Grandma's Kitchen Table

Whisk Wednesdays: Soupe à l'oignon gratinée (Onion soup) and Potage Ambassadeur (Split Pea Soup with Bacon, Sorrel, and Lettuce)

      My Whisk Wednesdays group has been very patient with me these past couple of months.  First, I was a crazy person trying to juggle all those swimming gigs with my normal life here, and then I just fell off the wagon about posting.  I allow myself a certain amount of time for writing/posting each day/week and when that is gone, then I just stop trying to get it all worked into the day/week...I've been a bit distracted and my writing time has been used elsewhere, so the Whiskers have been very nice and patient with me.  But, that said, I'M BACK!  I will not try to catch up all the things that I missed, but I might filter in a few things here and there on rewind as I did photo most of it while I was making it.    

       Soups are one of my very favorite things in the food world.  I am a serious consumer of soup.  I think it stems from my childhood when I ate a lot of soup and very little else.  When the soup classes came up, I have to say, I jumped for joy.  I think I posted two of them, so I think I will post two more here today and then I will retire the soup entries, but believe me, you will want to make them all...very good. 

      I went on a soup-making marathon one weekend and made about four kinds of soup, using just half recipes for each.  Assembly line, as you can clearly see, with any number of pots containing wonderful selections. (The Total and Oatmeal are breakfast fare, forgot to remove those for the photo, oops.) That was one fine weekend.    

       Of course, my first favorite was the Soupe à l'oignon gratinée (Onion soup), on pages 48-49.  It is somewhat difficult to find a really good bowl of French Onion Soup...or maybe I am just really picky (probably more than just a rumor).  My current favorite is at Lennie's in Bloomington.  

      Our Le Cordon Bleu recipe is very good also.  It is different than most of the recipes I come across in that it does not use beef stock, but rather just white wine and water with the onions and such.   It is much more of a light tasting soup, something that would be great served before a meal that did not include beef or pork, etc....something like chicken or fish.  Definitely something I will make over and over.   

      The recipe recommended using Gruyere cheese for melting on top, and I wasn't too keen on that as while I think Gruyere melts very nicely and can't be equaled for something like a quiche, I prefer a Swiss on top of the onion soup as it melts to a much more creamy texture.  Gruyere is also somewhat nutty in flavor and I don't care for that as much with the onions...the Swiss is much nicer with that little bite of tartness to it.  When I served it the next time, we used Swiss and I will do that from now on.   

      I am including this photo of the peeled onions before slicing for this reason:  I have a solution that has always worked for me to prevent crying when slicing onions.  A doctor I know, from France, told me a long time ago that onions make you cry because of what you are smelling, not what you are seeing.  In other words, while your eyes tear up and you think that is what is making you cry, it is really the fact that you are smelling the onion and that is what releases the tears from your eyes.  He showed me a way to prevent this, and it has worked every single time for me.  Put a small dab of something with a perfume in it (soap, lotion, whatever you have at hand in the kitchen) in the small indentation directly below your nose and above your lips.  You then smell the lotion and not the onion while you are chopping.  Works every time for me...give it a try and see if it works for you also.     

      The other soup that Matt and I found most interesting and very good was the Potage Ambassadeur (Split Pea Soup with Bacon, Sorrel, and Lettuce), found on page 462. 

      It does not win a lot of enthusiasm in the looks department, but in the taste department, it is really really good.  The peas and bacon and lettuce just really go very well together.  (Confession:  I have no idea what sorrel is, nor did anyone in my vicinity in the markets here, so I just left it out.  Who knows if it would be better or worse with or without it, but it was very fine cooked without it.)  And rich.  Only a small bowl is sufficient for a portion.  Matt and I ate it all within a couple of days (again, it was only a third of the original recipe) as Mark and Alex took one look at it and said, "I'm not eating that."  And they didn't.  Not even a taste.  Their loss, believe me.   

