I don’t know what took me so long to make my own aioli. I guess I was scared of killing myself with raw egg, which is silly because I eat hollandaise sauce in all sorts of shady restaurants. Last night, I finally forced myself to make some garlic aioli. We had fresh eggs that the BF got practically straight from the chicken’s butt, so there’s nothing to fear, right?

I looked up a couple recipes online and they ranged from “add garlic to pre-made mayonnaise” to “use a mortar and pestel and I hope you have arms of steel!” I took the middle-path. I threw a clove of garlic and some coarse salt into my mortar and pestled the hell out of them. Then I threw that along with two egg yolks (they were small eggs) and a teaspoon of dijon mustard into a small food processor. I turned that on for a few seconds to distribute all the ingredients, and then slowly drizzled a little less than half a cup of safflower oil while the blades were going. I was planning to use just generic vegetable oil and a splash of extra virgin olive oil at the end, but realized we didn’t even have vegetable oil, thus the safflower. It still tasted pretty good.

I picked up a bundle of young asparagus from the Hollywood Farmer’s Market this weekend specifically to dip in the aioli. I simply steamed them for ten minutes, but I guess it could have gone for more, according to the BF. I like my asparagus on the crunchy side but I guess he likes his more tender. I plopped the asparagus on a plate with leftover vegan mac & cheese, a dollop of the freshly made aioli, and called it dinner. The aioli was garlicky and mustardy, two great flavors that went well with the asparagus.