Tartar Sauce (Page 885)

• Date: Saturday, May 10, 2008 -- 7pm
• Location: Somerville, MA
• Kitchen: Matty's Apartment
• Dining Companions: Matty, Mike, Matt, Ricky, Ana, Craig, Grace, Alex, Gunther, Angelica, Jenny, Vero, and Pam
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

This was one of the many mayonnaise-based sauces that were part of the mayonnaise tasting I held on Saturday night (see below). I thought this tartar sauce was quite good. A number of people pointed out that it didn't taste so much like a typical tartar sauce. But it had a good flavor to it. It was a bit fussy to make, as there was a huge long list of ingredients, each added in about one tablespoon quantity, finely chopped. But the flavors did meld well, producing a sauce with a nice relishy, herby taste to it, that certainly would have complemented seafood well, as tartar sauce ought to. We ate this on onion rings and vegetables, and it also worked well for that purpose.

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The Sauces and Salsas section of The Book contains nine mayonnaise, or mayonnaise-based recipes (mayonnaise, horseradish mayonnaise, curry mayonnaise, mustard mayonnaise, blender mayonnaise, green mayonnaise, tartar sauce, eggless aioli, and quick aioli). I decided that rather than making these mayos one at a time over the next several years, I would knock them all out in one day. So on Saturday we had a mayonnaise tasting! In addition to the nine mayo recipes, we also made a few things to taste the mayo on: onion rings and buffalo chicken wings. Add to that a cake (with frosting) and some bean stew (in case anyone wasn't satisfied eating only mayonnaise for dinner) and it came out to 14 recipes in one night -- easily a record within my project so far! With 14 recipes and 14 people tasting, I made a big chart on the chalkboard for people to contribute their grades (the frosting ratings got cut off in my picture...):

It was a fun evening! Mayonnaise is pretty fast to make, so making 14 recipes in one day was possible (painless, even!). Luckily, I also had the assistance of several lovely people who came early to help finish up the cooking. Not all the mayo recipes were excellent, but there ended up being plenty of perfectly good food to eat. It's hard to go too wrong with mayonnaise, fried food, and beer!

So as to avoid blogging about nine mayo recipes in a row, I am going to mix things up for the next few weeks, and perhaps go slightly out of order in my blogging.