Andrea Reusing's Cooking in the Moment

I have disliked mayonnaise for as long as I can remember. It's even possible I was born hating it. My whole life I've recoiled from its wobbly texture, its eggy aroma, its mysterious ability to turn the simplest sandwich into a mess of goo. Oooh, just thinking about it is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Yuck, people. Yuck. I literally just shivered.

As I grew older and got over a lot of the dislikes of my childhood (Brussels sprouts, mustard, parsley and oysters, all of which I adore fiercely now), mayonnaise remained the lone cowboy on the deserted plain of my food phobias. I even found a way to like cilantro, which for so long had reminded me of soap, at best, and rat poison, at worst. But mayonnaise would not budge.

The frustrating thing was that so many people whose taste in food I adore and revere seemed to love the stuff. Layered in tomato sandwiches, dolloped on top of a hard-boiled egg, set out for dragging a piece of cold cooked crab through; why, mayonnaise, when written about like that, did seem like it could be manna from heaven. Why, then, did it repulse me so?

A few years ago, when I was still editing cookbooks at the publishing house I used to work at, we got a proposal in from a woman named Andrea Reusing, the chef and owner of a restaurant called Lantern in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The restaurant specialized in a fusion of Asian cooking with local ingredients and there was a substantial amount of buzz surrounding the project. We were very interested in buying the book, but ultimately lost out to a publisher who bid more money than we did. It's frustrating when it happens, but it's part of the publishing life. I put the book out of my mind and got back to work.

A few months ago, that publisher sent me a copy of the book. As I flipped through the pages, I felt a small stab of disappointment. Despite the stunning photography (by a master, John Kernick) and what looked like good food, the design felt a little soulless to me. All those lower-case chapter and recipe titles and color blocks. (This is the curse of the cookbook editor; it's like being a film editor, you can never again look at another movie without thinking of what's happening just outside the frame.) I thought of all the ways "our" designers would have made the book sing and then I put the book on my coffee table and forgot about it.

But last week, I picked it up again for bedtime reading. I live alone for five days a week now, and the only time someone's around to get me to turn the light off so he can go to bed already is on the weekend. I slid into bed with the book in my hands, turned to the first page and started to read. And before I knew it, an hour had passed.

I read the book from cover to cover that night, falling in love with the world that Andrea writes about. She may be the chef of a high-end restaurant, but this book feels deeply, deeply personal. There are no complicated, cheffy dishes between the covers here. The recipes are easy and approachable, but the flavors that Andrea combines feel wonderfully fresh and new. I know you think you've heard this before, but, here, let me give you a few examples and you'll see what I mean.

She puts soy sauce on asparagus, cardamom on spinach and sorghum on sweet potatoes. She blends dried elderflowers into freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, coats fried chicken in rye breadcrumbs and banishes the tired old carrot-ginger soup once and for all with her carrot soup made with toasted curry and pistachios. There are pickled sour cherries and hot tomato relishes and salt-marinated cucumbers alongside pot roast and grilled mackerel and rice grits. I stopped marking which pages I wanted to cook from because, frankly, there were too many.

But aside from the recipes, the book is a beautifully written ode to the bounty, diversity and history of North Carolina small-scale farmers and Southern foodways. Essays about her favorite fish market in Carrboro, for example, or the man who supplies her restaurant with a wide array of mushrooms from his home garden or the couple who run the Chapel Hill Creamery, making a mozzarella so delicate it "barely holds together until dinner", enrich the book immeasurably and cast a spell on the reader, making you long for a life in a region that is rediscovering its agrarian roots so thoroughly that it's become second-nature for greenmarkets to offer not just heirloom tomatoes (Pruden's Purple, Hillbilly Flame, Arkansas Traveler!) and apples (Dula Beauty, Striped July, Bald Mountain!) but squash (Jumbo Pink Banana, Jarrahdale, Old Timey Pie Pumpkin!), melons (Emerald Gem, Pride of Wisconsin, Sugar Baby!) and sweet potates, too (O'Henry, Beauregard, Covington!).

