Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Do Over: Buerre Blanc

It's a week of catch-up in the kitchen and my first order of business was to win my battle with buerre blanc. I tried the exact recipe I had tried the previous night and it came out perfect. Basically, I took the Chopping Block recipe and added the tarragon and lemon from the Trib recipe. As I expected, the heat was the culprit before and by controlling that correctly, I got a smooth, coating consistency. It does take a long, long time to work in the cold butter into the sauce and it does consume your full attention during that time. Definitely not an absolute last minute kind of thing.

The one thing I'll tweak next time is the tarrogon and lemon. While the sauce came out perfect, the flavor wasn't as intense as the night before. I suspect it had something to do with properly reducing the lemon juice. It was still really good, though.

I served it with the left over poached chicken from the night before and some gemelli tossed with white wine and olive oil. The pasta was my first planned use of that "sauce" from the fingerling potatoes and it worked just as I expected.

It was a very light beige plate, though.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hal,
This blog is amazing! Very detailed and fun to read. I love seeing your "trials" as well as your successes. I can't wait to read more, and try some of these fantastic recipies. You could compile a cookbook, if you don't wind up writing one yourself.

Hal Shipman said...

I swear, I'm not paying these women.