Sauce béarnaise

"The catch (there's always a catch) is that made with the classic technique, it's very easy to mess up." J. Kenji López-Alt - Serious Eats

I can't believe how much coincidence is going on in my life just now. If you remember, a couple of days ago I wrote about tarragon and mentioned Nigella Lawson's Béarnaise sauce. Well last night I grabbed a few moments to watch whatever cooking program was on the SBS food channel, and there was Nigella - from a long time ago - she looked very young and had young children - and what was she cooking but Steak Béarnaise! I was so taken aback that I swore there and then that this is what I would cook for dinner tonight. And indeed that is what I am shortly going to do.

I am nervous though. Especially when I saw Felicity Cloake quoting Anthony Bourdain who said this:

"Know this. If you haven't made [it] before, you will surely fuck this sauce up. Don't worry. Just do it again." Anthony Bourdain

Well no I won't do it again - not tonight anyway. But then I remembered that I have made it before, so I breathed again. Well I'm not sure whether I have made Béarnaise sauce before but it's a variation on Hollandaise which I have made, and Sauce Paloise too which just has a different herb - mint - in it.

Béarnaise sauce, just in case you wanted to know, was, according to Wikipedia

"accidentally invented by the chef Jean-Louis Françoise-Collinet, the accidental inventor of puffed potatoes (pommes de terre soufflées), and served at the 1836 opening of Le Pavillon Henri IV, a restaurant at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, not far from Paris. This assumption is supported by the fact that the restaurant was in the former residence of Henry IV of France, a gourmet himself, who was from Béarn"

Not that they explained what the accident was that caused its invention. Anyway Bèarn is definitely a region of France.

So whose recipe do I choose to use? Well, of course I was going to go with Nigella. It's one of the very first recipes in her first book How to Eat, which I have. Well she did say that it was her desert island recipe. Her very favourite thing. And when I watched her doing it it looked pretty OK. Not sure I shall attempt to strain my yolks from my whites through my fingers though. But I thought I should check it out a bit and found a fair bit of variation with all of the people I read claiming that their way was best. Some more or less just chucked everything in together, and then either whisked away or threw it in a food processor. Fear was definitely building up by now and it was all rapidly becoming a big mistake. But then I found Felicity Cloake of course had been through all of that before me and was very reassuring:

"Ignore the hype, forget the breathy MasterChef-style commentary in your head, and just remember that hollandaise, like its steak-friendly cousin béarnaise, is nothing but a hot egg and butter sauce."

"Caution, therefore, is good: fear, however, will almost certainly curdle your hollandaise quicker than the evillest of eyes."

Having looked at a wide variety of options that include Delia, Nigel (via Nigella), Michel Roux Jr. and various other notables, she finally plumps for somebody I have never heard of (I should say that she is talking about Hollandaise, not Béarnaise here, but it is sort of the same):

"I save the simplest method until last, because, if I'm honest, I'm a little bit hesitant about it. It comes from McGee's On Food & Cooking and, rather than faffing about, simply sticks all the ingredients in one cold pan, heats gently, and stirs until the sauce cooks. "The butter gradually melts and releases itself into the egg phase as both heat up together, and the cook then continues to heat the formed sauce until it reaches the desired consistency". That's the theory anyway. I'm expecting disaster, but somehow, miraculously, it comes together into a satiny pool of deliciousness – and all with just one pan and a whisk. I'm a convert."

So do I go with that? No I think I shall go with Nigella. Coincidence wins. Mind you the steak is a whole other problem. I am not very good at steak - I always overcook it - mostly because David doesn't like it rare and so I'm always scared it will be too pink for him. Nigella said not to go with chips - just dunk some baguette in it. And I was going to do that, but alas there was no Laurent baguette in Coles today, so it will have to be plain potatoes. (My lovely husband has just volunteered to go to our Coles and see if they have some there - I looked in Doncaster.) If we have to have potatoes then we can mash them in the sauce. Nigella, along with somebody else also thought that you should dunk the steak in the sauce from a communal bowl, rather than pouring it over the steak. Not sure what I'm going to do there. Then you start with shallots - and I haven't got any, so it will just have to be onions. I also don't have any chervil, but she said not to worry about that. Then I'm sure the quantity she gives is too much but I can't easily halve it because she uses three egg yolks. So what to do about that?

The fear is coming back. It's all so daunting. I doubt it will look like this. But there will be asparagus - and salad too. They should be OK.

And maybe - other coincidence - I shall have to make pavlova with the egg whites. I was given yet another recipe for a fail safe pavlova the other day.

I doubt my steak will look as professional as this, but I'll give it a go. And look - here is Nigella cooking Steak Béarnaise on YouTube. Doesn't she look young?

POSTSCRIPT: Well I didn't fail, in the sense of getting the sauce to come together properly. But I admit to being a little disappointed with the taste. A bit bland I thought. Maybe I didn't put in enough tarragon. And as I feared, the steak was a bit disappointing - overcooked and far too thin. I'll give it another go some time though.