French Dressing Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is a bit weird, isn't it? Eggs and oil whipped together to make a soft white jelly? That's weird right? I find it best not to think about it too much. On the plus side it's way easy to make. On the double plus side it's also really easy to add all sorts of different flavours to customise your mayo according to your tastes and requirements. I make aioli a fair amount, and if you follow the recipe at that link you'll come away with a very poky and deliciously antisocial garlicy mess. Easy enough, but I can hardly take credit for the idea of 'garlic mayonnaise'. This recipe, on the other hand, is all Bronners.

To digress a moment - rejoice one and all! For it is Jersey Royal season. The new potatoes with flaky skin and a fresh nutty taste are so good just boiled and buttered there's very little else you need to do with them. Granted I also like roasting them, but that's because I am a contrarian and a pervert.

Anyway, the other day I boiled up a bag of the tasty little bastards, and I wanted either an interesting dressing or sauce to go with it. I was torn between making a classic french dressing with vinegar, oil, mustard, garlic and capers, or a fancy potato salad with mayonnaise. *Record scratch* Wait a minute, hold on now. Didn't I just say that you could easily add different flavours to homemade mayonnaise to suit your tastes? I think you'll find I did.

So here's the deal. For the basic mayonnaise (that you can change as you see fit), I use:

1 egg
salt and pepper
1 tsp cider vinegar
300ml olive oil
300ml sunflower oil

I blend all the ingredients apart from the oils in a food processor and add the oil slowly in one long, thin stream. Use an electric whisk if you don't have a food processor. Use a whisk if you don't have an electric whisk. If you do use a food processor you should hear it change tone as the texture thickens and emulsifies. After this point you can add the oil a little quicker.

For my French Dressing Mayonnaise, I tripled the amount of vinegar (I don't know how good you are with maths, but that brings the total amount up to 3 teaspoons), added a small clove of garlic, a teaspoon of mustard and a tablespoon of capers.

You recognise the glass pot, don't you. Don't lie to me, I know you do.

You can either mix your potatoes into the mayo for potato salad, or do what I did and just dip them into a little pot on the side. Nothing else needed.

This recipe does make about a pint, so rest assured it goes really well in a lot of different scenarios. I can personally vouch for it in a turkey roll, on a poached egg, or smeared on to bread and stuffed in my mouth.