How to Eat (4 page)

By habit and maternal instruction, I always used to use an ordinary whisk. This takes a long time (and I can see why my mother used us, her children, as
commis
chefs). Now I use my KitchenAid mixer with the wire whip in place. You can equally well use one of those hand-held beaters, which are cheap and useful. Please, whatever you do, don’t use a food processor; if you do, your finished product tastes just like the gluey bought stuff. And then, hell, you might as well just go out and buy it.

2 egg yolks (but wait to separate the eggs, and see below)

pinch salt

1 cup peanut or sunflower oil

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

juice of ½ lemon or more, to taste

salt and freshly milled white pepper

Put the eggs, in their shells, in a large bowl. Fill the bowl with warm water from the tap and leave for 10 minutes. (This brings eggs and bowl comfortably to room temperature, which will help stop the eggs from curdling, but is optional, as long as you remember to take the eggs out of the fridge well before you need them.) Then remove the eggs, get rid of the water, and dry the bowl thoroughly. Wet and then wring out a kitchen towel and set the bowl on it; this stops it slipping and jumping about on the work surface.

Separate the eggs. Put aside the whites and freeze them for another use (see
page 17
), and let the yolks plop into the dried bowl. Start whisking the yolks with the salt. After a few minutes, very, very gradually and drop by mean drop, add the peanut oil. You must not rush this. It’s easier to let the oil seep in gradually if you pour from a height, holding the measuring cup (or bottle with a spout, if you’re not actually using measured quantities) well above the bowl. Keep going until you see a thick mayonnaise form, about 2–3 tablespoons’ worth; then you can relax and let the oil drip in small glugs. When both oils have been incorporated (first the peanut, then the olive oil) and you have a thick, smooth, firm mayonnaise, add the lemon juice, whisking all the time. Taste to see if you need to add more. Add salt and pepper as you like; my mother used white pepper, so she didn’t end up with black specks, and so, generally, do I.

SAUCE VERT

If you want a sharper, more vinegary taste, you can add ½–1 teaspoon Dijon mustard to the egg yolks in the beginning. A touch of mustard is fabulous in a sauce verte, or green mayonnaise, which is made by adding 2 tablespoons or so of chopped herbs—sorrel, tarragon, parsley, whatever—and, classically, a handful of spinach, blanched (dunked for a few seconds in boiling water), superefficiently drained, then minutely chopped into the mayonnaise at the end. Otherwise, a little watercress or arugula, chopped with the unblanched herbs, in place of the spinach, is fine. And if you’re in the mood, you can add some chopped capers and gherkins (about 2 teaspoons of each) as well. In other words, treat this as what it is in Italian—salsa verde (page 181)—only hanging in an egg and oil emulsion rather than just bound in the oil; you can stir in some minced anchovy if you like too.

EGGS WITH MAYONNAISE

I love sauce verte, especially with cold pork, but I have to say that every time I eat real mayonnaise, in its bleached-yolk yellow and unmodified state, I am freshly surprised how good it is. And eggs with mayonnaise—hard-boiled eggs, sliced and masked with light mayonnaise, with or without a criss-crossing of anchovies on top—has to be one of the most fashionably underrated of dishes.

HOLLANDAISE

Hollandaise is really a kind of hot mayonnaise. As children, we all took turns standing on the chair, pushed up against the stove, to stir the butter we’d conscientiously cut into cubes before starting into the swell of eggs in the pudding basin, suspended above a saucepan of boiling water. But you needn’t worry about equipment; a double boiler is all you need. I’m glad, however, for my early training in making hollandaise (and béarnaise, see below) because it preempted any fear about how difficult saucemaking might be. Even my brother, who scarcely cooks anything other than pasta, can make hollandaise.

It’s true, we didn’t make it according to the classical canon. Most French textbooks instruct you to make a fierce reduction to whisk into the yolks at the beginning. I think—and, as my pared-down attitude is one also sanctioned by Carême, there’s no need to apologize for it—that a simple, gentler hollandaise, just eggs and butter emulsified and spruced with lemon juice, is best. If you want to try the ur-recipe, then boil down 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar, 1 of water, a good grating of fresh pepper, and the smallest pinch of salt until the liquid is reduced to about 1 tablespoon, then whisk that into the yolks at the very beginning, before you get on to adding any of the butter.

