Monday, May 7, 2012

Hollandaise Redux

As the garden, work and family life keeps us super busy, we find the need to have shortcuts which are not a compromise on quality.  So we were very happy when our regular Sunday morning brunches with our great friends Monica and Chris lead to the discovery of a "cheats" Hollandaise sauce!

We don't think you will often find us quoting Better Homes and Gardens - New Cook Book - but this is a winner.  It has the right consistency, richness and tang that a good Hollandaise deserves - and it is fast.  Peta bought Jim a saucier for christmas and in this we are able to make a great sauce, without the fuss of a double boiler (just make sure you keep the heat down low and stir constantly!)

1/2 Cup butter
3 beaten egg yolks
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
dash salt
cayenne pepper

Cut butter into thirds and bring to room temp.  In the saucier or top of double boiler, combine egg yolks, water, lemon and salt.  Add a piece of the butter.  Place over low heat (saucier) or boiling water (double boiler).  Cook, stirring rapidly with a whisk, till butter melts and sauce begins to thicken.  Add the remaining butter, a piece at a time, stirring constantly till melted. Continue to cook and stir till sauce thickens, then immediatley remove from heat.  Add cayenne to taste.

We must confess that we are such Hollandaise freaks - so for the 4 of us, we double the recipe, so we can have a little left over for asparagus or some other dish!

Enjoy the quickie... especially on a Sunday!

Jim & Peta

Thursday, May 3, 2012

MasterChef!


We became enamored by the Seared Halibut with Sweet Corn Sabayon as created by Cat Cora for an episode of Master Chef, one of Gordon "You Donkey!" Ramsey's eleventy billion cooking shows.  Chef Cora is able to cook the dish in something like 18 minutes.  Yikes.  We've done it several times now, often for our occasional "special" guests, i.e. people that you can fail in front of, like family, and it always takes a lot longer than 18 minutes, but it sure is tasty.

The title of the dish is only half of the story.  Once you sauce the plate with the sabayon and plate the fish, you top the whole thing with a mixture of sauteed thinly sliced red onion, fava beans, arugula, corn and cherry tomatoes that she calls the "salad".  This is a real "composed" dish with all of the major flavors represented: sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami.  (Note that this sabayon (or zabaglione) is savory in nature and thus does not include the sugar and sweet wine of a "normal" sabayon.)

The first time we attempted the dish, we were not happy with the consistency of the sabayon; it was just too runny.  When Peta's brother Sean-of-London visited last year, we cooked it for the second time and the results were the same with the recipe as printed until we added another egg yolks.  With the added egg yolk, the sauce seems to set up better and coat the plate without being too thick or too watery.  You can just ladle it onto the plate and give the plate a swirl and voila, a sweet and savory, mostly circular, eggy base on which to plate your fish and salad.  Super chef-y.

This time, Jim's mom was our test pilot.  We found fresh fava beans at the farmer's market at a reasonable price, but as Jim went looking for the corn and cherry tomatoes, we realized that at nowhere on the planet would sweet corn, arugula, cherry tomatoes and fava beans be in season at the same time.  Sure, this is California, but still.  While at our new favorite store New Frontiers (bulk grains!  oil-cured olives!  marrow bones!), we picked up some frozen sweet corn and utterly flavorless, "organic" Mexican cherry tomatoes while CJ's Lolo (Jim's mom) held down the fort.

We shelled the outer husks of the fava beans while watching the Daily Show and the next day gave them a quick parboil and removed the tough outer skins.  But seriously folks, here's a link to fava beans.

It's an expensive meal with the halibut (we used Alaskan rather than the local Californian because it was thicker, yeah, we know, we're evil.) but it's a keeper.

This is out first actual food picture on the blog.  They just don't look like the ones on other blogs, so that's what's been holding us back.  Clearly, we'll be looking into the lighting/angle/lens requirements of shooting food, although we have no problem with shooting food with a Remington Model 700 BDL when the opportunity presents itself.  Down goes the venison, down goes the venison!!

Jim and Peta