      I can so see this soup on a cold winter night with a slice of toasted baguette, some nice cheese, a sliced apple, and a mug of hot apple cider curled up in my reading chair in front of the fireplace.  Yep, I am so there come this winter with this soup.  There are two chairs...you can come and join me if you like!  Or, if you want to make your own soup at your own home, just purchase the cookbook Le Cordon Bleu at Home and make it there.  If you would like to see how the other Whisk Wednesday members fared in the soups classes, click here, or better yet, come and join us!

     

Whisk Wednesdays: Salade de Sardines Crues aux Epinards

        This week's Whisk Wednesdays recipe, Class 15, Part 3, is Salade de Sardines Crues aux Epinards (Spinach Salad with Fresh Sardines) and can be found on page 197-198 (along with the discussion of Vinaigrettes on page 55) in the Le Cordon Blue at Home cookbook. 

      Epinards are not a big hit around here...actually, Epinards have never once been invited into the house, let alone for a meal or snacking.  We all like various kinds of fish, but sardines are not one of them.  I substituted, because at Whisk Wednesdays we are very practical and if one does not like the recipe, one is free to PLAY with it.  Shrimp is always popular around here, so I subbed in that.   

      This was one really great salad...really great.  I only made enough for two as Mark and I were watching the Iowa/Iowa State football game while the boys were doing their own thing and opting for leftover pizza for lunch.  I knew this would make a nice lunch for Mark and I, much preferred over the leftover pizza certainly. 

      I guessed correctly, Mark declared it "most excellent" and declared it a Keeper.    

      While probably not your standard halftime lunch for a football game, this is SO going on our Christmas Eve menu this year for the salad course.  It just looks like Christmas on a plate, dontchathink?  

      The recipe is quick, the prep all easy, the longest part is marinating the sliced mushrooms in the vinaigrette for an hour, so you need to plan ahead on that a little.  I used six fairly large shrimp, cutting them in half lengthwise after I steamed them, which enabled me to use the right halves on one plate, the left halves on the other plate so the little shrimps were all facing the same way on each plate going around the circle.  I know...compulsive...I am completely compulsive, who cares and even notices these things?  So, just in case you are also of a mind, that's how you do that.  

      The combination of lime, vinaigrette, and shrimp is light and very pleasing.  I think I really should use limes more often.  Limes definitely are not getting enough playing time around here...need to take them off the bench and bring them into the game more often.

      Next week from Le Cordon Bleu Cooks at Home is: (September 17)• Éstouffade de Boeuf Provençale (Braised Beef Casserole, Provence Style) page 139-140 {discussion of braising and stewing, page 140}.   If you would like to see how the other members met the sardine challenge, you can click here, and then click on the individual participant's blog, and then really, think about joining us! 

      Oh, and in case you were wondering:  The Iowa Hawks won against the Iowa State Cyclones, so the Cy-Hawk trophy returns to Iowa City.  It's been a win/win afternoon for me, both the salad and the Hawk victory made for one fine afternoon.

Whisk Wednesdays

Matt and I are at swimming Zones from Wednesday through late Sunday night. Five days pretty much away from the kitchen other than the necessary preparations, I am afraid, so I am taking a break here this week, and next week I will try to catch it all up.

I look forward to reading your blogs and seeing what you all created, and I definitely am looking forward to getting back on track and cooking Le Cordon Bleu at Home. ~Kayte

Whisk Wednesdays: Will post by 8:00 p.m.

    'Tis another busy Wednesday of cooking for the priests, another family, a funeral, and my guys.  Oh, and two trips for pool foolery as we are practicing for Zones.  They drained the CHS pool for maintenance, necessitating a new and not-improved drive of maybe 25 miles round trip to another pool, as opposed to the 10 mile round I currently drive.  I will try to have the post up by 5:00 Wednesday afternoon...who am I kidding, check after 8:00 p.m.  Only two more weeks of all this chlorine craziness and then by the time the next round comes, THE BOY WILL HAVE HIS DRIVER'S LICENSE, leaving me plenty of weekends to get my whisking commitments completed and filed in a timely manner.

