Aioli...

Aioli platters scream summer. Traditional platters will always include salt cod, accompanied by boiled potatoes, green beans, carrots, artichokes, chickpeas, beets and perhaps some olives. It is easy to substitute any of the lovely vegetables available to you during the summer: the Aioli police will not show up at your home and ticket you for substituting, or omitting, an ingredient that you are not fond of. Or if you happen to feed all your carrots to your favourite horse, just grab another veggie out of the fridge and move on.

Richard Olney writes in “Simple French Food”, of Provençal festivals where the entire town turns out for an aioli monster “with huge globs of garlic mayonnaise, liberally moistened with the local rosé.” Sounds like summer to me.

A true aioli is made with olive oil, garlic, egg yolks and salt; it is delicious. I have made this sauce (not a true aioli) with roasted garlic and the addition of a half cup of Oven Roasted Heirloom Tomatoes. It is very delicious and will pair well with a cold fish or chicken as well.

 You can follow Mr. Olneys’ method for aioli:

Take two cloves of garlic person, peel them, reduce them to a paste with a pestle; add a pinch of salt, an egg yolk and pour in the olive oil in a thin thread. Add the oil slowly and keep beating until it is thick. After adding about 3 or 4 tablespoons of oil, add the juice of one lemon and a teaspoon of tepid water, continue to add oil little by little until it is thick. An aioli for seven or eight people, he says, “will absorb something over two cups of oil”.

Or you can cheat: roast a head of garlic, squeeze the roasted garlic into a blend or food processor with one cup of prepared mayonnaise and a ½ cup of Tomato Bliss Oven Roasted Heirloom Tomatoes, which you have drained. Push the button and you have it.

Oven Roasted Heirloom Tomato Aioli Plate