Reading Cooking in the Moment made me want to start planting my own vegetables, made me mourn how far behind Germany is in all ways to the American local food movement and made me want to get into the kitchen all at once.

And (did you wonder if I was ever going to get back to the mayo?) it made me fall hook, line and sinker for homemade garlic-anchovy mayonnaise, which I whipped up in two minutes and have proceeded to eat every day since.

Every.

Day.

Since.

Me.

Mayonnaise.

Case closed.

All you need, says Andrea, is a jar and an immersion blender. Which charms me, lazy bones that I am. You just buzz egg yolks with salt, an anchovy fillet, some minced garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice in the jar with the immersion blender before slowly drizzling in neutral-flavored oil and a bit of olive oil for flavor until you've got a few inches of creamy, palest yellow mayonnaise and your five-year-old self's mind is blown at the prospect that you are about to put this stuff in your mouth and eagerly at that.

Creamy, savory, garlic-anchovy mayonnaise, it turns out, tastes fabulous with cold roast chicken. So fabulous I ate it for lunch two days in a row. Then, when the chicken was gone, I made myself - finally! at 33! - the iconic tomato sandwich with white bread, sliced tomatoes, a healthy sprinkling of salt and more of that mayo. It was, indeed, as delicious as everyone says. The anchovy, in case you're wondering, disappears entirely into the mayo, leaving behind not a trace of fishiness. I promise. Cross my heart.

Now I'm almost down to the bottom of the bowl and I'm frantically trying to come up with reasons why I shouldn't make another batch. So far, they're all terrible.

Cooking in the Moment is incredibly inspiring, not just in terms of cooking but also in terms of its spirit. Andrea's reverence for the people growing the food she serves to her customers and to her family is infectious. It will make you want to mail-order chickens from a Kansas chicken farmer, gather your children around to help churn fresh ice cream out of fresh strawberries, buttermilk and cream (and then watch them eat it directly out of the churn) and then book a flight to Chapel Hill so you, too, can be fed by the woman who makes Indian lime pickle with citrus from Plaquemines Parish and serves it with a chickpea purée.

Andrea is that rare breed of chef whose talent for lyrical writing is as developed as her pitch-perfect taste for food and her ability to seize everyday moments and find the divine within them. Her soulful, richly textured book is a gift, for readers, for cooks and for everyone in between.

Garlic-Anchovy Mayonnaise
Makes about 1/2 cup

1 egg yolk
Salt
1 garlic clove, minced
1 anchovy fillet
1/4 lemon
1/3 to 1/2 cup of neutral vegetable oil
2 to 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1. Put the yolk in a wide-mouth jar and pulse for about 30 seconds with an immersion blender. Add a good pinch of salt, as much minced garlic as you'd like (I used about half a clove, which made for a pretty mild mayo), the anchovy and a big squeeze of lemon juice. Pulse again. While pulsing, slowly drizzle in the oil until the mixture is emulsified and creamy. Taste for salt and thin with a little water if necessary.

Comments

[Molly]

And here I was, thinking I was alone in my mayo fear and loathing!

I just received Reusing's book yesterday, and am sinking in to it's wonderfulness. I bookmarked that strawberry ice cream immediately (no custard, yes, yes, yes!).

I've made homemade mayo before even, and still nearly gagged. Maybe, maybe, the lemon and anchovy will convert me. Tomatoes are coming, after all...

[Rocky Mountain Woman]

Homemade mayo will make a believer out of just about anyone!

I am so going to order this book....

[Ali]

I love this post -- and your blog! -- for so many reasons. I too am a life-long mayonnaise hater, but also an ex-Chapel Hill resident (and life-long fan!) now living in Northern Europe (Amsterdam) after spending several years in NYC... if ever I was required to comment it is now! I may skip the Lantern cookbook, for now, but am on my way to buy an immersion blender. Thanks!

