mutteringhousewife

I grew up in a fairly condiment free household, so I never felt a burning urge to make my own mayonnaise. Despite this, I have had two attempts at it, mainly to prove that I could, and it turned out that I couldn’t. Once with a whisk and once with a blender. Both times it was looking very promising, then irretrievably split into a watery, curdy mess. Of course, it’s really easy in a Thermomix. Having a had a good hard look at myself, you could even say it was foolproof.

What you do is put in the Thermomix the yolk of an egg and a tablespoon of vinegar. You can also add flavourings, I put in two teaspoons of hot English mustard and, because the only mayonnaise I’ve regularly encountered is Praise which is really sweet, a teaspoon of honey. You could also add a clove of garlic. It says salt and pepper to taste, but as if you’re going to have a taste of that mess, so I just put in a twist of the grinder of each. I also weighed out 250 grams of olive oil into a jug for pouring purposes. It suggests a neutral tasting oil, and despite using a light flavoured olive oil, you could definitely taste it, but I like it, so there.

You put the butterfly fitting over the blades. My demonstrator told me there was some secret wrist action that would secure it onto the blades, but I haven’t been able to reproduce it, and everything I’ve read suggest you can just perch it on the blades and she’ll be right. So that’s what I did. And it was. Mix it for one minute on speed 4.

Then comes the bit I’ve always failed at. You pour the oil in a thin steady stream onto the lid, with the little plastic lid on, because the lid slopes down to the middle and there’s a small gap under the lid. You do this on speed 4. It is suggested that you take about five minutes to do this. Or you could pour a steady stream for one minute, then realise the biscotti are about to burn, rescue those, blop in some more oil, decide to take a photo because it looks pretty in the sunlight, and I’ll tell you it’s really hard to take a photo of yourself pouring oil into a Thermomix with an iPad while standing on one leg. But I did it, because I wanted to share:

Anyway, my even with interruptions my very unsteady stream took about three and a half minutes, but look!

I made mayonnaise! It’s the colour and consistency of soft butter, which is probably a bit thick for mayonnaise, but eminently spreadable. It’s rich and delicious.

Then you don’t even have to wash out the bowl to make coleslaw. There are an infinite number of coleslaw recipes, but let’s go with a basic one first. Put in the bowl two tablespoons of your terrific home made mayonnaise, a cored and quartered green apple (I can’t help but notice that a lot of the salad recipes in the Thermomix book contain a green apple), a hundred grams of carrot (which is one large one, very roughly chopped) and about two hundred grams of cabbage. I also put in two green onion stems which were a bit harsh the first day, but had mellowed in by the second day. I may replace them with celery the next time. Then zap for about ten seconds. I like to start off at a low speed, increase over a couple of seconds to a medium speed, then check. The machine does shudder quite a bit at first, but apparently that’s normal. This treatment got the coleslaw to what I think of as Kentucky Fried consistency.

It was an excellent, slightly dry coleslaw, but better the next day. It made two breakfast bowls full, and I ate one bowl for dinner last night. I think you could add whatever hard vegetables you had to hand, I’ll have to let you know how that goes. It could possibly stand a little more mayonnaise too.

So all of a sudden I can make salads. It changes my whole perception of myself. I’m going to have to make some sweets to restore my equinamity.