A couple of classics and an unsuccessful experiment

In the spirit of tieing up loose ends before the end of the year, and also because my mum bought too many eggs over Christmas, I decided to try a couple of eggy classics over the Christmas break - homemade custard (without Birds custard powder) and homemade mayonnaise.

My custard recipe was great on flavour but didn't thicken as much as I would have liked. Not sure if that's how the recipe is, or whether I went wrong, but I thought I'd try it again in future with a different recipe. I bought a River Cottage cook book in the January sales so I'll try Hugh's recipe next time. It has a bit of cornflour in it so I imagine it would thicken more successfully. We'll see.

The mayonnaise was good. I'm not usually a fan of mayo. Its that old condiments thing - I just don't really see the point of drowning food in layers of cheap nasty processed sauce. But homemade mayonnaise was great.

I made a garlicy version, as we had it with squid so I thought that would go well. I put too much garlic in but otherwise it was a great success. At least it kept the vampires at bay for the evening! I would use a little more lemon juice or some white wine vinegar to give it a bit of bite if I was makig a 'straight' mayonnaise, but the garlic was more than enough flavour for this.

Mayonnaise

100ml extra virgin olive oil
1 egg yolk
a few squeezes lemon juice
1/2 clove garlic (crushed)
salt and pepper

Stir the egg yolk with a wooden spoon until it thickens. Add the garlic and stir.
Pour the olive oil in a drop at a time, keeping stirring all the time with the wooden spoon.
Take your time or the mixture will curdle. Add the olive oil VERY gradually, stirring all the time. Add the odd squeeze of lemon as you go.
Once the mixture starts to stiffen you can speed up the oil a little, but don't rush.
If it curdles (mine did, so I know this works!), take another egg yolk and put it in a clean bowl. Stir it until thickened then gradually add your curdled mayonnaise mixture, stirring all the time. This will fix it.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

The unsuccessful experiment was pastry made with wholemeal flour and olive oil, instead of plain flour and butter. It came out with a bready texture and was rather hard. It also didn't keep or freeze as well as normal pastry and was much more difficult to roll out. I think I'll stick to the traditional pastry recipe in future.