Sauce & Fish

Sauceboats - they don't pour, they're not meant to pour. Add a spoon, easy and no drips.  European sauceboats have attached under-plates.  Very sensible.  If you can, have two per table. If you're still hunting around the junk shops, use a bowl with a spoon (rather than a jug). 

​I've long thought that serving fish well, basically boils down to having a lemon and to knowing two sauces - beurre blanc and sauce vièrge (see post 15/12 2018)

There has been a lot of feed back on the Coulibiac (November 2018 post), with promises to make one and send photos!  In that case, you'll need to try a beurre blanc, the perfect sauce to serve along side. This is not a sauce for fat phobics and margarine eaters.  If you think you'd better only have a small serve, perhaps this is not the sauce for you.

This sauce relies on technique and understanding.  Somehow you are making oil and water emulsify.  It's magic. BUT if my kitchen phobic partner can do it, anyone can.  It can be made with red wine - nice with steak - and of course it is then a beurre rouge.

Beurre Blanc (a tidy serve for 6 to 8)
½ cup white wine
1 spring onion or 1 tbsp finely chopped shallots
dash of cream **
250 gm butter
seasoning to taste
lemon juice to taste
 
Use a saucepan with a handle so you can easily lift it on and off the heat to monitor the heating temperature.
Unfortunately the sauce should be made no earlier than 3/4  hour before serving.  Let this be the only last minute thing you have to worry about.
Any left over can be eaten the next day spread on toast.
**Cream doesn't feature in the classic recipe but Gabriel Gaté suggested it to me as added protection against the sauce splitting.

• Cut the butter up into small blocks (size of a walnut?) waiting to go and keep it chilled in refrigerator.
• Have lemon cut in half ready to go.
• Slice the spring onion finely, using the white and half the green part.
• Place wine & onion in a saucepan. Boil until reduced & syrupy. (about 2 tbsp)
• Add cream. Boil again until reduced.
• This can be set aside for a while until you are ready.

 

• Keeping the heat low, (moving saucepan on and off the heat) whisk in a block of the cold butter.
• NOTE: Stab the small block of butter with a fork and use this as the “beating” instrument.
• Continue to amalgamate the butter, block by block with the syrupy wine residue.
• Too cold the butter will not melt, too hot it will just become oily.
• When all the butter is used, add salt and lemon juice to balance the flavour.
• Some choose to sieve out the spring onion.  I leave it in.
• It can be kept at the back of the stove top until ready to serve.  Heat gently if necessary.
• Pour into a warmed sauce-boat (fill with hot water) and serve.

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