Hollandaise Sauce

Been re-reading french cooking books (MTAOFC and Anne Willan's Look & Cook - french edition), I feel the longing to cook those buttery petit dishes wkwk. I think, one of the (if not the most) important things on french cooking is the sauce. We may prepare various meats-poultry-fish etc but then again - as many other western cuisine - IMHO, the taste are pretty simple. No matter how "rich" the flavor, to me, western food tasted more simple than Indonesian food. However, sauce plays an important role to add variety (as well as prestige LOL) to the said simple taste. Page 54 of MTAOFC stated that "sauces are the splendor and glory of French cooking.." well, couldn't agree more. So, I tried to dig in the sauce section under the MTAOFC and selected the Hollandaise sauce as a starter. This is my first time making Hollandaise sauce, so I tried the traditional method as contained in page 79 of the MTAOFC. Quoting page 79 (I think by "we" it was referring to Julia and Simca wkwk) - "We feel that it is of great importance that you learn how to make hollandaise by hand, for part of every good cook's general knowledge is a thorough familiarity with the vagaries of egg yolks under all conditions.". Following the instruction in page 79-81 step by step, it resulted into a very delish Hollandaise sauce. Tasted like the most delish Hollandaise ever.. I'm so happy.

I used the Hollandaise for my poached eggs when me and my husband were pretending to have brunch outside, but in fact too lazy (and scared) to go out. The texture is perfect, the taste is delish, oh I just love it. I once saw Julia Child's "the French Chef" video on youtube when she made this Hollandaise sauce. She sipped the sauce saying "just taste it and you know that it's homemade... hmmm delicious..". I never thought it's gonna be this delish, so rich and buttery with a little bit lemony (and I made mistake with this one).

Highlighted issues:

Heating and thickening:

When reading the instruction, whereby I must beat the yolks on a sauce pan in low heat, I kept on wondering if this is for real. Well you know, it's eggs... in Indonesia, if we buy a local chicken porridge with raw eggs, the eggs will automatically cook just from the heat of the porridge. But I did as instructed anyway - and it works. How? by setting the heat/fire as minimum as possible (kinda hard with my broken ancient-prehistory era stove), and take the pan off the stove for few times. This on-off-on-off method is to make sure that there is no constant increasing heat, that will cook the eggs and makes it hard or lumpy. The book did not mention that method, but it conveyed an implicit message to that end, and the episode of the French Chef did mention it. The book also stated that Hollandaise is probably the most famous of all sauces and is often the most dreaded, as the egg yolks can curdle and the sauce can turn.

Lemon juice:

Satisfied with the success, happily spread the Hollandaise on my eggs, and got a lunatic idea to add 1 tbsp more of the lemon juice to the sauce. Turned out sour (or a bit sour), and as I mentioned earlier, I really2 can't stand sour. Grrr what an idea, but at least my husband can still enjoy it. This is a very rad lesson for me. Actually, the book said that we can add more lemon juice to taste. So perhaps, if you like the lemon taste on your sauce and can handle sour better, it's probably a good idea to add the lemon juice - but not for me hehe.

The book said that the recipe takes only 5 minutes. Hmmm idk whether I was too slow or the book was actually referring to one part of the process only (kidding), because I did it in 20 minutes LOL. The recipe is calculated to serve six people, so I still have the remaining sauce sits on my dining table. I'll make some spinach and garlic butter shrimp for dinner, and add this Hollandaise as the sauce. Hopefully the sour taste will go well with the shrimp.

This is my poached egg looks like, pre-Hollandaise. See the shape? it's weird right haha... I cooked it with a cling wrap to maintain the shape. I've tried many methods to cook poached eggs and still can't make the "Benedict" style. That's OK, I'll try harder.

For the love of food, happy eating and cooking.