Aioli

After my negative article criticising our incompetent president, I thought I would write an article about something a little bit more happy.  One of the culinary products of Provence with an absolutely beautiful flavour is aioli.  Aioli has a flavour that is absolutely divine.  A Frenchwoman knows that only French cuisine is of sufficient quality to eat if one is the bee's knees.

There are various factors that go into this distinction.  We have very capable farmers, even if they are dinosaurs receiving far too much in the way of agricultural subsidies via the Common Agricultural Policy.  We have very finely tuned senses that can discern which ingredients are of the highest quality.  We have chefs that are very skilled at their craft, making food that is a feast for all the senses.  We have consumers that have finely trained senses that create a marketplace in which only the highest quality of food will be successful.

One delicious condiment that exists in France that goes into making our cuisine effortlessly perfect is aioli, a garlic mayonnaise.  Please note that this isn't the low-quality stuff in the bargain aisles of supermarkets made from vegetable oil.  This is the real McCoy, made from olive oil, mustard, garlic, egg yolk etc.

As I have been keen to point out in numerous previous posts, one of the reasons a Frenchwoman has such a dainty appetite (and is therefore effortlessly thin) is the rich foods she eats.  Real aioli made the proper way has an extremely rich flavour.

There is another variant that is commonly consumed in Spain, which is spelled "alioli".  From what I can gather, it is fairly common in the province of Catalonia (as well as the Balearic Islands and Comunidad Valenciana), which forms part of the French-Spanish border.  Catalonia's proximity to France means that it isn't complete garbage, but it is still nowhere near as good as traditional provençal aioli.

A little piece of information for people who are ignorant about French cuisine: - there is also the name "aillade" in existence.  In Provence, this refers to a garlic-flavoured vinaigrette, whereas in other regions of France, e.g. Languedoc-Roussillon, it refers to aioli.

In my beloved Provence, there is a complete dish known as Le Grand Aioli, which normally includes boiled vegetables (commonly including carrots, potatoes, green beans, cauliflower courgettes and raw tomatoes), boiled desalted cod (though other fish are sometimes used as well), boiled eggs and sometimes also snails and mollusks.

Many of the aforementioned ingredients are very typical of Mediterranean regions, e.g. olive oil, garlic etc.  

As with chocolate, a Frenchwoman likes bitter flavours in her food sometimes.  One example is olive oil: - when making aioli, it should never be the mild version, but the extra virgin variety.  This will give the aioli a lovely bitter and rich flavour.  Please note that anything a Frenchwoman doesn't know about cookery is not worth knowing: - a Frenchwoman knows that there are very few circumstances where mild olive oil (rather than extra-virgin olive oil) is the best choice.

 

One of these examples is when using it for frying.  Extra-virgin olive oil is a poor choice for frying, as it can easily fill one's house with acrid smoke.  However, mild olive oil is a good way to enjoy the benefits of olive oil without doing this if frying.

Another example is bakery: - it is possible to bake cakes with extra-virgin olive oil, but unless one uses a Frenchwoman's intuition to work out the interaction of the flavours, the cake might end up tasting funny.  Given its strong flavour, extra-virgin olive oil often overpowers the other flavours.  However, with a properly worked-out flavour combination (which only a Frenchman/woman is remotely capable of doing), extra-virgin olive oil can produce cakes with absolutely beautiful flavours.  A good example of this is a pastis-flavoured cake: - a recipe can be found at http://www.jujucuisine.com/recette.php?recette_id=73 .  I love all the Mediterranean ingredients, such as pastis, olive oil, almonds etc.

All in all, ailoli is one of those things that go into making we French inexplicably special.  So there!