Chipotle Mayo

As you may remember, I took some time off from blogging for a few different personal reasons. In the past couple of months I have met two of my biggest, almost unachievable goals. I have made some strict changes in my diet that have allowed me to manage my IBS symptoms enough to go back to work, and as of February 16th I became employed at a nearby grocery store in the deli department.


I'm really happy and I feel great. It's kind of strange because a job like that may sound menial to someone of my education level and work history, but after being unemployed for 5 years because of health reasons I'm thrilled just to be there. I approach the work with a positive attitude and diligence.

Here is a recent gift from some friends of ours in Michigan. This Roos Roast brand of coffee is THE BEST coffee I've ever had. I strongly recommend buying some at http://roosroast.com/. I'm particularly fond of the A-A Cowboy Blend. Warning: this coffee is only for serious coffee drinkers, like those of you who think Starbucks is over-roasted-burnt-tasting dren. You know who you are.

As part of a thank you for gifting us more Roos Roast coffee (and of course the Breakfast Ninja mug) I naturally have to plug Kate's Etsy store at http://www.etsy.com/shop/omaspatch and her blog at http://omaspatch.blogspot.com/. Support a talented crafter who makes everything by hand; go there and buy your favorite critter!

And this couldn't be a post without food so here we go. I found some giants bags of frozen sweet potato fries at the Sam's, so they have become a staple for us particularly on burger night. Unsure of what to dip them into (not ketchup) we've been using some Ken's honey mustard dressing, and it's okay. I've been wanting to find a recipe for a Bloomin' Onion or Awesome Blossom sauce, that might be good, but my preliminary searches didn't leave me confident. I'll have to dig deeper. What I did find was a Chipotle Aoili, but that word has too many vowels for me so I'm just going to call it chipotle mayo.

I'm familiar with a sauce made from chipotles in adobo sauce mixed with sour cream and lime juice, so this sounded a bit similar to that. It uses chipotle chili powder rather than the chipotles in adobo sauce though.

I found this recipe at http://littlechefbigappetite.tumblr.com/post/10983558447/crispysweetpotatofries.

1/3 cup low-fat mayo
1 T chopped chives
1 tsp chopped garlic
1/2 tsp chipotle chili powder
3 tsp lime juice
salt and pepper to taste

Truth be told I didn't like this at all, at first. To me, it tasted like really sour mayo followed by an unbearably scorching hot aftertaste. The overall taste needed to round out a little bit; it seemed to me like it needed more body between the sour and hot contrasting flavors. My first idea was to mix a little more mayo along with some chipotles in adobo sauce, but after scouring the freezer apparently I threw away my frozen stash of chilis. I decided my mixture had enough chipotle flavor and certainly enough heat, so I just tried adding more mayo to maybe dilute the sour and mitigate that heat a little bit. About 2 heaping spoonfuls of mayo and a couple of hours to let out the flavors of the garlic and chives worked fairly well.

 So now was the test - would this taste good on sweet potato fries?

It wasn't perfect. It wasn't terrible or even bad, but it didn't really work either. I kept getting that sour mayo taste which overpowered everything else. I tried using less of the dip on each fry but then it was as if I wasn't dipping into anything.

This sauce would be good on a burrito or a quesadilla (or maybe even that hamburger). I wouldn't even say this sauce came close to being an Awesome Blossom sauce (not that it was touted to be), so I'll continue my quest to find a good dipping sauce for sweet potato fries.

If any of you know a good recipe for one I'd love to hear from you. Please use the comments below!