The milky way.

Last week, Amanda Hesser posted what looked like an incredible recipe to the blog at Food52. For those of you who haven't discovered it for yourselves quite yet, Food52 is an online community of home cooks dedicated to creating a fantastic repository of recipes as well as a series of thoughtfully and collaboratively curated cookbooks. I am personally addicted to it, and follow the site (as well as its founders, Amanda and Merrill) on Twitter - you should, too.

Anyhoo, back to the point. Amanda posted a recipe for a milk-based mayonnaise last week, and I was immediately intrigued. For starters, how would the emulsion work? And how would it taste? The answers, as it turns out, are: very well, and just as Amanda described - pillowy goodness.

Since the protein here comes from whole milk, as opposed to the sticky substance that is egg yolk, the mayonnaise produced is lighter than the usual - pillowy is absolutely the right description; cloudlike would also work. The touch of garlic adds a piquancy to the mix and lends depth to the overall flavor.

Mine ended up looking a bit like vanilla ice cream, but don't be deceived - those black flecks are not vanilla bean, but freshly ground black pepper, since I didn't have any white pepper on hand. Either way, the mayonnaise was delicious folded into my go-to chicken salad, and I'm pretty excited to try it out as a sauce for pan-roasted lamb chops tomorrow night. Yum.