Hollandaise Sauce

How I lived before hollandaise I do not care to remember. Warm, velvety and (most deliciously) buttery, I love it on toasted sourdough with a soft boiled egg, or as my dipping sauce for artichoke.

Martha Stewart Cooking School is a must have for anyone like me, trying to learn how to cook on their own. She teaches you basics in a clear easy to follow way, pointing out how and where in the recipe variations can be made. I actually came across it at the library, and after giving it a test drive decided I had to own it!

Here is the recipe as well as some notes from Martha found in the book.

Recipe from: Martha Stewart's Cooking School

Here, we used a white wine reduction, but you can skip that step and simply whisk eggs with 1 teaspoon lemon juice and 1/4 cup boiling water. As one of the French "mother sauces," its preparation is a basic culinary technique that can be varied to create other sauces in the same family (often referred to as "warm emulsions"). By changing the acidic liquid to blood orange juice and zest, you get sauce Maltaise, typically served over steamed asparagus; tangerine juice and zest flavor Mikado sauce. Perhaps the best-known variation is Béarnaise, a traditional accompaniment for steak. To make it, prepare the hollandaise as directed, adding tarragon (the defining flavor of Béarnaise) to the reduction mixture. As it is designed to demonstrate, the method is the key to making the sauce, not the specific ingredients used to give it flavor.
When making hollandaise or any of it's variations, using gentle heat is critical to achieving the right consistency.

You will need:

- 1/4 cup dry white wine

- 1 T white wine vinegar

- 1 T minced shallot

- 1/2 t cracked black peppercorns

- 3 T boiling water

- 3 large egg yolks

- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into tablespoons

- pinch cayenne pepper

Directions:

Make reduction

Combine wine, vinegar, shallot, and peppercorns in a small skillet over medium-high heat; cook until reduced to one tablespoon, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the boiling water and strain through a fine sieve into a heatproof nonreactive (stainless-steel or glass) bowl.

Prepare hot-water bath

Fill a medium sauce pan with 2 inches of water and bring to a boil, then reduce heat so water is barely simmering.

Heat egg yolks

Add egg yolks to strained reduction and whisk, off the heat, until they become pale. Place bowl over saucepan with simmering water. Whisking constantly, cook until the mixture is thick enough to hold a trail from the whisk and begins to hold it's shape when drizzled from the whisk. Remove from heat. Wipe off any mixture that may have cooked to the side of the pot with a damp paper towel to prevent any lumps from forming.

Incorporate butter

Whisking constantly, add butter 1 tablespoon at a time, whisking until each addition is incorporated completely before adding the next. When all the butter has been added, season with lemon juice, salt, and cayenne. The sauce should be thick but still able to drizzle from a spoon (and it should form a pool, not a mound). If it is too thick, thin it with a little water.

Parmesan Chicken, Puttanesca Tomato Salad, and the Best Garlic Bread Ever (so say Jacob and Grayson)

I know it sounds like a lot, but it is really easy and comes together fast if you plan it right. If you watched food network today then you’ve likely already seen two of the three recipes. The Puttanesca Salad is a Rachael Ray recipe, so you know it’s easy (and is jam-packed with E.V.O.O.), and the garlic bread was on Guy whatever’s show today. The parmesan chicken is an old Ina Garden recipe. If I ever let loose and get totally wasted, I’m doing it with Ina. She looks like a woman who knows how to grip it and rip it.

If you are gonna make all this in one night (like I did) here is the game plan I would suggest:

- Prep the garlic butter for the bread first.
- Next, assemble your tomato salad and store it in the fridge while you finish everything else.
- Pound out your chicken breasts and prep your flour/egg/bread crumb stations. Then get your skillet preheated and ready.
- Slice your bread, and coat with the garlic butter. Line a cookie sheet with tin foil (you will be glad you did come clean up time) and put the buttered bread on it. Preheat the broiler.
- Start breading and cooking your first and second chicken (I had to cook my chicken breasts one at a time because my skillet was too small), put the garlic bread in to cook about the same time you start your last chicken breast on the skillet.


