I Released an Olive Oil
And made aioli with it
This week has been an exciting one for me: on Monday, my friend Damian and I put out a small batch of early harvest EVOO from Puglia, which you can now buy online. Damian runs Primis Imports, which brings in some of the finest extra virgin olive oils I’ve encountered — mostly from Greece, but also Italy and Peru.
After using Primis almost exclusively in my cooking, Damian and I started discussing a way to collaborate on a high-quality, early harvest oil. Good olive oil is essential to the food I love, and I was very interested in bringing that level of quality into (hopefully!) your kitchens.
That led us to a delicious Coratina EVOO from Puglia, Italy: grassy, peppery, and bursting with early harvest flavor. The olives were picked only last October and the oil bottled in March, which is exceptionally recent compared to grocery-store-shelf standards. After tasting a small sample, we agreed to import a small batch of this for your home cooking pleasure.
The oil is good for just about anything, but I recently used it to make some of the best-tasting aioli I’ve ever produced. It was done very simply with an immersion blender — unorthodox, maybe, but good for those who don’t have an hour to spare for mayonnaise — and about half Coratina oil, half Algae Cooking Club oil. This is a newfangled cooking oil extracted from seaweed, and it’s wonderfully neutral — great for frying, and also great for aioli. It was especially useful in emulsifying the aioli while letting the bold flavors of the Coratina olive oil shine through.
I had it with a chicken Milanese, the recipe for which is here, but it would be just as good with some of the spring vegetables popping up at the market. If you do buy the Anchovy Trove Primis olive oil and make this aioli — or anything! — I’d love to hear what you think.
Immersion Blender Aioli
Ingredients
1 whole egg
Juice of 1 lemon wedge
3 garlic cloves, finely grated
1/2 cup Anchovy Trove Primis Imports early harvest Coratina EVOO
1/2 cup neutral cooking oil, like Algae Cooking Club
Kosher salt
Instructions
Combine the egg, garlic, lemon juice, and salt in a tall vessel that can comfortably fit a handheld immersion blender. Add the 1/2 cup of neutral oil.
Using the immersion blender, blend on high until fully emulsified; you may have to jostle the handle blender a bit, lifting it up and down to emulsify the oil.
With the blender still running, slowly pour in a thin drizzle of the EVOO until it is fully incorporated into the aioli.
Store in airtight container for up to 3-4 days in the fridge.