A while back there was a Dairy Queen commercial where a Dad shrimp is snacking on popcorn when his wife comes home and informs him that he’s eating popcorn shrimp, not popcorn. A couple of seconds later, the shrimp couple look at each other in horror and scream, “Where are the children?”
I remember the first time I made home-made mayonnaise, it was so good I made it three more times before Mike and I got tired of it. Home made mayonnaise is deliciously addictive. It’s fresh, bright yellow, smooth, and so much more luxurious than the stuff in a jar.
Regular home made mayonnaise just uses egg yolks, so I was curious as to how the texture of Chang’s red-eye mayonnaise would hold up. The red-eye mayonnaise uses a whole egg, or if you have it, a slow-poached egg.
Red-Eye Mayonnaise is a coffee-flavoured mayonnaise riff on traditional red-eye gravy from the South. Red-eye uses instant coffee for the coffee flavour, but since I’m not an instant coffee drinker and I didn’t have any at home I went out and bought a jar of Nescafe. Nescafe’s not bad as instant coffees go; I’ve been drinking a lot it.
Red-eye mayonnaise is made much like regular mayonnaise: the egg, instant coffee, water, sherry vinegar, salt and sriracha are whisked together then oil is slowly added. My mayonnaise didn’t thicken up as much as I liked, so I stirred in some store-bought to give it some extra body.
On it’s own, red-eye mayonnaise is a tiny bit bitter from the coffee and acidic from the sherry vinegar; not something I particularly enjoyed. But with prosciutto, the mayonnaise turns into something more: creamier, deeper, more complex. Who knew coffee and meat went so well together?
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momofukufor2.com is where I document the little tips and tricks I learned while cooking through the Momofuku Cookbook by David Chang and Peter Meehan.
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