The Backyard Grand Aioli

by Randy Kemner, Proprietor

Each summer my wife Dale prepares her version of a Grand Aioli, the traditional Provence feast, which we serve for guests in our backyard patio.  The essential ingredient that sets this meal apart is the aioli sauce, an olive oil, garlic and egg concoction whipped into a potent, strong sauce, traditionally done with a mortar and pestle.  Dale prefers Provence cookbook writer Patricia Wells' version.

 

We were first introduced to an authentic Grand Aioli by our friends Jack and Anne-Marie McLaughlin in the late 1990s after hearing of it in Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route and in Richard Olney's Lulu's Provencal Table, both must-reads if you are to understand the soul of Provence cuisine as well as two loving tributes to one of the most influential winemaking families in France, the Peyrauds.

 

It was at the McLaughlin backyard family feast when I got my first healthy dose of authentic, strong, mortar-and-pestle garlic mayonnaise, and where, for the first time I truly, fully appreciated the role of south-of-France roses with Mediterranean food.  They're refreshing for sipping in the summertime, but there is a greater reason for their existence.

When Jack first handed me a bowl of aioli, I asked, "what do I do with this?"

"Slather it on everything!" he said with a wide grin on his face. "Then wash it down with a lot of rose."

 

Olney's account of the Grand Aioli served at the legendary Bandol estate Domaine Tempier is particularly vivid:

"Aioli--garlic-oil--is two things.  First of all, it is the more or less mild or powerful garlic mayonnaise that Lulu serves with any number of individual preparations--cold roasts, poached fish, boiled vegetables, fritters, etc.  Secondly, it is an abundant meal, a traditional cornucopia of products of the earth and and sea, accompanied by an aioli sauce.  The traditional meal, or Grand Aioli, at the Peyraud table, is a mad, joyous circus.  Lulu rarely prepares a Grand Aioli for fewer than 15 or 20 people, and there are always three mortars of aioli sauce at table;  one, relatively mild, for les estrangers (Parisians, Americans, etc.); one, generously dosed with garlic, for the Provencaux; and one, overpowering, for Lucien, who likes a "bite" in his aioli (the Parisians and the Americans invariably end up wiping Lucien's mortar clean).  As with the bouillabaisse, vin rose is always present, but it is cool, young red that flows most freely."

In Adventures on the Wine Route, Kermit Lynch describes the real world effects of one of those Domaine Tempier aioli feasts:

"One evening I dined outdoors with a dozen Peyrauds.  It was almost nine o'clock but the sky was still radiant, with a touch of fiery amber.  Around a table crowded with heaping platters of boiled red beets, carrots, cauliflower, artichokes, fennel bulbs, baked sweet potoatoes, hard-boiled eggs, sole filets wrapped around dill blossoms, and a heady octopus stew, the piece de resistance was passed without cease despite its nearly impossible weight:  a huge marble mortar filled with an aioli that Francois had worked up by hand with a wooden pestle.  Aioli is Provence's garlic mayonnaise.  Some poor souls find it indigestible; others feel their blood stir with excitement as they wolf it down.  This aioli had an entire head of garlic in it, two egg yolks, a pinch of salt, and a liter of Domaine Tempier's own olive oil.

Catherine, Jean-Marie's wife, coughed and sucked in air to cool off her mouth.

"It's not too strong, is it?" asked Lucien, reaching again for the mortar.  "You think there's too much garlic?"

"No, no, I have a little cold," Catherine replied.

"An aioli is good for colds," Lucien said and plopped another heaping spoonful onto her plate.

Jean-Marie poured more Bandol rouge into each wineglass, empty or not.  "You've got to have a cool young wine with aioli" he said.  "An old wine would be lost."

I once lost an argument with Andre Angles at the now-sadly-closed Frenchy's Bistro in Long Beach, just one more casualty in this damned recession.  A native of Avignon, he had been served Grand Aioli many times as a boy by his Provencal grandmother.  He insisted the vegetables had to be boiled to be traditional--at least that was the way his grandmother did it. 

Who was I to argue?  It's just that boiled vegetables, whether in a Grand Aioli, pot au feu or New England clam bake, is tasteless and watery, all of the goodness (and vitamins) sapped right out of them.  (I never had him do a Grand Aioli again for our annual Provence fests, preferring instead his can't-get-enough version of monkfish with rouille and his roast leg of lamb with aioli.)

That's where Dale's take on the vegetables for the grand aioli, while not by-the-letter authentic, is really much more flavorful.  She roasts her home-grown beets, farmer's market fingerling potatoes and sweet potatoes, and she grills her caulliflower, and carrots, which intensifies their tastes.  We usually pass on the fish and octopus stew (this year she did make a Provencal brandade, a mushed up reconsituted  salt cod as an appetizer), but for the main course, she clamps a whole chicken and a boneless leg of lamb on the rotisserie.  The results of all of that are bold, true flavors just waiting for liberal slatherings of home-made, rich and garlicky aioli from her own marble mortar.

The meal is a slam dunk to make, she says, but I've watched her spend hours prepping it--it's no small task, even though the food doesn't require a three-star French chef's technique.  The chicken is always perfectly juicy and the lamb, a pinkish medium-rare with some crustier bits always available for those looking for a little char.

We've been doing that each year ever since, and it is always delicious.  It is remarkable how intelligent simply prepared food and dry Provence rose becomes in that context--perfection in food and wine. 

On one of the warmest days of August, we had the staff and their wives, husbands, girlfriends and boyfriends over for Dale's Grand Aioli, version 2012.  As a tribute to Lulu Peyraud, Richard Olney and Kermit Lynch, I provided an all-Tempier wine lineup, including the magnificent--and hard to get--Bandol rose, the queen of them all, a rare beautifully drinking 2008 Bandol La Tourtine, and three vintages of young Bandol Cabassaou, the hyper-rare 100% Mourvedre top-of-the-line bottling from the estate, the 2007, 2008 and newly released 2009 for comparison. 

 

Each wine had its own personality, beautifully reflecting each vintage.  Each was straight from the chilled cellar and was cool to the tongue and as flavorful as any wine on the planet.  Truth be told, the red wines were delicious, but a little too much wine for the feast.  Did the 2009 Cabassaou have a taste of barrique?  If so, that's the first time I've ever detected wood in a Tempier wine. 

My staff turned again and again to the rose, which, even as the light faded into darkness and the table glowed with candlelight, still worked its summer magic on all of us.

The Wine Country is offered a small allocation of Tempier wines each year--sometimes 6 bottles of a vineyard-designated red, yet there are too few of our customers who know them and revere them.  If there is any of the last year's vintage left on our shelves when the new vintage comes in to the store, I'll buy the wine myself and put it in our personal cellar. 

Sometimes I think I need to grab my customers by their lapels and give them a good shaking--"What's the matter with you?  Why is this wine still here?  Why aren't you cellaring this wine?  Too expensive?  You're spending that much on Pahlmeyer Chardonnay and Caymus Cabernet!!  And how do they taste with your aioli?  You don't know what aioli is?  Well neither did I.  Let me tell you how it works..."