It’s just mayonnaise, Carrie
At least that’s what the sous chef kept telling me.
I flicked on the lights to the kitchen and glanced up at the prep board. I took a deep breath in and let a long exhale out while I stared at the first item on the list. Aioli. I was the only one coming in who had time to do it. And we needed it before service started.
Between schedule changes and me being out on vacation, I hadn’t made the aioli for a couple months, but on this particular day it was just me and Ally, one of our newish prep cooks. So the aioli fell to me.
A year prior was the first time I had ever made it on my own. I’d spent an hour holding up the 20+ pound mixer that was almost as tall as me, while I slowly drizzled 16 quarts of oil into a mix of egg yolks, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, garlic, and salt resting at the bottom of a 22-quart cambro container. I watched the chemistry between the egg yolk and the oil work its magic and emulsify the mix from liquid to a creamy spread of mayonnaise or, in this case, its fancier cousin, aioli.
At one point the chef came over and peered into my container. “I don’t know how you’re doing it but it’s looking good.”
The mix did have that velvety, almost whipped cream-like consistency.
“If this breaks on me now, I’m either going to start crying or I’m going to swear like a sailor.”
I drizzled the last bit of oil into my beautiful mix. An hour after starting. Not quite ready to celebrate but feeling like I was almost there.
But in the next immediate second, I felt the mixture start to move around more easily in the container. “Don’t cry, Carrie.” I told myself as I calmly turned off the mixer and dipped a spoon into my mix. It swirled around like it was soup. What had just been a thick sauce now had only ribbons of it swimming in a pool of liquid.
“It broke.” I called out to no one in particular.
“Ah.. no.” K said while raising a hand to his masked mouth.
“No!” said our head line cook staring toward my corner.
“No way,” our chef said. The mix had broken on him just the day before as well.
“Sorry Chef. I really thought I had it.”
“I’m sorry it broke on you after all that. I’ll take care of throwing that away. Two batches of 22 quart aioli in the greaser this week.” He half chuckled although I’m sure underneath he was concerned about the cost of the waste.
“I’m wondering if the recipe needs to be reworked. Seems like so many of us are having a hard time ensuring the aioli doesn’t break,” I casually suggested.
“Yeah, I need to work on that,” Chef said as he walked out of the kitchen with the waste.
The next few times I tried to make the aioli it proceeded in much the same way as that first. Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle of oil and when I was almost to the end… it would break.
A few people were able to get it done, but I seemed to have a mental block.
Our sous chef tried to tough love me through it. “It’s just mayonnaise, Carrie.”
He watched over my shoulder as I drizzled in the oil. “Faster. This is a huge batch. You gotta pour it faster. Now see how it’s getting shiny? That means it’s about to break.”
“Give me the mixer,” he said. “Let me do it.”
He explained, “You have to feel it. It’s a feeling. Starts to get too thick, you add water. Too thin, you add oil and you go back and forth like this until all of the oil has been added. Here…”
He handed me the whirring mixer.
“You finish up. I gotta get back to sauté.”
I kept going back and forth with a little bit of water and a little bit of oil. So close to having the velvety mix done. Then I blinked, the mix turned shiny, and then immediately into soup.
“Dammit… what’s wrong with you, Carrie?” I said under my breath and pulled the hot mixer out of the sauce.
I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get this. My life, my work, had revolved around cooking. I’d even taught cooking on live TV. Why couldn’t I get this aioli to work? I started to question whether I was as capable as I thought I was.
Our head chef walked over to me and peered into the cambro.
I leaned against the low-boy fridge, shoulders down, hugging the mixer.
“It broke.”
“No.”
The sous chef looked across the kitchen at me, shook his head, and said, “It’s just mayonnaise.”
Chef said, “I’ve gotta rework that recipe. The ratio of egg yolks to oil just isn’t right. We shouldn’t be having to put water in here at all. Alright, go straight to the greaser with that.”
Back on that first morning after vacation, I was pouring myself a cup of coffee when Ally arrived.
“Hey, how was San Diego?” she asked.
We chatted a minute and then I said, “Aioli is at the top of the prep list. I’m going to get it done first. I’ve got to get over this mental block of mine. I don’t know why I can’t do this. And I gotta get it done before Sous Chef gets in and starts lecturing me.”
“While you were gone, Chef rewrote the recipe. It was turning out runny for all of us. It just shouldn’t be this stressful to make and it shouldn’t be breaking so often.”
I looked at her for a beat.
“Oh, good. Yeah, I agree. I was really hoping someone would modify that recipe. Never seemed right.”
Huh, I thought. Maybe it was the recipe all this time and not me.
I measured out the ingredients per the newly revised recipe and set myself up in a corner station.
I heaved the four-foot-long “hand-held” mixer into the 22-quart container and turned it on. Immediately specks of egg yolk, mustard, and garlic splattered up on my shirt, hair, and glasses.
“Grrr….” I called out to Ally. “Well, this doesn’t seem like I’m off to a good start.”
I started the mixer up again, more fully in the mix, and started pouring in the oil.
I could hear the sous chef’s instructions in my mind.
“It’s a feeling. Oil. Water. Oil. Water. You just gotta feel it. You can’t let it get too thick.”
Instead of my usual slow drizzle, I just started glugging the oil in. I’d stop and let the mixer do its magic for a beat. Then more glugging. Specks of aioli sprayed up on me and all over my apron. I could feel my heart pounding. I had never made the aioli on the first go without it breaking.
I had two quarts of oil left. This was always when it broke. When I was 80% done.
I glugged the last two quarts into the wave of silky sauce, stirred the mixer around a bit, and the instant it looked incorporated, I turned it off and pulled the hot appliance out of the mix.
I leaned against the low-boy fridge and stared down at the creamy sauce waiting for it to turn to soup.
But nothing happened. It simply stayed its creamy self. I grabbed a tasting spoon and dipped it in there. A quick taste. Delicious. Didn’t even need more salt.
A year after I had made that first soupy mess that took an hour, I had made this perfect batch in 10 minutes, no problem.
I carefully poured the aioli into a fresh container, labeled it, and put it in the walk-in.
“Good job, girl,” I said to myself.
“Hey Carrie, you did it!” Ally called out from her station.
“Yeah, I can’t believe it. Makes me think that perhaps it was the wrong recipe all this time.”
“Definitely the wrong recipe,” Ally said back.
So it wasn’t me after all.
So much wasted time and stress from using a recipe that simply needed a tiny bit of tweaking.
For almost a year I thought I was bad at making aioli.
Turns out it wasn’t me. I was following a recipe that wasn’t quite right.
I’d spent so much time discounting what I could see and feel, the way the mixture behaved under my hands, the little warnings before it broke, while listening to everyone else’s instructions. “Pour faster. Feel it. It’s just mayonnaise, Carrie.” I kept assuming I was the problem.
Sometimes I am, of course.
But sometimes it really is the recipe.
Ours didn’t need a complete overhaul. Just a few small tweaks from someone willing to look at it with fresh eyes. Funny how long it can take to trust that maybe the directions were off, not you.
I’ll try to remember that the next time the aioli breaks. Or anything else, for that matter.
Cheers,
Carrie
PS: Happy Father’s Day! Shout out to all the fathers and father figures today. I’ll be celebrating by grilling up flank steak and roasting asparagus for my hubby, the most incredible dad to my children I could have ever wished for, and with my own dad who puts mayonnaise on everything… but only if it’s Best Foods. No fancy aioli stuff.