3 egg yolks

16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, soft, cut into ½-inch cubes

juice of ½–1 lemon

salt and freshly milled white or black pepper

Put the yolks in the top of a double boiler. Fill the bottom with cold water, which should not touch the top pan when it is inserted. Fit the pans together, put on high heat, and whisk the yolks while the water comes to the boil. When it does, reduce to a steady simmer and start whisking in the cubes of butter. As one piece of butter is absorbed, whisk in the next and, by the time they have all been added, you should have a bowlful of thick sauce. If you feel it’s reached that stage before you’ve finished all the butter, don’t worry—just stop. And throw in extra if you feel it could take it. Still whisking, squeeze in the juice of half a lemon—I love watching the yolk-yellow goo suddenly lighten—and add the salt, pepper (grinding in white pepper, if you’ve got it), and more lemon juice to taste.

When the sauce is ready, you can fill a saucepan with tepid water and suspend the top of the double boiler over that (this time with the base of the top submerged) to keep it warm for about 20 minutes, but beat it firmly again before serving. If the sauce looks as if it might curdle while you are making it, you can quickly whisk in an ice cube (to bring the temperature down) or stand the top of the double boiler in a saucepan of cold water and whisk well.

Hollandaise is not an essential accompaniment for asparagus, but a pretty divine one. I love it, too, made with saffron threads—a large pinch or ¼ teaspoon, however you prefer to measure it—softened in and added with the lemon juice.

SAUCE MALTAISE

You should know that sauce maltaise is a hollandaise with blood-orange juice. I don’t go for it; I prefer, if I want that particular realm of flavor, to substitute Seville orange juice for the lemon juice. This means (if you don’t freeze your Seville oranges) you can make it only in January or February (see Foods in Season,
page 42
). As a once-a-year accompaniment to plain, baked, or grilled white fish and broccoli, it might be a treat, but proceed—as with all deviations from the classical—with caution.

BÉARNAISE

for Dominic

I grew up believing, erroneously, that sauce béarnaise was just a hollandaise with chopped tarragon in it. Up to a point, it is. And if you want to make a quick almost-béarnaise, use my mother’s method, which is to say follow the recipe for hollandaise above, adding 1 teaspoon dried tarragon to the egg yolks and then stirring in some freshly chopped tarragon at the end. Use a little lemon only, and lots of pepper. Be careful: too much tarragon can evoke that manure-underfoot, farmhouse scent, although I don’t know why. When I was a child and dried herbs weren’t considered as ignominious as they are today, we made béarnaise without any fresh tarragon, though with a drip of tarragon vinegar along with the squeeze of lemon juice. Unless you are trying to create the great classic in its purest form, be kind to yourself. If you can’t get chervil, be assured that the sauce will still taste fabulous with just tarragon. Equally, you can use 4 tablespoons of vinegar and omit the wine.

This is my desert island sauce; there’s little better in the world to eat than steak béarnaise. (It’s also very good with salmon.) If you substitute mint for the tarragon, you have a sauce that goes very well with lamb, especially steaks cut off the leg and plain grilled.

1 tablespoon minced shallots

2 tablespoons fresh tarragon leaves, chopped, and their stalks, chopped roughly and bruised

1 tablespoon chopped chervil (optional)

2 tablespoons wine or tarragon vinegar

2 tablespoons white wine

1 teaspoon peppercorns (preferably white), crushed or bruised

3 egg yolks

1 tablespoon water

16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, soft, cut into ½-inch dice

salt and freshly milled white or black pepper

juice of ¼–½ lemon

Put the shallot, tarragon stalks, 1 tablespoon of the chopped tarragon, and the chervil, if using, and the vinegar, wine, and peppercorns in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and boil until reduced to about 1 tablespoon. Don’t move from the stove; this doesn’t take long.

