Lou grand aiòli — the Provençal one-dish meal for Friday or Sunday, where garlic unites all diners
The Grand Sunday Aïoli of Arles
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A large communal platter of boiled vegetables and desalted cod, around a mortar of garlic pounded with olive oil — the aïoli — blazing like a Provençal sun.
Lou grand aiòli — the Provençal one-dish meal for Friday or Sunday, where garlic unites all diners
A large communal platter of boiled vegetables and desalted cod, around a mortar of garlic pounded with olive oil — the aïoli — blazing like a Provençal sun.
Here, in this South where the sun falls in blows of chrome yellow, on Sundays they make a dish that resembles my canvases: everything revolves around a star, and that star is garlic pounded in oil. You take a head of garlic, you crush it at length in a mortar while pouring the oil drop by drop, until the sauce rises, golden and firm like impasto. Around it, you arrange the boiled garden vegetables and the desalted cod, and everyone helps themselves. It is poor and royal at the same time — like a field of sunflowers.
Ingredients
- •New garlic — a whole head (signature, base of the sauce)
- •Provençal olive oil — a bowl (binder for aïoli)
- •Egg yolk — one (emulsion)
- •Desalted salt cod — one piece per person (protein)
- •Garden vegetables (carrots, green beans, potatoes) — according to diners (boiled garnish)
- •Hard-boiled eggs — one per person (garnish)
How it was made : Aïoli was the totem dish of 19th-century Provence, eaten on lean days (Fridays) and village feasts. The garlic was pounded in a marble mortar; local olive oil and dried cod brought in through the ports completed a meal that was both meager and generous.