Now for the recipes...


For the Garlic Bread you will need:

- 1 loaf sourdough or French bread, cut in half lengthwise
For the Garlic butter:
- ¾ pound unsalted butter (3 sticks of butter), room temp.
- ½ cup mayonnaise
- Pinch of paprika or cayenne pepper ( I prefer cayenne)
- 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
- 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
- garlic salt (Guy roasted his own garlic which took an hour, I used garlic powder and it was better than fine…to each his own.)
To top:
- ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
- either sun dried tomatoes or roasted tomatoes in olive oil, whichever you prefer. I used the latter because I think sun dried tomatoes are a little to strong/sweet if you know what I mean…
- about 2 tablespoons chopped fresh Basil


For the Garlic butter simply mix all the ingredients together. Top the bread with the butter and then broil until toasted. Slice the toasted bread, and top with the parmesan cheese, tomatoes and basil. You better serve this with something delicious, because this bread will seriously steal the show.

For the Puttanesca Tomato Salad you will need:

- ½ cup E.V.O.O. (Rach, that you so much for that…(sarcasm…))
- 1 jar large capers (drained and patted dry if you plan to fry them, but I don’t think you need to…I tried it and thought that frying took away their flavor.)
- 1 clove garlic grated or finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon anchovy paste (don’t be scared)
- 6 plum tomatoes (I used roma and was fine)
- 1 small red onion, or ½ medium very finely sliced (I used ½ a small onion and it was still a lot)
- ½ cup coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley (I used the same Italian parsley that I used in my garlic butter)
- a handful of pitted good quality black olives (Harmon’s has an olive bar, hopefully you have access to some place with one, like a Wholefoods…canned black olives aren’t gonna cut it this time…)
-salt and black pepper
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes for seasoning

If you want to fry the capers: Heat 1/4 cup oil in small pan over medium-high heat. Add capers but be careful, they will spatter. Fry the capers 1 1/2 to 2 minutes until golden, drain on paper towels.
Then, combine remaining 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil with garlic and anchovy paste. Add tomatoes, onion, parsley and olives. Season with red pepper flakes and salt and pepper. Garnish with capers and serve. This recipe has a lot of what I like to call ‘adult’ flavors. It is strong, but really good served on top of the parmesan chicken, so give it a try!

Thank you Harmon's, and your plentiful olive bar...

For the Parmesan Chicken you will need:

- 3 chicken breasts, pounded until they are ¼ inch thick
- 1 cup all purpose flour
-1 teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
- 2 large eggs, beaten with a tablespoon of water added
- about 1 and ¼ cups seasoned dry bread crumbs
- ½ cup freshly grated parmesan, plus extra for serving
- unsalted butter
- olive oil (Ina Garden is way too cool to say E.V.O.O.)
Combine the flour, salt, and pepper on a dinner plate. On a second plate, beat the eggs with 1 tablespoon of water. On a third plate, combine the bread crumbs and 1/2 cup grated Parmesan. Coat the chicken breasts on both sides with the flour mixture, then dip both sides into the egg mixture and dredge both sides in the bread-crumb mixture, pressing lightly.Heat 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large saute pan and cook 2 or 3 chicken breasts on medium-low heat for 2 to 3 minutes on each side, until cooked through. Add more butter and oil and cook the rest of the chicken breasts. Serve with the additional parmesan and some of the puttanesca tomato salad.

I will tell you that I didn’t pound out my chicken to the thickness specified by Ina, and I spent about ten extra minutes cooking each breast. It was a bummer, and Jacob and Grayson didn’t get to eat until almost nine o’clock. The moral of the story, plan well fair chefs, plan well. I didn't take a picture of my chicken because it was all cut up and ugly, but you can go here to see the one Ina posted on foodnetwork.com:http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/parmesan-chicken-recipe/index.html