mayonnaise

You would think that someone who has cooked as much as I have would have made their own mayonnaise. Not so. But this morning I was thinking about using some leftover roast chicken to make chicken salad for lunch and realized that we didn't have any mayonnaise.

How easy is making mayonnaise! It took me about 10 minutes and it was so much better than even Best Foods (aka Hellman's for those of us residing in the East). I would change one thing about the process -- whisking by hand nearly made my wrist fall off, so halfway through the process I switched to the hand blender. I don't think I would break out food processor unless I was making a large amount.

Really what got me thinking about homemade mayonnaise, aside from the fact that I really wanted chicken salad, is that Friday Big J and I went out to lunch and I had mussels and frites and it made us think about our trip to Belgium where they don't use ketchup (my kind of country). Of course we dove right in to the culinary traditions and ate our frites with mayo. The restaurant we had lunch at didn't have mayo, but they had garlic aoli which was just as good.

But I haven't been able to stop thinking about moules et frites! Thank goodness there is a great fish monger in town that sells amazing mussels (2 lbs. for just $5.95). Since I got the Bouchon cookbook for Christmas, I've made mussels twice with amazing results. Now I just need to perfect the frites!