rapeseed oil which emulsified almost instantly. I chilled the aioli thoroughly before using it.
The chilis I used here were mildly spicy (to me at least) and came in a rainbow of colors with stripes and patches. I tossed the chilis with olive oil and roasted them in the oven for about 20 minutes. I let them cool a bit and served them warm.
To cut the heat of the chilis a little bit and also to add another dimension of flavor and texture to the dish I used some raw cherry tomatoes, Mexican gherkins and wild raw spinach. I also garnished the plate with some of the leaves that were attached to the peppers. Some of then were bright white, resembling flour petals. Others were stripped or mottled with green and white. And they tasted
Product:
Organic Heirloom Chilis - Culton Organics
Organic Padron Peppers - Root Mass Farm
Organic Purple Garlic - Culton Organics
Organic Cherry Tomatoes - Happy Cat Farm
Organic Mexican Sour Gherkins - Happy Cat Farm
Organic Wild Spinach - Queen's Farm
Making your own aioli is ridiculously easy. If you don't have a stick blender a regular one should work just fine. I started by chopping two whole cloves of garlic. If your garlic has a strip of green on the interior it should be removed and trashed. I placed the garlic in a container and added two whole organic eggs. I blended these two things together to puree the garlic a little. I added a teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of sugar. With the blender running I drizzled in a half cup of olive oil and half cup of rapeseed oil which emulsified almost instantly. I chilled the aioli thoroughly before using it.
The chilis I used here were mildly spicy (to me at least) and came in a rainbow of colors with stripes and patches. I tossed the chilis with olive oil and roasted them in the oven for about 20 minutes. I let them cool a bit and served them warm.
To cut the heat of the chilis a little bit and also to add another dimension of flavor and texture to the dish I used some raw cherry tomatoes, Mexican gherkins and wild raw spinach. I also garnished the plate with some of the leaves that were attached to the peppers. Some of then were bright white, resembling flour petals. Others were stripped or mottled with green and white. And they tasted
Product:
Organic Heirloom Chilis - Culton Organics
Organic Padron Peppers - Root Mass Farm
Organic Purple Garlic - Culton Organics
Organic Cherry Tomatoes - Happy Cat Farm
Organic Mexican Sour Gherkins - Happy Cat Farm
Organic Wild Spinach - Queen's Farm