Text 5644, 190 rader
Skriven 2008-04-19 07:49:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av DAVE DRUM
Ärende: A Stern warning 170
===========================
 DD> When I first encountered the Sterns it was in the pages of Gourmet
 DD> magazine. And their articles were so uniformly gushingly full of praise
 DD> for the places they had visited I began to think that they never met a
 DD> roadhouse they didn't like.

Just think of all the bad places they had to visit.

  Then one day, it dawned on me - they make a
 DD> big chunk of their living from these articles, and like all writers
 DD> they are basically whores - they write what Ruth (Gourmet's editor -
 DD> Reichel) will buy. And she's not in the business of telling people
 DD> where NOT to eat.  Bv)= 

Indeed. It is a risky and ungrateful thing to write about
places that suck. I used to enjoy Seymour Britchky's writeups
in (I believe) New York magazine, as some of his were just as
mean and rude as a waiter who thinks he's too good to serve you.

 DD> They also have a web forum called Roadfood - in which I participate
 DD> from time to time ... and in which both Sterns are active. 

I think Clean Dave also participates there. I am a member too
(and on Chowhound and a couple others) but never write.

Here's a recipe from one of my favorite food sites -

Bearnaise Advocadoes
Cat: starter, main
Servings: 4 or 1

2 ripe advocadoes
5 eggs
100 gr butter
Fresh chervil, tarragon and parsley
2 shallots
1 bay leaf
White wine vinegar
White wine
1 pn salt
1 ts crushed peppercorns
Kitchen string, plastic foil, a couple pots

This recipe was served as a first course 40 years ago as
Avocats Fermont at Le Chanzy, a restaurant in Arras, France.

I will use this fancy copper bain marie pot to prepare the
béarnaise sauce, but you can use any salad bowl placed on a
pot of boiling water. I've been eyeing this pot for 5 years
now at Mora and Dehillerin in Paris, and managed to snatch
one on Ebay from a French lady who barely used it. It is
made in two parts with the water downstairs and the sauce
upstairs, with a ceramic ring between the two. Unless you
spill some, the food is never in contact with the raw
copper.

Anybody can do a bearnaise sauce by following my recipe.
Béarnaise [bay-ar-nayz] is a member of the hot emulsion
family of sauces, where fat is emulsified using egg yolks on
a low heat. Béarnaise is a cult sauce, everybody's favorite
and always a hit with cardiologists. It is flavored with
tarragon infused in vinegar and then reduced. You can also
use clarified butter instead of regular butter. But, as we
are dieting, we'll use plain butter today.

Start by dicing finely 2 shallots.

Drop them into the pot. Here I am using the bain marie (pot
on a pot of water) also for the reduction, but it would be
quicker and more rational to use a regular casserole and
only use the bain marie when the egg comes into play.

Add the wine and vinegar. Their job is to provide acidity to
balance the butter's heavy blandness.

A bay leaf now.

Finely snip the tarragon and chervil.

Add the herbs with parsley stalks (the part that is usually
discarded when you snip parsley) and a teaspoon of freshly
crushed pepper.

Let the vinegar boil until is reduces to a few tablespoons
of liquid.

Filter out the herbs and discard them. Do not mourn these
herbs, they have served their purpose and given their very
best to the vinegar reduction. They can now rest, content of
having fulfilled their ambition in life.

If needed, let the filtered vinegar, now flavored with
paradisiac herbal fragrance, boil some more until you get
about 2 tablespoons of liquid.

Pour the reduction into the bain marie pot. Make sure
whatever you are using to cook this is not placed directly
over a flame but rather on a pot filled with boiling water,
otherwise your sauce will break as the egg yolk coagulates
and the béarnaise will be on you and your children for 777
generations. With the acidity increase due to the vinegar,
the yolk might not coagulate before you reach 91°C / 195°C.
But when the yolk has coagulated because your pot was just
too hot, then your sauce is lost, kaput, FUBAR and TOFUED,
and you can order some Chinese take-away for your guests. So
please do watch the temperature!

Wait until the vinegar has cooled down a bit, then add the
egg yolks. If the vinegar's temperature exceeds 68°C, it
might coagulate as you drop it in the vinegar. If this
happens to you, just filter the egg out, wait until the
vinegar has cooled down some more, then start again with
another yolk.

Two tablespoons of cold water are added so that we get an
oil-in-water emulsion when we later add the butter.

We will now add, tablespoon by tablespoon, butter at room
temperature, and whisk it into the egg, water and vinegar
mixture. Since they are collectively more numerous than the
little of bit of butter we add, the butter's fat will
emulsify using the egg yolk and make tiny fat droplets
surrounded by water molecules. That is what we want.

As soon as one tablespoon of butter has been fully absorbed
in the sauce and you again have a smooth mixture, now one
shade paler, if not lighter, continue with another
tablespoon of butter. Continue until you run out of butter.
Finish by adding some freshly snipped herbs into the sauce.
Some people will tell you that this sauce is heavy, but as
my Mom always says, 'It is not the béarnaise sauce that
makes people fat, but rather what they eat with the sauce.

Now we will poach the eggs. Most people fear egg poaching
and would never dream of doing this for guests by fear of
ending up with egg white shrapnel soup. Well, from now on
you will be able to poach eggs like a chef with no fear in
your heart. Here is how Philippe Rochat poaches his eggs. It
is burger-flipper-proof.

Take one egg per guest, a very small bowl or glass, kitchen
string and plastic foil. Place a large square of plastic
foil inside the bowl (bottom left), slightly oil the plastic
foil inside the cavity to ensure the egg won't stick. Break
the egg into the bowl.

Carefully remove the plastic paper like a little bag.

Tie it up with a piece of string. Do not worry, the hen
inside the yolk won't get out. Proceed with three more eggs.

You can also add a few tarragon leaves inside the bag with
the egg (look closely above the yolk).

Poach in hot water for 3 minutes or 300 minutes, as you like
your eggs.

Remove, cut the string and open. If you forgot to grease the
plastic with a little oil, some of the egg white might stick
to the sides like it did here. But no big deal, and perfect
poached eggs every time!

Cut your advocadoes in half, then use the blade like I do
above to remove the pits, unless you plan to plant them. I'm
told that if the advocadoes you found are too hard, you
could simmer then in hot water for a few minutes. Frankly, I
have never done this and like my advocadoes so mature that
the grocer often hesitates to charge me. Sincere advocado
gerontophilia, as Gerard Oberle would have it.

A spoonful of bearnaise sauce, then an egg, then more sauce.

That's it. I could eat half a dozen of these, as a
vegetarian first course.

You could serve this with salad, but then it would become a
real calorie bomb. Let's keep reasonable here.

Book tips: For an excellent discussion on bearnaise and many
more detailed, serious explanations on fundamental cooking
techniques, Madeleine Kamman's The New Making of a Cook is a
must and worthy investment for anybody serious about
cooking. For a more scientific angle, Harold McGee's On Food
and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen is the best
available in English.

Source: fxcuisine.com

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