Refining Our Tastes...

Yesterday was the second day off the Master Cleanse for us, so we are still getting back to eating regular meals and filling up on good food. When I came into the kitchen to get lunch ready there was a already a plan in place as the children were asking for sushi. 

This is one of our favorite  meals or snacks that takes little time to prepare and is very versatile, it also travels fairly well for small kids. Of course, we don't make this with raw fish - but nearly anything else goes when it comes to sushi in our house.

Usually we make sushi rolls with guacamole, tuna, cucumber and grated carrot. However, yesterday everyone was in the mood for other flavours, so I rooted around to see what we had on hand. I found local crab meat and locally hot smoked tuna -- when mixed together this was a very nice combination.

For the meal I made a vegetable stir-fry and then realized that -- with virtually no processed foods remaining in the house, we did not have a mayonnaise or sauce for dipping. This brought me back to the drawing board and cooking/creating something from scratch.

I have tried my hand at making mayonnaise several times, with some success. However, for small children, I did not necessarily want to use raw duck eggs as part of a recipe. Thus, the sauce needed to be cooked so this was moving into new territory for me.

In the end, I separated the egg yolk and cooked it together with some water, spelt flour and butter. Then added in mustard and spices, vinegar and kept stirring until it was thickening up. After taking it off the stove I pureed it and slowly added some oil. 

To be honest, I thought that it was lovely and smelled nice, but it looked more like hollandaise sauce then mayo, at least not the white stuff you will find in the shops. The one thing I was certain of was that the children would not eat it - but they were the ones who surprised me. Everyone loved it and I don't think there was much left over!

Now, I just want to play around with the recipe a bit more to get it where I really like it and then find a way to preserve it for a couple weeks at a time or perhaps even longer. I mean, we can buy something off of a shelf and it has a date indicating that it can last for quite awhile - how do they do that with such highly perishable food items?

The only method is to use chemical additives, stabilizers or preservatives and so forth. When not using these, perhaps the best way to enjoy mayonnaise sauce is freshly made. The wonderful thing here is it was very quick to put together with just making it up as I went from a vague idea of what should be found in a white sauce that I wanted to become a mayonnaise. 

Perhaps, this is the simplicity of all cooking and preparing meals - they can be tasty, wholesome and easy to assemble and we have somehow been stupified into thinking otherwise. Clever marketing, yes?

Have a great day,

April

Sushi roller, sheet of nori seaweed and lunch!