Apologies for another hugely delayed entry - a combination of New Year, flu, and a weekend cooking job. Here, therefore, is the post which you should have had round about New Year's Day...my contribution to our big bash at home: Hollandaise (and Bearnaise) Sauce.
Hollandaise Sauce
Hollandaise sauce is probably one of the most offputting of challenges for the amateur cook. It can curdle at the drop of a hat, and if you're anything like me your hand gets hideously tired holding that bowl over a pan of simmering water. Annoyingly, as well as being the most difficult, Hollandaise, along with its close cousin Bearnaise, is one of the most delicious of sauces. The former is wonderful with fish or vegetables, most famously asparagus; the latter is, to my mind, almost indispensible with a good steak and chips.
Down to recipes, then. The classic hollandaise method is the one most at risk of splitting; Delia Smith's Foaming Hollandaise is a much less risky option; I use another recipe altogether. Mine is totally reliable, and originates from one by a friend of my mother's who runs cookery demonstrations: find her here. It's even more of a cheat than Delia's, since it uses creme fraiche, which has nothing whatsoever to do with a traditional hollandaise, as its main ingredient. It might not stand up in a direct 'sauce-to-sauce' comparison, but it tastes very, very similar to the classic version and is just as delectable with the same basic food groups.
Hollandaise is one of my absolute favourite things to eat, and in the hope that you'll end up as obsessed with it as I am, I'm going to treat you to a little info about the traditional method of making it before I let you in on my secret cheat's recipe.
Hollandaise sauce is an emulsion, like mayonnaise, only warm rather than cold. Most traditionally, this emulsion is formed by whisking egg yolk and acid such as vinegar or lemon juice over a low heat - use a saucepan of water, hot, but not even close to boiling, and put the egg etc in a bowl over this. You need to hold the bowl up rather than resting it on the pan, as you don't want the heat too strong. When the egg mixture is pale and creamy, you start to add butter - either melted butter, which you add very slowly on the heat, whisking constantly; or cubes of cold butter, which you add one at a time off the heat, again whisking constantly. In the latter method, acid is omitted from the recipe until the emulsion has formed, when lemon juice is added to taste.
These methods are for some reason usually considered the superior ones, particularly in professional kitchens: probably because they're more longstanding and traditional, and call for a steady nerve and some skill in the kitchen. They are both do-able, don't get me wrong, but there are several downsides, especially for the nervous or inexperienced cook. Your hands will get tired from whisking and holding up the bowl, which, incidentally, will get a bit hot, more and more greasy from your buttery fingers, and therefore harder and harder to hold. You'll panic because the butter isn't combining properly. You'll over- or under-heat the mixture, both of which are bad - too hot, and the egg will curdle; too cool, and the butter won't melt and emulsify. And at the end of it all, the ghastly thing will curdle anyway and you'll have to run around whisking frantically and adding dashes of cold water (this does save it though, by the way). All in all, it's classic French-style cookery at its best...and it's a bit of a faff.
Slightly more friendly is the blender method, wherein the eggs are blended with acid rather than heated and whisked, and the melted butter is then poured in in a stream as you blend. It can still curdle, but it's less likely as you're not operating over direct heat. Like classic Hollandaise, that made by the blender method can be kept warm for a few hours in a thermos, or on the very edge of the aga if you have one. Delia Smith's Foaming Hollandaise - there's a link above to the recipe - is another method close to the original, but suggests whisking in stiff egg whites to stabilise the normally volatile sauce. She claims that it can then be made the day before, or even frozen and re-heated. However, I've generally found that even my cheat's Hollandaise is not at its best when cooled and re-heated, and with the ordinary sauce you run all the risks of curdling and so forth all over again.
Recipe (The Cheat's Hollandaise)
So that, in what is admittedly a fairly large nutshell, is your traditional Hollandaise. Now for a grand finale, I'll take you through the very reliable cheat's method I used on New Year's Eve (we served it with some amazing rare beef fillet, by the way) and a couple of ways to play around with your new favourite sauce.
Ingredients:
(for 4)
A medium tub of creme fraiche (Tesco finest size, not normal Tesco size!) About 3 tbsp
Tbsp cornflour
2 egg yolks
Small splash of white wine vinegar
Even smaller splash (maybe two squeezes) of lemon juice
Pinch of salt
85g soft (but not melted) butter
Method:
Now you'll understand why this is great. So. Stick all your ingredients into a small saucepan and whisk together over a medium heat. Keep whisking until it begins to simmer, but don't let it boil. It will eventually thicken.
Once it thickens, take it off the heat and check the seasoning. Add more salt, lemon, vinegar if necessary. Incidentally, when increasing the quantities for this recipe careful with the vingear and lemon - you don't need quite the same ratio for more sauce, and I've added too much before. The sauce should taste creamy with a hint of a tang, but not like straight vinegar! Remember when you first add these flavourings that you can always add more at this second stage.
Now, while it's still off the heat, whisk in the butter. Yes, all of it at once. No, it won't go wrong. Done it? That's it. Job done.
Here are some fun ways to use your Hollandaise:
Pour it over grilled or steamed asparagus
Eat it with steamed baby carrots
Eat with any white or mild fish
Dip in some salty french fries (my personal favourite)
Eat with rare beef fillet
And a couple of more complicated ones:
Make Bearnaise sauce:
Use tarragon vinegar instead of white wine in the above recipe. If you don't have any, get some fresh tarragon and simmer gently it in some white wine vinegar to infuse. Stir in some chopped tarragon and/or chervil to the finished sauce. (NB: traditional Bearnaise also uses finely chopped and sweated shallots in the base before adding the butter, or even infuses these with the herbs and vinegar and then discards before adding the vinegar to the sauce. I think my version tastes wicked, and that omitting the shallots, while probably an insult to a purist, need not concern the everyday cook too urgently). Eat your Bearnaise with steak and chips or similar.
Make Eggs Benedict, Eggs Florentine, or Eggs Benedict Royale:
Eggs Benedict is a delicious and filling breakfast. Take half an English muffin, toast it, and set it on a plate and top with some slices of ham (fantastic use of your final shreds of the Christmas one, by the way), a poached egg (drop the egg, without shell, into swirling hot (but not boiling water) and cook. Or use one of those little poaching gadget jobbies), and a dollop of hollandaise on top. Utterly, utterly divine. I promise you, Eggs Benedict is God's answer to mornings.
Eggs Florentine is the same, but with spinach instead of ham - not my thing, but an excellent vegetarian alternative. Eggs Benedict Royale uses smoked salmon instead of the ham; a more luxurious version, great for those who like fish for breakfast (again, not me, but each to their own). Possibly more suited to a light lunch.
Finally:
Hollandaise is the basis, or 'mother sauce' for a variety of French 'daughter' sauces - there's Bearnaise, as described above, but you can also create a multitude of alternatives by adding different flavourings and seaasonings to the very basic 'acid, butter, egg' combination. Famous versions include Dijon sauce, or Sauce Moutarde, which adds a couple of tablespoons of dijon mustard to the basic recipe, and sauce noisette, which uses clarified and browned (but not burned!) butter in place of the fresh butter of the original. As far as I know, most of these variations should be just as possible with the more stable recipe above as with the classic sauce.
So there you are, Hollandaise explained. I really and truly am in love with this sauce, and I hope that after you've mastered your fears with the cheat's version, and maybe even had a go at the classic one if you're feeling brave (it can work, I promise; chefs wouldn't use it if it didn't) you will love it too.
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