Whisk Wednesdays: Julienne Darblay

       Ta Dah...last week's class assignment, Julienne Darblay (Creamed Leek and Potato Soup with Julienned Vegetables), which is found on pages 133-134 of Le Cordon Bleu At Home.  Can you even believe it?  Thanks for being patient...you are being patient, right? 

      I usually try to do these cooking bits on the weekends, but since my weekends are spent breathing chlorine fumes for the foreseeable future, who knows how timely these posts will be until the long course swimming championships are finished...probably not very.  Justsoyouknow.  

       We love this soup.  Love, love, loved it.  I am the soup queen...I would be a happy camper if I had nothing but soups and salads for the rest of my life.  Seriously.  I think I was led to Whisk Wednesdays by something in the universe telling me there was going to be Soup Learnin' in the near future.  Happy to be here. 

      I made the stock before I left for Bloomington last week as I figured I had made stock enough times that it would be fairly effortless, and it was, producing a very flavorful stock, I might add.  Probably my preferred stock recipe from here on out actually.  I like making stock and then parking it in the frig overnight so that I can scrape as much of the fat from the top as possible (it hardens when cold and you can just lift it off easily).  Works really well and gives the stock a nice clean taste without all that fat floating about.  I also like making stock as I can control the salt added.  We are not really crazy on the salt around here (Mark getting his daily fix in potato chips and all), so this has immense appeal for me. 

      The rest of the soup I threw together this morning as Wednesday is my cooking day for others...and a busy one it is today, so it's anyone's guess whether I will get this week's soup finished or not today...not by 5:00 for sure, so this may be the only post tonight. 

      Julienne vegetables are not my thing yet...my knife skills leave a little, a lot, to be desired.  I figure I have nowhere to go but up, so I am looking forward to that.  In other words, don't look too closely at the veggies.  I tried...I had plenty of rejects, which is nice as I like eating rejects that have no calories and are actually good for you.  After steaming the veggies (yes, I know, I was supposed to dunk and boil them in water and then toss the water, but maybe the original recipe person didn't know you lose a lot of nutrients that way, so I steamed instead) and setting them aside,  I processed and strained the leek/potato mixture, reheated it, added the little bit of cream, and here it is...one very fine bowl of soup! 

      This soup is time consuming...well, more time consuming than purchasing it already made anyway.  I like the fact that it is assembled in various steps and therefore fits in really well with how I cook around here.  You know, up at 5:15, do a little something before heading out the door to swim practice, come back do a little more, go back to retrieve swimmer, come back do a little more, head out again for whatever, come back do a little more, and on it goes throughout the day...my kind of cooking, bit by bit, and it all comes together brilliantly at the end.  I like this French cooking because so far all the steps can be done in small bits and all those bits add to layers and layers of flavor...very nice.  

      I will make it again.  And again.  And again.  (Just not today...and if I don't get this week's soup done after dinner tonight...might be golf involved, what can I say...too early to tell for sure...then I will post two soups next week...I think.  I know, I said that last week, too...I am proving to be totally undependable in these matters, but I will definitely try. )

      More chlorine all this weekend and all...Matt is swimming 50 Free; 100 Free; 200 Free; and 100 Backstroke...keep those good thoughts coming, okay? 

      Julienne Darblay...don't you just love saying that?  It sounds so sexy.  Hop on over to the other Whisk Wednesday members and see what we are making this week...more soup!  Click here and then click on the blogroll members sites. 

Whisk Wednesdays: Sorry, No Post Today

Hello, fellow Whiskers and Whisk Wednesday readers.  I am sorry to say that there will be no post today about the wonderful French soup we are all making because I am in Bloomington at the swim meet and although I made a valiant effort at trying to get the soup made before I left, I only got as far as the homemade stock, and it is parked in the freezer at the moment so that it will be viable when I return on Sunday. 

      Hopefully, next Wednesday I will post both recipes...not ideal, but the best I can do this week.  I get half credit for getting the stock made before I left, okay?  Thanks!

