A Lesson in Motion | Basic Mayonnaise

Homemade mayonnaise.

Sorry folks. Summer turned into autumn and we know we’ve gone missing. And now that we’re back, all we can offer you is a homemade mayonnaise recipe?

Yep.

We’d like to take this opportunity to announce that we’ve enrolled in the RGB Culinary Institute. Never heard of it? It’s a place where wannabe food industry professionals get together to home-school themselves on subject matters of food, hospitality, entrepreneurism and everything in between because they can’t afford the time or money required to commit to a real school, like the Culinary Institute of America.

(Never-mind the fact that we live on the wrong side of the U.S. to make it to class on-time every day.)

But we’re still serious about makin’ it in the food world, which for us means operating that Bistro we keep alluding to. How are we gonna get there without a piece of paper saying we graduating from some accredited program?

School ourselves.

Lesson # 1 came to us about a year ago this season, courtesy of Ms. Julia Child via our 1977 version of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Julia’s rules for making mayonnaise:

1. Your egg yolks have to be at room temperature.
2. The glass bowl you’re using has to be warm. If you’re in a cold kitchen, this means you’re whisking over a water bath on the stove top.
3. You have to whisk for one full minute before adding in lemon juice, mustard and salt. 59 seconds is not enough.
4. Without stopping the whisk action, you then have to drop in oil, one… droplet… at… a… time. Each droplet has to be fully whisked into the egg yolks before you drop in the next droplet.
5. Once you’ve added about half of the oil, you can finally relax. To quote Julia directly, “the crisis is over.” Then, you can more efficiently incorporate the remaining oil to complete the mayonnaise.

The crisis is over? Julia, how dramatic!!!

Heart palpitating, sweat beads forming and hands shaking, it really did feel like the first day of school. Julia was a great teacher. And I’d like to say that we were good students. Because instead of passing love notes in class, we paid attention, followed directions, and ended up with one sublime bowl of homemade mayonnaise.

Wanna know what we learned? Keep it moving.

Folks, this is just an exercise in consistency and motion. And it’s not exclusive to mayonnaise. In fact, we give you Exhibits A, B, C, D and E:

Exhibit A: Blow some air, if you have to. But you have to keep it warm.

Exhibit B: Get your tools out, then keep 'em all moving.

Exhibit C: Adjust your ingredients as you go.

Exhibit D: Remember, keep it warm!

Exhibit E: The final product.

This summer, we spent an afternoon at the Sawdust Art Festival in Laguna Beach. In the glass-blowing demonstration cage, we watched two dudes turn a glob of hot sand into a beautiful flower vase. Their secret: they never stopped moving.

For 30 minutes, these guys rolled and rolled their little hot glob on a metal skewer. Into the kiln. Out of the kiln. Roll, roll, roll. Into the kiln, out of the kiln. Roll, roll, roll…

If these guys can keep moving for 30 minutes to make a vase, surely, us kiddos can make a bowl of mayonnaise out of some egg yolks.

We just have to keep whisking, whisking, and whisking.

This lesson isn’t specific to mayonnaise. It’s a good lesson in general. If we wanna play with the big kids, we gotta keep whiskin’. And we’re gonna use this blog to hold ourselves accountable.

So heads up, people! Lots of adventure ahead… like pimping ourselves out to a pizzeria to get some “internship” and “industrial kitchen” experience in. More on that later…

[K]

P.S. Fear of the homemade mayonnaise; overcome. Ketchup from garden tomatoes, you’re on notice.

What’s your number one lesson?!

Homemade aioli, made from homemade mayonnaise.