Press the reduced liquid through a regular or tea strainer and leave to cool. Put egg yolks and water in the top of a double boiler. Set over the bottom, in which water has come to a simmer. Add the reduced and strained liquid and whisk well. Keep whisking as you add the butter, cube by cube, until it is all absorbed. Taste, season as you wish with the salt and pepper, and add lemon juice as you wish. Treat it as the hollandaise to keep it warm and avert curdling. Stir in the remaining tablespoon of fresh chopped tarragon as you’re about to serve it.

SEPARATING EGGS

For each of the three sauces above, you need to separate the egg yolks from the albumen. Everyone always tells you that the best way to do this is by cracking open the egg and, using the broken half-shells to cup the yolk, passing it from one to the other and back again until all the white has dropped in the bowl or cup you’ve placed beneath and the perfect, naked round of yolk remains in the shell. I don’t think so. All you need is for a little sharp bit of the cracked-open shell to pierce the yolk and the deal’s off. It is easier and less fussy altogether just to crack the egg over a bowl and slip the insides from their shell into the palm of your hand near the bottoms of your fingers. Then splay your fingers a fraction. The egg white will run out and drip through the cracks between your fingers into the bowl, and the yolk will remain in the palm of your hand ready to be slipped into a different bowl.

I cannot bring myself to throw away the whites. Occasionally, when things threaten to get seriously out of hand, I just separate the eggs over the sink, not even giving myself the agony of choice. But otherwise I freeze the rejected whites, either singly or in multiples, marking clearly how many are in each freezer bag. Just in case you forget to label them or the bag’s gone wrinkly and you can’t read what’s written on it, you should know that a frozen large egg white weighs about 1½ ounces. From that, you can work out how many you’ve got stashed away in any particular unmarked bag just by weighing it.

MERINGUES

The obvious thing to make with egg white is meringue. For each egg white you need 1⁄3 cup sugar; the whites should be at room temperature before you start. I use superfine sugar, but you can substitute soft brown sugar to make beautiful ivory-colored, almost toffee-ish meringues, golden caster sugar (see
page 460
) if you want the ivory color but not such a pronounced taste, or maple sugar for the most fabulous, smoky, gleaming, elegant meringue of all time, the color of expensive oyster-satin underwear. The brown or maple sugar variants are worth bearing in mind to go with ice cream or fruit compotes of any sort or just with coffee after dinner. I wouldn’t necessarily sandwich the meringues together with whipped cream, but a bowl of raspberries, another of thick cream, and a plate of sugary, creamy, soft-centered, buff-colored meringues is easy to get together and pretty damn fabulous—children’s tea-party food with an edge.

To make about 40 meringues about 1 inch in diameter, or 20 about 2 inches, you need:

2 egg whites

2/3 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to a very low heat: 275°F. Whisk the egg whites until stiff. For this, I always use my free-standing mixer with the wire whip attached, but a hand-held electric beater or whisk will do. When you lift the beaters or whisk out of the mixture and firm peaks retain their shape, it’s stiff enough. Gradually whisk in half the sugar. The meringue will take on a wonderful satiny gleam. Then fold in the remaining sugar with a metal spoon.

Line 1 or 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or, better still, a fabulous creation called, just as fabulously, Cook-Eze. This is some sort of nonstick flexible fiberglass sheet that you can reuse more or less indefinitely (until you lose it, in my case) to line cake and roasting pans. Mail-order kitchen equipment places and some baking goods shops stock it (see
page 462
for a source). Another such item is called Silpat.

I am not dextrous, but I enjoy a bit of squeezing through piping bags. It makes me feel brisk and accomplished without having to be either. Remember to fold back the hem end of the piping bag by about half its whole length as you fill it. I stand the piping bags in a straight glass to do this. Once the piping bag is half full of the meringue mixture, you can unfold the bag’s skirt and twist the ends together to put pressure on the meringue within, keeping one hand near the (plain) nozzle. Squeeze out individual meringues to your desired size on the lined sheets. Refill the piping bag and continue until all the mixture is used up. Don’t worry if you haven’t got a piping bag; just use teaspoons, or tablespoons if you’re making the larger size, to deposit and shape them into neat piles, one by one.