[Thea]

Sold! I am a long time lover of mayo but have never felt confident enough or inspired to make it myself. Until now.

You made this mayo, and this book, so tempting that I couldn't resist! So I whipped it up, anchovies and all, in 3 minutes and was instantly in love. My 2 year old watched me in amazement as I oohed and ahhhed. She was determined to love it as much as I did, and she faked it well.

I have a chicken roasting in the oven to go with it and am ready to run out the door in search of white bread and tomatoes.

Thank you as always, for your love of food and ability to write about it so well. xox

[Grace]

As soon as you wrote wobby texture and goo, I knew that whatever it was you had a disdain for it certainly wasn't mayonnaise.

Well, not decent mayonnaise anyway! :)

[Leah]

I have to disagree with you regarding the book. While it is visually appealing, a lot of the recipes include ingredients that aren't readily available and include some dodgy inclusions such as tomato stems. I'm not sure why something known to be poisonous would make it into a recipe.

Granted, it's a book to be savoured if you're into autobiographies of sorts but as a cookbook I cannot say it's very reliable.

[go heels]

Yay for Lantern and for Chapel Hill!!!

[Luisa]

Gordon - that story is unreal. Hysterical! Reads like out of the script of a gross-out movie!

Steph - I'm sure you could! Give it a try and let us know.

Michelle - it lasts for at least a couple days. Beyond that, I'd be a little nervous just because of the raw egg.

Amanda - thank you, darling. :)

Anna - No, it's not. As far as I can tell, there are no Lantern recipes in the book.

Gadia, Beril, Thea - yeah for cooking in the moment! So glad you guys liked it.

Leah - What recipes did you try that you found unreliable? Everything I tried was delicious. The only recipe with tomato stems is a really homey cream of tomato soup that has you steep the stems in the soup, but you discard them before eating. I'm pretty sure you could leave them out if you didn't feel comfortable with that step.

[The Grazer]

I'm going to make the mayonnaise AND buy the book! lovely post. xxx

[Alison @ a la Alison]

Thanks for the recipe! I will definitely be trying this out soon

[Karen]

After making some seriously terrible mayonnaise more than once, I gave up on making it altogether. When I saw this post, I went right down to the kitchen and tried it, using anchovy paste instead of tinned anchovies. It turned out perfectly! I put it on portobello mushroom burgers with a bit of Quebec's OKA cheese, lettuce and tomato, and it was a Mouth Party, I'm telling you. I used the rest (minus the unmentionable amount I consumed on a spoon/my finger) on toasted tomato sandwiches the next day and it was just as good as promised. Glad you overcame your fear of eating mayonnaise and helped me get over my fear of making it.

[hungry_jess]

so true about Cilantro... but I too discovered that in the right context it works!

As for mayo, I've always loved. This recipe looks great with the achovie

[CookiePie]

Great post! I share your hatred of mayo -- but the homemade stuff is in a whole different realm. This recipe, with the anchovy, sounds divine!!

[Susannah]

I feel the same way about Andrea's book. I loved it so much I even bought it for my mother for mother's day. Andrea is an old friend and my husband and I eat at Lantern every birthday and any other time we can get out without the kids. She always surprises us with an extra appetizer or dessert and it is hard to hold back and savor it as opposed to gobbling it up. Her book taught me things about the farmer's I buy from at our local market every week that I didn't know and found fascinating. We've had cooler, rainier weather here in NC this week, so last night I made the roasted chicken with spring onions recipe and it was incredible. Thank you for writing such a great review. I've been reading your blog for years and made your mustard roasted potatoes the other night...delicious.

[Oana]

Super post. It made me laugh. It made me salivate. A lot. It made me look forward to upcoming ripe tomatoes which I will devour on top of crispy, mayo slathered bread. I am a mayo fanatic and glad you found yours.

