I made mayonaisse!

So what? You say. It's not that difficult. Most of the time.
All true. I think the reason I have never been bothered to make mayo from scratch is (whisper quiet voice), I prefer the commercially produced stuff. Which might sentence me to a fate worse than death if I were a Masterchef contestant, but, in the greater scheme of things, has not really held me back gastronomically speaking.

Thanks to the salad recipe calling for herbed mayonaisse, I knocked over both the regular mayonaisse recipe (saving it in a jar for later) and one of the variations. Wonderful now but at the time, a lot of cooking and a lot of processes.

Menu
Cotes de Porc Sauce Nenette
Chou-Fleur Aux Tomates Fraîches
Petit Pois (for very young peas)
Salade À La D'Argenson
Mayonnaise
Mayonnaise aux Fines Herbes

The beetroots for the salad had been sitting around for a week but, knowing that cooking them takes an hour at the very least, I had always been too tired to cook them. Eventually I popped them into the oven on Monday night in preparation for Tuesday. This meant I just had to peel them (a job better done while they are still warm I would suggest) and dice them, while I waited for an equivalent amount of potatoes to cook, so I could dice them and mix with the beets. I then added minced shallots and, instead of making another vinaigrette, substituted the mustard dressing I had made the night before. I also added half a cup of cooked beans.

After that it was just a matter of making the mayonaisse. Beat egg yolks until sticky, add dry mustard and white wine vinegar, beat with whisk while slowly adding oil drop by drop. This was a lot easier thanks to the helpful Julia suggestion of using a teaspoon to add the oil. Eventually the mayonaisse emulsifies and you can add oil more quickly. Julia then suggests adding two tablespoons of boiling water as an anti-curdling agent. This thins it out but, interestingly, turned my mayonaisse from a pale yellow to a more traditional creamy colour.

For the herbed mayonaisse variation, I simply finely chopped two tablespoons of parsley.

Apparently parsley is great for iron absorption, calcium, vitamin C and lots of other nutrients. Of course - as with most things - too much parsley is bad and can result in pre-term contractions and early labour. So for now, I use parsley in Julia's recipes with a little caution but in about nine and a half weeks it may feature more prominently in my diet.

I added the herbed mayonaisse to my beet and potato mixture and voila! D'Argenson Salad. The only D'argensons I could find on Wiki appeared to have been French statesmen. One is described as a noted bibliophile - hopefully the salad was named for him, perhaps my Larousse Gastronomique will have the answer.

The pork chops had been browned on the stove and them cooked in the oven. Julia's recipe still seems to over cook pork chops, no matter how much I reduce the cooking time. The sauce was simple - dry mustard and tomato puree were mixed with simmered cream and seasoned. At the end the sauce was added to the deglazed pan and simmered for a few minutes before the chops were returned to the sauce to coat. Le Gourmand and I agreed this was a tasty pork sauce!

It's hard for any cauliflower dish to live up to Cauliflower au gratin. This one involved blanching the cauliflower and adding it to a dish and surround it with tomato pulp. Melted butter was then drizzled on top before swiss cheese and breadcrumbs were added and more butter was drizzled. Everything was then baked in an oven for 30 minutes. Yummy but not quite like the decadent white sauce we eat whenever we can justify it in the Brioche household.

Meanwhile, peas take forever to peel and at this time of year the young baby peas are mixed in with the more mature larger peas, so I threw caution to the wind and cooked them to the baby pea recipe which involves boiling them, adding a bit of sugar and butter and voila!

Part of the challenge tonight was to try not to draw Le Gourmand's attention to the fact that we were having white meat with a creamy sauce for the second night in a row. I understand that this might be cause for objection, unless it was a clever use of leftovers (which it was not). Speaking of leftovers, Le Gourmand is starting to fret about the amount of leftovers in our fridge. Try as I might to cut Julia down to size (I divided the pork and potato and beet salad recipes in two) we do have a lot that remains and most of the meat things I am being super-careful about not reheating for fear of some nefarious baby unfriendly bug. Ordinarily it wouldn't be a problem but we are off to Melbourne for the weekend. C'est la vie!


Pork chops