Mayonnaise and Italy

Unless it is Miracle Whip mayo…then it is salad dressing… :weary:

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

:scream:

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Well, when my mom wanted to reciprocate a lunch with my sister’s neighbors in San Vito dei Normanni (near Brindisi) by introducing them to her potato salad, she was able to find bottled mayonnaise at the alimentari down the street … I’d already gone back home by then, so I have no idea what brand it was. I doubt that my sister remembers, too; it was thirty-some years ago.

The potato salad was not very well received, but that was apparently due to the raw onion. They did love the fried chicken, though.

Actually, I don’t quite understand the title of this thread, Mayonnaise and Italy is it made by admin @hungryonion? It’s a bit out of the blue. Mayonnaise or Aïoli (both seem) to be origined in Spain and the French adapted it and now everywhere in the world one can find it easily.

Yes, this is one of those curious side threads that got split off by admin.

Yeah, actually I go through the post the cheap eats in NY and every post here, I’m still scratching my head, unless there is the assumption that mayonnaise is originated from Italy.

What happened was: I posted to the Cheap Eats thread about a Middle Eastern place that I liked, despite the fact that they put mayonnaise in their hummus. Ttrockwood was skeeved by this, and I said something to the effect that at least it’s not as bad as mayonnaise in guacamole. The discussion then turned to avocados, which brings us to Post Zero on this sub thread.

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I remembered eating this dish from time to time when I was living in Sicily when invited to some party. Isn’t there anchovy in the sauce?

Nevermind, hope nobody is really upset about anything over a mysterious title.

Maybe? I always thought it was just tuna, but who knows. Time to google some recipes. It’s one of my favorite antipasti, tho I would probably try to find a substitute for sliced veal, as I’ve no way of getting any anywhere around these parts.

ETA: The first result was this one here, and it does indeed use anchovies. Damn, I want me some tonnato now :smile:

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Tuna as fish, but in the sauce, there are some anchovy mixed and you don’t see them anymore.

linguafood, even when Mrs. O was consuming animals on a daily basis she would not allow any veal in the house. Therefore I was delighted to discover that there’s a dish that turkey breast is actually good for! I don’t know if I’d seen J. Beard’s recommendation of subbing that in before or after I started doing it, but it works beautifully. You just have to bring it JUST to its proper (as opposed to FDA-mandated) internal temperature. You can call it Tacchino Tonnato if you wanna be honest …

The recipe I have (I think from Beard) does have anchovies. And PLEASE don’t listen to those young know-it-all chefs who urge us to “improve” it by using fresh tuna! Canned is exactly correct – Chicken of the Sea if that’s all you can find, but never water-packed. Canned fish is a highly respected art form amongst the Mediterraneans, and Tonnato is one of its finest expressions.

For several years now I’ve been buying Ortiz brand Spanish tuna packed in olive oil. It’s simply incredible.

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I don’t really eat veal either, unless it’s humanely raised… but I don’t find its flavor to be something worth seeking out. As you said, tacchino (turkey) tonnato is a reasonable substitute.

A restaurant in Berlin does (or did) a riff on vitello, where a sauce made from veal fond is served over raw tuna carpaccio. Pretty tasty variation.

I’m old enough and been into food long enough to remember when people still used veal to make “mock chicken”! However, we lived in a small farming town and chicken was relatively cheap if you bought live ones, and veal was not common fare on the Owen table. My parents did like veal tenderloin, however – cut into medallions, breaded and fried. I think when Mrs. O is out of town I might get one of those big chops, just by way of satisfying curiosity.

@ catholiver: I’ve gotten the Ortiz tuna at Surfas in Culver City. Yes, excellent. Mostly I go to my neighborhood Italian deli and ask the ancient owner for his recommendation, since he carries up to five different brands, mostly Italian. I think he just recommends what’s selling the worst, but it’s always good. Another of my bachelor-cook projects is to follow up an idea I had and use Trader Joe’s excellent frozen mushroom pasta as the basis for a tuna-noodle casserole. I will definitely want some good tuna for that.

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If you are talking about big chops, that might be what Italians call vitellone and here, grain-fed veal (as opposed to milk fed). There is nothing particularly cruel about that except that it is slaughtered younger. The main specific humane arguments are against veal fed milk much longer than biologically normal, prohibited from grazing and confined to little cells with no exercise.