[lynn]

It sounds like a wonderful book and a fabulous recipe, both. I discovered the joy of homemade mayo about a year ago, when I made some to enhance our homegrown artichokes. Yum.

[Robin]

You know, I made mayonnaise just the other day (I'm a whisk girl), and for the first time ever it tasted bland instead of heavenly. I was experimenting with all canola oil, and even lemon and garlic couldn't quite bring it up. Now I can't wait to try it this way!

[Aubrey]

This post makes me so happy. I'm glad you like it now, I guess just because of that slightly irrational (but wonderful) human tendency to feel immense pleasure over some food, and look across the table and meet someone's eyes, wanting to know they taste the same thing.

One of my best friends hates mayonnaise; I've been working on her for years with no results. I'm sending her this link.

[Sara]

I've always hated mayo, too, until I made it at home from scratch. I still won't eat jarred stuff but homemade is fine.

[Toffeeapple]

And you don't even need to drizzle the oil in, you can put it in all at once.

[Ashley]

A friend and I found this book at Borders a couple of weeks ago. We promptly sat down in the cafe and devoured the entire thing. We loved it. It's on both of our wishlists now. Such a great cookbook!

[Katie]

I hear you on the mayo front...unless it's been doctored up I generally don't like it. Maybe I should try making my own? Here in the Netherlands they dump it on their fries, makes me shudder! I blogged about that actually...

[heather @ chiknpastry]

i love that you are writing about the area where I grew up. NC is a beautiful wonderful place, and I would LOVE to visit Lantern, only problem is they are closed on Sundays and that always ends up being the only day I'm near Chapel Hill when we go to NC.

glad to hear the mayo story. i was the same way about regular ol' yellow mustard until last year. good stuff!

[rach]

I am reading Niki Segent's Flavour thesaurus - it is the most unexpectedly exquisite, funny and brilliant book - For me the best and most useful food writing since Simon Hopkinsons Roast chicken and other stories. Anyway, my head is full of wonderful flavour combinations, amongst them tomato and egg (fresh and fruity and sulphurous), anchovy and egg (briny and sulphurous), tomato and anchovy (fresh and fruity and briny). This mayonaise is exquisitely timely for my forthcoming tomato, egg and anchovy sandwich.

I do hope this makes sense. I'm not sure it does.

Always reading and so looking forward to having your book in my hands one day.

[Susanna]

And I thought you hated raw garlic as well ...?

[Anne]

I read this post and ran out to buy a rotisserie chicken (they're good and cheap and it was 60 mins before lunch). Then I made this mayo - added 1 tsp lemon peel - and it was a lip smacking, glorious lunch. And minimal clean up too! THANK YOU!!!!

[Patrice]

Haven't commented before because, well, because. But I HAD to just say OMG. I made this and am in mayo heaven. Artichokes, Luisa. Dip them in. You must.

[Denise]

I will definitely try this, maybe in a simple potato salad. Thank you!

[Allison @ Decadent Philistines Save the World]

Mayonnaise has always made me gag. Even having it in the fridge gives me the willies.
BUT... this makes me think that just like I've found home baked bread is better, home made mayo might be something I can handle.
Still in small doses. Those large dollops will always be the things of my nightmares.
Thanks for the recipe!
http://decadentphilistines.blogspot.com

[EMT Training]

Well I'm on the "ewwww mayonaise" side of this argument. Something about the texture just doesn't sit right with me. That said, the book looks great and I might just go out and buy a copy!

[Jon]

Homemade mayo is the way to go. I find it hard to purchase in the supermarket anymore. It's just not the same.

The book may do it justice!

[Kish]

i just made that mayo recipe.

effing.

amazing.

i love mayo. hahaa

[Vanessa]

How happy I am to see so many self-proclaimed mayo-haters here as I thought I was part of a rare bunch. I dislike mayo so much and all my life, resulting in strange looks from mayo-lovers. I am so tempted to make a turn for the better, and give this a try. Maybe with this mayo I can finally like the infamous chicken salad?