Overcoming the mayonnaise juju

In my quest to avoid the unpronouncable list of nasties that is the ingredients of most store-bought condiments, I have raced up the learning curve of becoming a home-saucier. Bordelaise, vinagrette, red wine and raspberry balsamic, creamy mushroom, white wine butter sauce, Tzatziki, blue-cheese dressing (oooooh, yes!) - all of these have been conquered, no matter how complicated the recipe.

When it came to simple Mayonnaise, however, my first two attempts were a complete derailment of the gravy train, so to speak. Mine had a really nasty aftertaste which nobody could stomach, so I gave up. Of course, I was hindered by the fact that I wanted to use only olive oil, being that I'm not very fond of seed oils.

On New Years day, we were having lunch at The Programmers parents house and Mama Programmer mentioned that she uses only extra-lite olive oil because it tastes better. So, having thought about that for a bit, I made a supermarket stop on the way home and got some. Voilà! Success! I think my most adored extra-virgin cold-pressed oil has too much natural flavour and doesn't work well in mayo. The recipe I used is this one, except I used a grainy mustard, not mustard powder, and a little bit of honey instead of sugar. It was delicious.

And even better on today's omlette...
..which happened to contain a bunch of greenery (chives, oregano, basil) from my now-thriving herb garden. It's sooo bello.

Just let me don my food safety hat for a second here. Mayonnaise is a raw product, containing raw egg. Therefore it doesn't keep more than a few days in the fridge, and don't let it sit on your table getting hot. You need to try and keep it under 4 degrees to prevent microbial growth. Having seen the flourishing of food pathogens under the microscope, I'm fully convinced that it's not something I'd like to be putting in my tummy. Also, naturally, if you are pregnant, you really don't want to be eating any raw egg products, just in case.