Ryan and I did not travel to visit family this Christmas, so we planned a Christmas meal for two. Our menu was far from the traditional Christmas fare, but perfectly festive and decadent: filet mignon with bernaise sauce, carmelized onion and gruyere tarts, roasted asparagus, and chocolate fondant (individual warm chocolate cakes with a gooey center).
I had never made bernaise sauce before and was not at all intimidated by it until I started leafing through two of the cookbooks I got for Christmas. Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook contained the following note about bernaise:
Note: Know this. If you haven’t made béarnaise from scratch before, you will surely fuck this sauce up.
Bourdain went on to say that bernaise, and its cousin hollandaise, can smell your fear and will curdle or separate without fail if you lack confidence. Seriously!?! I didn't lack confidence until you said I was destined to screw it up, but now I sure do.
Next I consulted Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which contained over three pages of instructions, including tips for rescuing your sauce should it fail to thicken, over thicken, curdle or separate. Alternatively, Julia included a recipe for making bernaise in the blender, which she said was so easy that an 8-year-old could do it. Never one to back down from a challenge in the kitchen, I opted to follow the traditional recipe instead of the apparently fool-proof blender recipe. The general idea is to flavor your egg yolks with wine, tarragon and shallot and then emulsify them with butter--get the mixture too hot and you'll curdle the eggs, add the butter too fast and the sauce will separate.
The result: Flawless, delicious bernaise sauce on the first try.
Take that Bourdain!
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