Whisk Wednesdays: Billi Bi aux Paillettes (Mussel Soup with Cheese Straws)

       Billi Bi aux Paillettes (Mussel Soup with Cheese Straws) pictured in a small bowl, an appetizer portion.

       Whisk Wednesdays has rolled around again, and this week we all (flash:  we are up to 11 of us now) made Billi Bi (Mussel Soup) on page 313 from the book Le Cordon Bleu At Home, with the option of also making the Paillettes (cheese straws) found on pages 209-210 and 313, as Shari had already prepared the cheese straws in another lesson. 

     I have eaten mussels time and again, always at a restaurant, never having purchased or cooked a mussel before, I was rather looking forward to doing both this week as we happen to be a mussel-loving household.  Indiana, not known for the availability of fresh anything-from-the-sea, I called my favorite seafood restaurant, and inquired about the possibility of obtaining two pounds of as-fresh-as-possible-still-smelling-of-the-sea mussels.  So, this week, my new friend is Rob, who set me up with mussels fresh off the plane, guaranteed to have been swimming in the sea mere hours before their little flight.  (Making lots of new friends with all these cooking gigs.) 

 

      While the mussels were, for the most part, cleaned very nicely, there was a certain satisfaction in scrubbing them a little myself, removing a beard or two, and making sure that they were all tightly closed (2 pounds of mussels was about 70 mussels, 3 of which I discarded before the boiling as they had a chip or were not closing tightly when tapped, and 3 which I discarded after the boiling as they did not open).   How fun...I bought, cleaned, boiled, and shucked all these with no problems arising at all.   These little guys were all very plump and nicely sized...if anything, might get 3 pounds next time just because we are a mussel-loving household and these were so easy to fix. 

       It was a hit...we all enjoyed it.   I did have one portion of soup left over for the next day and found that reheating it (I removed the mussel bodies first and set them aside so they would not get toughened in the process, adding them back in when the soup was hot, which was enough to warm them back up) was great and perhaps even more flavorful than the day before, probably because the flavors had a chance to sit and meld together overnight, etc.  Which, leads me to think that I can prepare this soup a day before and reheat it, as I detailed, the day I want to serve it.  A big plus in any sort of thoughts on entertaining with it.

  The cheese straws were also a big hit.  The boys, all three of them, munched and munched.   I had never made puff pastry before, from scratch and all, and I have to say, it was very satisfying and fun.  There's something magical about it...creating all those layers and having it turn out!  I was really nervous about trying this at first, but Shelley emailed me that she and her girls had a great time making this, so I just started and before I knew it, it was finished and I still cannot believe how nicely the cheese straws turned out on my first try.  A big hit...wow...I can make puff pastry...who knew???  (I sorta kinda took photos but in the process lost track of taking one of them on the tray when they were baked...they looked so cute all lined up and all.)

      So, what would I change, do differently, or eliminate?  Not much.  I would add more mussel bodies as the recipe directs you to squish up half of them in the boiling process of the broth and then moosh them to get all the juices out before discarding them.  So, half your little mussel bodies get dumped...I am thinking more mussel bodies would be welcome in our house. 

      The first time I make a recipe, I can never figure exactly how long it will take or exactly what size pots I will need, and which steps I can do in my unique way of cooking, i.e. I cook throughout the day various bits and pieces and then somehow it all comes together at mealtime.  (Mostly this is due to running kids here and there and other various commitments, etc., so I learned to cook in small frames of time and assemble at the end.)  Anyway, now that I have made both of these recipes once, I can see where I can do it my way with no problem. 

      Oh, and I would make the cheese straws (their directions said 1/2 inch by 3 inches) larger as, let's face it, there are guys here and this size only means they need handfuls to be satisfied that they are getting something substantial.  While I was content to put three on my little plate, they were mounding up a considerable number more than that on their plates. 

      Other than that...it was all very good as is and I will make this again, especially in the fall and winter when curling up next to the fire with a cup of this and a few cheese straws on a cold evening seems immensely appealing. 

