Quest for the Perfect Sandwich, 2: Condiments

This is going to become mayo.

In the first post, I posited that I was hoping to best Ike's and generate a homemade sandwich which I personally found as appealing.  Today we'll go over the ingredient whose importance is only overshadowed by the bread: condiments!  Often condiments seem an afterthought, dispensed out of tiny metal packets and sort of smeared around before the sandwich is closed.  However, given that the other sandwich ingredients (meat, cheese, lettuce) tend to be fairly bland in and of themselves, the condiments are the only serious opportunity to inject character into a sandwich.  Given my desire to have a sandwich I can throw together quickly, I've settled on trying to make a single sauce which can serve on its own.  The base of the sauce is Mayonnaise.

My lovely assistant.  Its hard to see
but she's currently whisking at high
velocity.

 In keeping with my recent food craziness I've decided to make the mayo base for the sauce from scratch, rather than using the store bought variety (although that also works quite nicely.)  This might be overkill, since in the end I'm going to load it up with spices anyway.  Still, why not?  Anyway, you can see all the necessary ingredients in the top image.  In the metal bowl I have whisked up a single egg yolk with 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp ground mustard, 1/8 tsp sugar, 1 tsp lemon juice, and 1 tsp white wine vinegar.  In the squeeze bottle (I got that at Sur la Table for $2.50) is 1 cup of oil.  I used extra virgin olive oil.  That was probably a mistake.  A milder oil (even just milder olive oil) would probably work better.

Now its full of flavor.

Now if you want to make mayo you have got to seriously prepare yourself for some arm exercise.  Alia and I took turns, actually.  Thankfully, feel free to take a break, it doesn't seem to hurt anything.  What you're going to do is very slowly start adding the oil (from the squeeze bottle) to the egg, while whisking it essentially as hard as you can.  By slowly, I mean a few drops at a time.  This worked just fine for me, but apparently if you add it too fast the sauce will 'break'.  I think you'll know what that means immediately if it happens to you.  
You can't see in the the picture, but I have a little rubber mat sitting underneath the bowl to keep it from sliding around.  You'll notice that the yolk becomes more opaque and thicker as you add the oil.  When I got about halfway through the oil bottle, the mass in the bowl was so thick it pretty much clumped up inside the whisk.  At this point, you add another tsp vinegar and tsp lemon juice.  It should smooth right back out.  You can increase the oil flow rate at this point, to more of a stream.

Back in the same squeeze bottle, ready
to be dispensed.

Once you've put in all the oil, you're done.  Now if, like me, you were silly and used extra virgin olive oil, it might not taste very good.  Otherwise, you might just want it to taste even better.  You can try loading it up with other stuff like I did.  I added:
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp smoked paprika (this is sort of an unusual spice, not the same as regular paprika.  I'm not sure regular paprika would taste that good.  Although it is a pretty color)
2 tbsp sweet red pepper relish
Lots of tabasco ( I think I used ~ 10 squirts)
Also 1 extra tsp lemon juice and vinegar each

After all the additions were incorporated, I put the sauce back in the squeeze bottle.
In retrospect I think something sweet would also go nicely in here, like honey or molasses.