# The Bastard Sauce



## PhilinYuma (Feb 21, 2010)

For Orthodox Asparagus Eaters, the asparagus season begins on St George's Day and ends on Midsummer's Day, but for me, the season begins when the price drops to $1.50/pound and ends when it goes back up again. Two days ago I bought my first pound of the season for exactly $1.50.

There are lots of ways of cooking the stuff, pan fried, deep fried, gratined, stir fried; you can even put it in a pie, but the classic way is boiled and served with hollandaise sauce, and there's the problem, two problems, in fact. Making this sauce is fraught with peril and requires some kind of bain marie, and once made, you'd better eat it all, because it doesn't keep. For these reasons, and because I am lazy, I haven't made this sauce in over ten years, but recently, by accident, I came across a sauce called "sauce batarde" which is French for "bastard hollandaise" and which we, more politely, can call "mock hollandaise." It is much less fragile than the real thing, can be made without a double boiler and will last for several days. My only question was whether it tasted anything like the original. Here's the recipe:

To make about 11/2 cups of sauce.

Ingredients:

1 egg yolk.

1/2 Tbs cold water or cream (use the cream!)

11/2 Tbs flour

1 cup warm, lightly salted water

1/2 Tbs fresh lemon juice (though you could use it out of one of the plastic thingies).

8Tbs butter (Yum!) divided. 2Tbs sliced and 4 Tbs cut into small cubes and kept refrigerated.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Method:

Beat an egg yolk with the Tbs of cream or water and set aside. (I am a little [?!] clumsy and find it easier to separate a chilled yolk from the white and then let the mixture warm up to room temp).

Melt the 2ozs sliced butter in a heavy saucepan (I use an enameled cast iron one; a metal whisk will damage a teflon layer) and heat gently until it bubbles. This is not the basis for a white sauce, so don't expect all of the butter to be incorporated in the flour. You also need a lower temperature than if working with a white sauce.

Remove from the heat and let the mixture cool for a few minutes, then whisk in the egg mixture. The important thing here is that you are not adding a small amount of egg mix to a large amount of a very hot liquid, like scalded milk, so if you are careful to whisk the mixture as you pour in the egg, there is no need to "temper" the liquid and you won't end up with scrambled egg.

Return the mixture to low heat and warm until it thickens, then remove the pan and add the lemon juice. Then _slowly_ stir in the cubed butter by handfulls, whisking constantly.

Although the recipe assumes that you will be able to amalgamate all of the butter in this way, I have found it necessary to replace the pan on very low heat to help the butter melt. Alternatively, you could use an equivalent amount of clarified butter.

And there you have it. A good robust sauce, with no hint of the flour base, very similar to "real" Hollandaise, easily made, and amenable to refrigeration for a few days. It goes well, not just with asparagus, but with fish, like poached salmon, chicken and a variety of vegetables, such as leeks and most famously, with eggs benedict. And of course, you can use it to make the usual "daughter" sauces like bearnaise, choron, maltaise and mousseline.

Before you rush off to make this, be warned. I looked this recipe up on Google, because Google is my friend, and was appalled at the insulting slop that many "cooks" were offering as this sauce. One used premade Mayo, another offered a "low cholesterol" version, and athird thought

that she was supposed to base it on a white sauce. Be assured; there are no more "shortcuts" and the sauce will not attain its glory without lethal ammounts of cholesterol. Stick with Phil's Phamous Phood Phorum, and you won't go wrong.  

If anyone actually makes this, I would be very interested to hear your verdict.


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## Peter Clausen (Feb 21, 2010)

We had asparagus on the side of salmon and shells and cheese pasta tonight. My wife made salmon in the oven (a new recipe with a milk base) and I did some in tinfoil on the grill (the failsafe). There is a growing movement it seems in marinating and/or cooking fish in milk. Apparently it reduces the fishiness.

My favorite method for asparagus is one my sister employs. I believe the term is braised...with, I think, garlic salt and she puts this black and white sesame seed mix on them. Mighty tasty! (and I do love to eat). But tonight we microwaved it and with garlic salt and even the kids love it (I didn't as a kid, though I could tolerate it okay).

I love hollandaise sauce and made a first attempt at home-making it a couple months ago, for eggs Benedict. It came out decently, I think, though my eggs were less than perfect as I actually followed the recipe for poaching(?) them in boiling water. Visual appeal aside, the overall taste wasn't bad for a first attempt.

Since it has been a couple months, and as I read your recipe, I find myself wondering what makes this diff. than hollandaise sauce? Was there worcestershire in hollandaise...wine?

Okay, Roxanne's about to serve the Mississippi Mud Pie! Catch ya later...

Peter


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## PhilinYuma (Feb 22, 2010)

How cool! I didn't mention microwaving, but if you arrange the stalks like the spokes of a wheel on plate, the microwave produces a great effect, as you now know.

With regard to poaching fish in milk, when I was "sick" (dodging school) as a kid, my mother would poach fish in milk for me. When I got to like it, my sick days increased slightly. Simmer in seasoned milk for 10 minutes per inch of thickness. You can also use condensed milk.

Poaching eggs. Do not boil the water, bring it to a simmer and add white vinegar, not salt. The trick is to lower the egg into the simmering water, not drop it like a bomb. I do this by cracking the egg with both thumbs just above the water, but you can break it into a small cup or saucer and just tip it into the water. Don't let the egg stick to the bottom of the pan and be merciless with any whispy strands of protein, blending them back into the egg. A large egg bought in a US supermarket (i.e. a very old egg) will poach in about three minutes. Here, we tend to eat them hot, but if you wish to have them chilled, transfer with a slotted spoon to iced water. In any case, you should remove the egg from the hot water as soon as it is cooked. Generally, the cooking and presentation of poached eggs in American restaurants is uniformly bad (I have even had steamed eggs masqurerading as the real thing). Come to think of it, though, there is no law against making your eggs in a steamer. They come out very uniformly shaped that way.

The difference between the "bastard" sauce that I described and real Hollandaise is less one of ingredients than in "la technique". Holandaise does not rely on flour as a thickening agent as the white sauces do, rather, it is an emulsion of egg yolks and butter that differs from mayonaise in being a hot, rather than a cold sauce. The emulsiion will break down if the mixture boils, hence the bain marie. A lot of folks will use a double boiler, but I like the greater control of a rounded container for the sauce that facilitates beating. Once the egg/water mix is well beaten,(a few minutes) it is thickened with the butter, stirred/whipped over heat as before. Lastly, lemon juice is added, whipped in and the pan removed from the heat. I am usually cautious with the lemon juice. Increase the amount until it tastes right. Overly sharp hollandaise is all too common, and the lemon is easy to add but impossible to remove. I hope that helps!


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## hibiscusmile (Feb 22, 2010)

Never had it Phil... is that good or not, I don't know. But my ex when my mom would make it used to get nervouse cause she would look at him and tell him to "eat it up boy" haha, mom was country from bama and lots of good cooking there, and his legs would jump up and down and say : haha, this maakes me laugh just thinking about it! " it taste like snots" haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


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