A strong stable emulsion, without any egg |
We had squid with a fiery garlic sauce that was blindingly white at a small Sicilian place, Caffe Sport, in San Francisco decades ago; that flavor and color have stuck with me to this day. We've tried to create it with various aioli in Catalan, Spanish, and French styles. The French ones use egg, which gave a yellow color and diluted the flavor; Jose Andres does the classic Spanish prep, crushing garlic in a mortar and pestle and adding oil drop-by-drop; we've tried it, only to have it break when we finished 30 minutes later.
When you've finished the sauce, don't be tempted to add (say) more lemon juice and whiz it up again: the emulsion will break when you turn on the processor. The garlic should be fresh: old or frozen or processed won't set up as a stable emulsion. You can rescue it by whizzing an egg in the empty processor then drizzling in the broken Toum, and it will taste fine: but it's cheating with the egg, and doesn't have quite the pure garlic burn: it's an aioli.
The flavor is a bit shocking right after making it, but it softens with time. We keep it in the fridge but it might be stable without refrigeration: unlike eggs in mayo, none of Toum's ingredients requires being chilled. We've substituted Sherry Vinegar for the Lemon and it came out very well for a Spanish dish we were serving.
Makes almost 500 ml [16 ounces] of sauce.
75 g 2.5 oz Garlic heads, peeled (see technique below)
6 g 1 tsp Kosher Salt
30 ml 2 Tbs Lemon Juice
350 ml 1.5 C Oil, Canola (neutral flavored)
Ingredients assembled |
Garlic after first shake in mixing bowls |
Garlic (lots of it) and coarse Salt to break it down |
Not quite broken-down enough yet, scrape and process a bit more |
A thing of beauty: thick and fluffy, and very smelly :-) |
Do try it at its freshest, it's an eye-opener.
No comments:
Post a Comment