      If you would like to see how the other Whisk members fared, please click here and then on each individual member's blog.  Next week's recipe is Julienne Darblay (Creamed Leek and Potato Soup with Julienned Vegetables) found on pages 133-134 in Le Cordon Bleu At Home.   We'd love to have you join us!

 

Whisk Wednesdays: Mayonnaise and Salade Messidor

      Whisk Wednesdays has rolled around again and this week we all (flash:  we are up to 7 of us now)  made mayonnaise (page 31) from the book Le Cordon Bleu At Home, using it in a recipe for Salade Messidor (Summer Harvest Salad), found on pages 30-31.  

     

 

      I had never made mayonnaise before, so I was eager to make this and learn something new.  It was so easy...I just followed the recipe from the book exactly and it came together just as promised, tasting very fresh with a little kick to it that jarred mayonnaise does not have going for it.  Very fresh tasting and nice...definitely a keeper.  I may never buy mayonnaise in a jar again.  Very simple to make: I still cannot believe how simple this was to make.  Who knew? 

       More artichokes...okay, now we are talking, as I am developing a new taste for artichokes. I cannot explain the difficulties that the others are finding with these artichokes (you won't be able to stop laughing at Shelley's take on the whole week's assignment on her blog today), as I am sailing through this artichoke business and loving it.  All I can think is this: artichokes are a big thistle...you don't eat much of it at all...most of it is "waste," but what is edible, and what you do eat, is heavenly when cooked correctly...a melt-in-your-mouth goodness that is addicting. 

      This recipe also consisted of several other vegetables, i.e. green beans, cauliflower, celery, and tomatoes, in a mayonnaise sauce and served in a prepared artichoke bottom (like a little cup).  A few chives from my herb pots sprinkled on the top, and we had one very excellent little summer salad, really, it was very good.  I would do this recipe again in a heartbeat.  (Thanks, Mary Ann for the lovely tea towel with the rooster and my initial "K" on it...it goes really great with this dish, don'tchathink?  So difficult to find tea towels, etc. in the wine color palate!)

      As there was no photo of the Salade Messidor recipe in the book, I did a web search to try to locate one and stumbled upon an excellent blog called Will's Eats by a Canadian gentleman who is cooking his way through the same cookbook we are using, albeit that it is only a sort of review for him as he has actually attended the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris.  Hop on over and check it out sometime.  (He gave me permission to link his site for your convenience.)   And to Grant, thank you for the lovely email and thank you very much indeed for allowing me to skulk about both your site and your flickr photos...I learned so much! 

      Because this recipe made a lot (a whole lot) of mayonnaise, and I decided to be judicious in the amount I actually used in the salad, I decided to give it a go in some of the ways we use mayonnaise (from the jar) around here, i.e. a light spread of it on a sandwich, in deviled eggs, in American potato salad, and since we had a roasted turkey breast for dinner last night with leftovers, turkey salad for sandwiches, all on small plates and in small bowls if you are trying to gauge sizes...you have probably all figured that out by now, right?  The sandwich bread would be baguette slices.    

      Have to say, yes, I do, that it was all absolutely delightful.  May have to switch back and forth between the homemade mayonnaise and the big H with the blue lid, which you just can't beat for quick convenience.  Give it a go, see what you think. 

      You can check out the other Whisk Wednesdays' blogs if you would like to do that by clicking Shari, Shelley, Sara, Becke, Glennis, and Teanna.

      Next week's recipes are:

Class 13, Part 1 • Billy Bi aux Paillettes (Mussel Soup with Cheese Straws) on page 311-313 (Puff Pastry directions on pages 209-210 and technique photos and instructions on pages 542-543) 

      The Cheese Straws are actually optional as Shari has done them already in another part of the class that we missed, so while those aren't required for next week, I am planning on having a go at them as I have never made puff pastry from scratch before, and this is, after all, why I am doing this:  to learn these things just for fun!  Come and join us...who doesn't love a good soup?

