Bearnaise Sauce - Nigel Slater

No visitors. No dinner parties. No daughter! Just me and A. I really didn't feel like doing much for dinner but I am on a mission after all.  I settled on steak (easy and tasty) and decided to make bearnaise sauce.

I love bearnaise sauce.  In fact I probably miss the taste of a good steak as I eat so much of the stuff.  I always stock up on jars of bearnaise from France.  I have tried budget brands and more expensive brands and I love 'em all!

I have always avoided making bearnaise sauce as it has such a potential to go wrong.

I picked the first recipe I found in my search - from Nigel Slater's 'Real Cooking'.  So much butter!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway one of the points of this blog is not just cooking from my endless recipe books, but also following the recipe properly in terms of ingredients and instructions - and this I definitely did for bearnaise sauce.

Did I say - so much butter?????!!!!!

I read, re-read and read again the instructions and pleased to say that the sauce did not curdle, did not cook and thickened nicely.  I used a very small whisk thinking that would be more effective for a shallow sauce but eventually swapped it for a normal size balloon whisk which did speed things up.

        

  

Comments:

- prepare all the ingredients and utensils

- read the instructions properly as you have to be careful

- the recipe was for two, but we had half left over - and I ate loads

- A loved it but I'm not sure.  I didn't think the tarragon flavour was strong enough.  It tasted stronger the next day when we had the rest on poached eggs.

Birthday Meal - Steak & Oyster Pie

It was my partner A's birthday last week.  He requested a pie.  This request became my first weekly recipe.  I looked at 'England's Finest Heritage Food and Cooking.  My criteria was:
1.  Puff pastry (personal preference)
2. Not chicken (I don't like how it re-heats)

Anyway, found the recipe very quickly and didn't look at any more books.  I planned to make the pie filling the night before, so all I would need to do was top it with the (ready made) pastry the following day.  This is even mentioned in the recipe.  This decision raised the question... shall I add the oysters the night before as well - I don't consider giving food poisoning an appropriate birthday present!!??  I even asked the fishmonger who said it would be OK but A was unhappy.  We reached a compromise - A shucked the oysters the following morning leaving them in a sealed tub.  I added them in the evening when I was making up the pie itself.

Making the pie filling was no real problem.  Much like making a stew.  I really wanted to add chopped bacon as I find it adds to this sort of food but resisted as 'it was not in the recipe'.  I used Old Speckled Hen ale for no other reason than we had it in the house, out of date but I thought it tasted OK.  Obviously not as worried about food poisoning when it comes to alcohol!!!!!. 

It was all very straight forward. My main comments are:
- I did not reduce the sauce to the quantity stated in the recipe.  It looked like there was the right amount already and I was hoping there would be enough to make into gravy.
- I do not own a large pie dish so made two smaller pies from same packet of puff pastry (which used more than if making one large pie).
- After cooking the pie itself, I would have liked the sauce thicker so would add flour / cornflour next time.  But that might just be a personal preference.
- Interestingly the oysters stayed very plump and soft despite being cooked for an hour in the pie (from cold).
- I liked it cooked in ale.  You could add red wine which I have added to stews in the past.  I found the addition of ale did not overwhelm the taste the way red wine can.
- The recipe was for six and there were five of us.  There were left-overs, which were happily eaten by A over the following two days.