Cookbook Egg Mayonnaise

It's Friday! I completely forgot! Greece and its vultures will simply have to wait. For today is the day we all begin to worry what to eat in the weekend and what to shop tomorrow morning. Therefore Friday will be Cooking Day on Metis Meets Mittington, the day I post a simple but attractive recipe from ABM’s Gorgeous Gastronomic Compendium, a.k.a. my manuscript cook book compiled over 70 ravenous years.

And how else to start, dear reader, than with that veritable culinary godsend with which my (other) motherland, la Douce France, has blessed human civilisation and the palate of mankind:

Oeuf Mayonnaise!

Oeuf Mayonnaise is all at once the easiest and the most gratifying dish. Yes: it is a down-to–earth hors d’oeuvre, but how often haven’t we called out to the waiter, in the middle of sometimes the most fancy restaurants: ‘Garçon! Forget about that main dish and bring me three more servings of les oeufs!’? Nowadays, naturally, we have to watch our cholesterol a wee little bit. But that doesn’t mean that we may not, from time to time, indulge in small pleasures. After all: these things are Good For The Soul, as our  dear old Milwaukee friend Kristin Lisa Johannsen always insisted, and thus they keep psycho-somatic maladies at bay. Kristin, you will understand, was a very wise woman.

There is a very simple side to the making of Oeuf Mayonnaise, and a more complicated one. The simple side (rejoice!) is how to make it. Here is how you do it:

Boil 3 eggs for every two people (5 minutes minimum from the moment the water comes to a boil). Let the eggs cool. Peel them, halve them and place three half eggs on each plate on top of a fresh, dry lettuce-leaf. Sprinkle salt and pepper on top of the eggs, and add a few drops of sesame-oil (if available). Then bury them under an ample heap of home-made mayonnaise. Serve with slices of baguette. Garnish with whatever vegetables strike your fancy (carrots, cucumber, pickles, celery etc…)

The complicated bit, dear reader, is the “home-made mayonnaise”. In reality, this is not difficult at all, but you have all been made paranoid by posh, pretentious cook books as to how difficult this is supposed to be, and how easily it fails, and what tremendous precautions one must take and skills one must master before taking such an audacious leap as beating your own mayo… NONSENSE! Insipid mystification by self-important cookery scribblers. Take it from old Al: making your own mayo is not difficult at all, and it is a pleasure to do. Next Friday, I will explain how.

Our Benefactors: the Chicken that lay the Eggs