I Finally Got the Aioli Memo
Like OMG?! An important quotidian event.
Hello! This is a dispatch from the well of discovery I’m currently in.
Now obviously, I have not discovered aioli. While I have an American passport I know better than to live by the nation’s imperial state of mind.
The thing is, yesterday morning on the eve of this week’s solar lunar eclipse, I learned that I have never eaten authentic aioli.
Madness.
Below, the audio I sent to a friend while externally processing the revelation.
Important to note
I had ordered an omelette (onions, bell peppers, spinach, sausage, American cheese) with potatoes, gluten free bread, and a side of spicy “aioli” which is what set this whole thing in motion.
Per the audio, emulsified is the word I was looking for.
Yes that was an ADHD-induced tangent regarding pesto because both pesto and aioli are traditionally made using a mortar and pestle.
The “spicy lie” was revealed over breakfast at a diner that’s been operating in VA since 1865 so there was a time when a black lesbian like myself wouldn’t have even been allowed to sit in the diner and now there I was solving an important case of aioli misattribution. This is my idea of progress: the right to whimsy.
Over the course of these past 24 hours I have since learned that Pliny the Elder wrote about aioli (what didn’t he write about geez) and that the addition of an egg to the mixture seems to have originated on what is now the French side of Occitania but this condiment predates current borders. In other words: great power conflict is fleeting, aioli is forever.
What to do with this new found knowledge…I’m envisioning a kind of southern “new world” meets southern “old world” combo: fried green tomatoes and fried squash blossoms with actual aioli on the side. Mayo is banned.
Green tomatoes and squash blossoms from my family’s new garden of course! Shoutout to my neighbors who helped us start a garden.
I will be experimenting in my kitchen soon because this lesbian’s place is actually in the kitchen* living out domestic goddess dreams à la Nigella.
Stay tuned. The aioli adventure continues. I’m on a mission.
Hasta la próxima.
✌🏾