January 14, 2010
It's Food Friday!
One of the best Christmas presents that Best Beloved received was a quantity of filets mignons. Which of course, he shares very nicely with me. It is equally fitting that sauce Béarnaise which we make to adorn the filets is acceptable to Atkins Diet thinkers, which is the way we are trying to go here in the second week of the New Year. We are walking every day, eschewing alcohol during the week and embracing Atkins. Thank heavens it is Friday!


Sauce Bérnaise
¼ cup white wine vinegar
¼ cup white wine
2 tablespoons shallots, minced
1 tablespoon fresh tarragon (but I just made it with ten year old dried tarragon and it still tasted great!)
Salt and pepper
2 egg yolks
1 stick of butter
Juice from ½ lemon

Using a small saucepan, bring vinegar, wine, shallots, tarragon salt and pepper to a boil. Reduce the mixture to about 2 tablespoons. Cool. Beat in the egg yolks. Add the butter and whisk, whisk, whisk until the sauce is smooth. Slather with hedonistic abandon over the filets. Be sure to have a nice, hot baked potato and some heady red wine. Charles tries to embrace vegetarianism most of the time, then Camilla whips up a batch of sauce Bérnaise. She insists that a dollop will taste just fine on his steamed organic Duchy asparagus, but he has excellent manners and insists that he wants to eat what we are eating. And he did bring the Stag's Leap Cabernet...

"A Béarnaise sauce is simply an egg yolk, a shallot, a little tarragon vinegar, and butter, but it takes years of practice for the result to be perfect."
Fernand Point

And a very happy birthday to Grace!