Beurre Blanc - New Quarantine Sauce Series!

We are on week seven of this pandemic and it's safe to say none of us could have predicted this. Ever. I've been blessed to be able to work from home and putting in long days (yay for being busy)...Fenway is basically part of the FaithBridge Foster Care team now, participating in every video call in varying stages of alertness and sleep. HA!

Fenway living her best life 

as my quarantine office mate.

In an effort to keep my creative juices flowing during this quarantine AND for me to make better use of some of the things I learned at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts 17 years ago (!!) we will go through all of the classic French mother sauces and then some.

Sauces are known as the "fond de cuisine" or the foundation of cuisine. We had to learn, make, and memorize the five "mother sauces" among a bunch of other classic French techniques and recipes. The concept is if you know these five sauces, the possibilities and variations are endless.

This was all inspired by my husband...more on that later.

I present the five mother sauces (in no particular order): 

• Béchamel - this common white sauce (butter, flour, whole milk) often becomes cheese sauce in my home.
• Veloute - is a base sauce made with butter, flour and white stock (chicken or fish).
• Espagnole - a brown sauce made with a browned roux (butter/flour), beef or veal stock, tomato puree, and mirepoix (carrot/onion/celery).
• Hollandaise - butter, lemon juice and egg yolks (what could be better?). Mayonnaise is the cold counterpart to Hollandaise...Side note: mayo grosses me out and I had to make it more times than I'd like to remember, by hand in school. When I lived in New England, a few times every summer I'd go to the Lobster Pool in Pigeon Cove (Gloucester) and have a cup of clam chowder and a lobster roll with just a hint of mayo. That's about where it begins and ends for me but man what I'd do for a good lobster roll right now! 
• Crème Anglaise - a delicious dessert sauce made with egg yolks, milk, vanilla and sugar

During this series we will explore all of the mother sauces. But I'm starting with one that is not on that list. It's a classic French sauce for which you probably have all of the ingredients on hand.

Beurre Blanc

This simple sauce is a rich, buttery sauce that has a beautiful balance of acid and cream. It is a great addition to anything from asparagus to fish and chicken. The literal translation is "White Butter" and that is fitting.

Ingredients:
2 TBS finely chopped shallots
1 cup dry white wine (for fun you can make a Beurre Rouge with red wine). Please do not use "cooking wine" - if you can't drink a sip of it without making a face, you won't enjoy it when it's reduced down with intensified flavor.

Shallots in a
white wine jacuzzi.

12 TBS butter - cut into 12 pieces, room temp
3 TBS heavy cream
Salt and pepper for seasoning (traditionally, white sauces require white pepper but I kind of like the specks of color pepper adds. You aren't getting graded on it so use what you have.)

Step 1: Put the shallots and wine in a sauce pan (a saucier if you have one) and bring to a boil and reduce until there is just enough liquid in the pan to keep the shallots wet.

Reduced white 

wine and shallots

Once it is where you want it - remove from the heat, turn the burner down to very low, and let the reduction cool a little.

Step 1 B: here is where you can add different flavors or just go straight to step 2 for a traditional sauce. You can add anything: fresh herbs, chipotle, sun dried tomatoes or lemon and capers...be creative and have fun with it.  

Step 2: Put back on the burner (low low heat) and whisk in the butter - a few chunks at a time. As each batch of butter melts in, add more. It will start to become a thick buttery sauce. Once all 12 tablespoons are blended in, whisk the heavy cream in.

Whisking the butter in.

Step 3: Now it's time to season. Taste the sauce first, then add salt and some pepper, taste, season, taste etc. until it has a rich savory flavor that you like. The end result should be a rich sauce with a buttery, nutty roasty flavor from the reduced wine and shallots. You can also add herbs here - thyme, tarragon, rosemary...whatever you like! Some people add a squeeze of lemon but I think the reduced wine adds enough acid and brightness.

I mentioned that my husband inspired this... well, while we've been quarantined we've been getting creative with some of the staples/ingredients we have and tonight's dinner was my husband's brain child. He knew we had some ravioli (we really love Rana Mozzarella Cheese Ravioli) and some baby portabella mushrooms and he thought a white wine/butter sauce of some sort would pull these ingredients together well. After we discussed it - and I said I would make a beurre blanc, this was born. The meal was delicious. And my brain took it a step further to blog/start a sauce series. Next up: the Béchamel!

The finished product: Ravioli with Sauteed
Baby Bella Mushrooms and Beurre Blanc