I had
returned to Albertson’s for their $6.97/lb. sale on Rib Steaks on Sunday and
bought 7 more steaks. I also bought another
2 lb. piece of boneless pork sirloin on sale for $1.88/lb., which we used ½ of
to make the Eggplant in Garlic sauce on Monday, October 13, 2014.
Today
Suzette drove to Santa Rosa and I worked and went to court and rode ten miles,
so did not get out to shop and we did not put together a dinner menu until
Suzette arrived home at around 5:30.
I suggested
that we grill a steak and I make Béarnaise sauce. I had bought a bag of sugar snap peas at
Costco on Monday (2lbs./$5.99).
Suzette suggested that we grill two steaks, “So we would have
leftovers.” While I made the Béarnaise
Sauce she seasoned the steaks with sea salt and black pepper and grilled the
steaks and de-stemmed and steamed the sugar snap peas and heated the PPI
roasted acorn squashes in the microwave.
Béarnaise
Sauce
I know the
Julia Child recipe for Béarnaise Sauce by heart; 2 Tbsp. of minced shallot, 1
tsp. of fresh tarragon, boiled in ¼ cup of white wine and ¼ cup of white wine
vinegar with a dash of salt and white pepper rapidly boiled until reduced by
2/3 and then left to cool while 2 egg yolks are whipped and then the wine and
vinegar reduction is poured through a sieve to eliminate the leaves and shallot
into the egg yolks and ½ lb. (16 oz.) of butter is added in 1 tbsp. pieces as
the sauce is slowly heated.
If one heats
the sauce too quickly it will break and you will end up with tasty scrambled
eggs.
Today I
adjusted the recipe in two respects to make it more fail safe. Since I had a bit over 2 Tbsp. of shallot and
over 1 tsp. of tarragon leaves, I used 1/3 cup of vinegar instead of ¼ cup of
vinegar. I also made a slight but
fortuitous slip of my hand when I was adding the white pepper and put in about
¼ tsp. instead of a dash, so I increased the amount of salt slightly, also. The
vinegar is what binds the egg and butter into the sauce, so more vinegar
insures a stronger bond. Secondly, I
used three egg yolks, the egg yolk to butter ratio is important because if you
increase the butter to egg ratio the sauce has a tendency to break. I think the combination of more egg yolk and
more vinegar helps prevent the sauce from breaking in another respect, because
the sauce will thicken and bond together naturally at a lower temperature which
avoids it breaking due to overheating.
These two
additions made a sauce that quickly thickened at a lower temperature. I even added an additional 4 oz. of butter to
see if the sauce would take it and it did, beautifully, quickly developing a
thick texture. As the sauce cooked I
added about ½ tsp. of the boiled tarragon leaves to color and flavor the final
sauce.
Suzette
judged this sauce one of the best. The
additional white pepper and salt gave the sauce more body and punched up the
flavor, if you like that instead of the elegantly smooth classical flavor.
When the
sauce had thickened but not stiff after the addition of all the butter I turned
off the heat and stirred it for another few minutes and then put it in the
freezer for a few minutes to cool it down.
One of the big mistakes folks make is not continuing to stir the sauce
after the heat is turned off in order to reduce the heat in the sauce. Julia Child recommended putting the pan in a
water and ice cube bath to reduce the heat quickly. This is especially important when using heavy
enameled sauce pans, because they build up a lot of heat in the metal and
enamel and without cooling will quickly overcook the sauce if left unstirred.
Suzette did
a great job grilling two steaks. She
grilled them perfectly to medium rare so the inside was pink throughout. The Béarnaise Sauce was thick so it lay on
firmly the slices of meat even though the meat had lots of juiciness. The reason I decided to make a Béarnaise
Sauce is because it tastes great with both steak and a slightly bitter vegetable
like sugar snap peas or asparagus or spinach.
The snap
peas were not overcooked and still had a crunch and the acorn squash was
softened in texture to a lovely tender consistency by its repeated heating in
the microwave.
I felt it
was important to drink a good wine, so I picked a 2010 Slingshot Cabernet
Sauvignon from Napa Valley, which is a favorite. We originally tasted it at a Southern Wine and
Spirits tasting and Suzette offered it on the Greenhouse Bistro’s wine menu for
about a year, but it proved to be too expensive for the restaurant, so she
brought several bottles home (As I recall the introductory bargain price was
around $15.00 wholesale and the regular price was around $20.00, so it did not sell
well at the Greenhouse Bistro in Los Lunas at $45.00 a bottle). This was our last bottle of Slingshot from
the cellar. We loved the wine, big and
smooth; perfectly matched with the delectable fresh steak with its juices still
intact and the thick creamy and vinegary Béarnaise Sauce. The steak had been stored in the fridge for
five days, which is not a lot of aging, but it is some, so it had a slightly
firmer texture.
All of these
small elements made this a memorable meal.
Suzette smacked her lips in amazement at the combination of the perfectly
grilled steak and the astoundingly well- constructed thick and flavorful
Béarnaise sauce. Quite a compliment.
Hats off to
the chefs.
After we
finished dinner I cut a slice of French Country bread and laid slices of
Iberico cheese on it for a cheese course and I enjoyed it with the wine
also.
Later, I
drank a cup of Cardamom tea with milk and sugar and ate several 70% chocolate
truffles (Costco, $7.99? for 25 oz. from Canada) and finished reading W.
Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, this month’s book club
selection.
Bon Appétit
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