French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [73]
To the salmon of the summer months, lacking the exquisite curdy flesh of the early part of the year, sauce verte supplies the interest which might otherwise be lacking, but it need not be confined to fish. An hors-d’œuvre of hard-boiled eggs with this green sauce is just that much grander than an ordinary egg mayonnaise. It never fails to please.
SAUCE MOUTARDE AUX ŒUFS OR SAUCE BRETONNE
EGG, BUTTER AND MUSTARD SAUCE
This is an egg and butter sauce reduced to its greatest possible simplicity. It has no relation to the sauce bretonne of the chefs.
Stir the yolks of 2 eggs in a bowl; add a pinch of salt and pepper and a teaspoon of yellow French mustard; then a few drops of tarragon vinegar; then a heaped teaspoon of fresh herbs finely chopped. These can be chosen according to what dish the sauce is to go with; fennel and parsley for fish; tarragon and chervil for steak; mint for grilled lamb cutlets, and so on. Have ready 2 oz. of unsalted butter just barely melted over hot water, and not at all hot. Add this gradually to the eggs and stop stirring as soon as it has reached the consistency of a mayonnaise.
Sometimes, if the sauce is made in advance, it goes grainy as the butter coagulates. The remedy is to stand the bowl inside another containing a little hot water; stir until the sauce is smooth again.
This, although so little known, is an immensely useful sauce for those with little time to spare, for it can take the place of hollandaise or béarnaise to serve with steak, fish, grilled chicken and so on, and for those who cannot eat olive oil it can even do duty instead of mayonnaise. It has not, however, the body which these sauces have, so it should always be served separately in a sauce-boat, not used as a coating sauce.
SAUCE SOUBISE
ONION SAUCE
One of the nicest of the old-fashioned sauces, seldom met with nowadays. It can be made in two ways, with stock or with milk. The first method makes the better sauce, if you have some veal and beef bouillon available.
Slice lb. onions, weighed when peeled, very thin. Soften them in 1 oz. of butter, letting them just turn pale yellow. This takes about 7 minutes. Stir in one dessertspoon of sieved flour; add a seasoning of salt, pepper and nutmeg, then just over pint of warmed, clear stock or milk. Simmer gently for 15 minutes. Sieve. If the resulting purée is too thick, thin it with a few drops of the stock. If too thin, let it simmer again until it has reduced.
Serve hot as a background to poached or fried eggs and fried bread, or with roast pork, chicken or mutton.
Sauce Robert is made in much the same manner, with the addition of a fairly strong seasoning of French mustard stirred in while the sauce is being heated up for serving.
SAUCE TOMATE OR COULIS DE TOMATES
FRESH TOMATO SAUCE (1)
Although it is so well known, I find that many amateur cooks are uncertain about how to make a good tomato sauce from the fresh fruit. It is very useful and very easy but, all the same, demands a certain care in the seasoning, and judgment as to the length of the cooking time. Here it is, in its simplest form, without stock, wine, thickening or meat.
Ingredients are 1 small onion, 1 to 1 lb. of very ripe tomatoes, oz. of butter, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, a lump of sugar, a teaspoon of chopped celery leaves or parsley, a clove of garlic, a couple of fresh or dried basil leaves if available.
Melt the butter and olive oil in a shallow wide pan and in this cook the finely sliced onion very gently until it turns yellow. Add the chopped tomatoes and all the other