Whisk Wednesdays: Sauce Béarnaise and Coeur de Filet Henri IV

      Well, well, well, this week's Whisk Wednesdays meal, Class 12, Part 2 was • Sauce Béarnaise (Warm emulsified sauce derived from Hollandaise sauce) page 250; • Coeur de Filet Henri IV (Filet mignons with artichokes, and Béarnaise sauce) from the Le Cordon Blue at Home cookbook, pages 250-252.  I also included the Pommes Pont Neuf (French fries) on page 253 as they were shown in the photo and included in the directions. 

      This was all most excellent...even on the first go around, we are counting this a resounding success (well, except the part with Justin).  I am still amazed at how easily this all came together and how great it all worked.  A keeper.  Definitely.  (Except the part with Justin.)

      The featured part of the meal, of course, since we are learning sauces, was the Béarnaise sauce, and let me tell you, it seemed quick and easy since we made Hollandaise last week, working up to a few more ingredients in the Béarnaise, such as peppercorns, shallots, white wine and white wine vinegar, tarragon, and chervil.  I only made half the recipe as I knew that we could not be trusted to only eat half if the whole was sitting there...four tablespoons of butter between three people seemed much more diligent than eight, and if truth be known, four Ts would have worked with four people also...there was plenty to go around.  

      We bought only two of the four 7 oz. steaks the recipe called for as Matt was not here, and while Mark can put away a 7 oz steak, Alex and I can easily split one with leftovers for Pippin and Vash.  We guessed right on that.  

      I have never before shopped for, selected, peeled, or cooked artichokes, so this one was a new experience for me.  It went well...turns out artichokes are very easy to prepare with the Le Cordon Bleu instructions, and step-by-step photos on page 520.  While they look a little strange beginning to end, the taste is wonderful, and I will definitely be making artichokes more often, with or without sauce, and hopefully without Justin, more on that later.

      The potatoes were also very easy...who knew you could make French fries from scratch?  Okay...confessional gasp...I have only fried anything about twice in my life as we are not big on fried foods around here, but the guys do like French fries, so I am thinking this might be a skill I could use in the future.  (I am not a French fry person, but hey, if I cooked them, I figured I should eat one, right?  I ate three!)  I liked the idea of cooking those potatoes twice, once for 7 minutes to cook them and then again right before serving for 2 minutes to color and crisp them.  Works for me...a lot less to do at the end of prep time.  

      I made a little lemon/mustard/evoo/white wine vinegar salad dressing for the watercress. 

      Dessert you ask?  Sorry...our chief dessert eater was not home from Arizona when I made this meal on Sunday night, so we opted for Monday being a dessert day.  (On Monday I made the TWD Mixed Berry Cobbler as I could be certain that at least half of it would be gone that day with Matt home, the remaining half the next, which is a good thing with cobblers.) 

      If you would like to check out the other Whisk Wednesdays bloggers, click Shari,Shelley, Sara, and Becke...yes, we are up to 5 of us now...why don't you join us?  We'd love to have you.  We all sort of have our own little niche within the group...Shari is the researcher/writer/photographer/creative guru; I myself am just trying to follow the book nicely and learn as I go (something I have been always fairly good at in the past); Shelley is trying to hone more cooking skills which match how she enjoys eating and she is trying to do so in a budget-minded way that fits in comfortably with her family's likes as well; Sara is The Wine Maker's Wife and is helping to educate us all with pairings of wine and food; and Becke is a Foodie with a blog that would beg you to even try to disagree with that statement.  There's room for everyone at Whisk Wednesdays, so you needn't fear that you won't fit in, because you will! 

      Oh, and for those of you who want to know about cooking without Justin, I highly recommend it.  Justin is our plumber...apparently artichoke leaves, stems, and whatnot, are NOT a good match for garbage disposals...now you know, if you didn't before, like say, me.  As my husband said, "Maybe 'we' should have thought this through a bit before jamming those down there."  You think?  Yep, maybe "we" should have...so nice of him to use the "we" instead of the "you" form as I felt badly enough for not thinking that through...really, one little moment of thought would have been good here, hindsight and all.  So Justin and I recommend adding artichoke peelings to the list of "potato peels, apple peels, celery, onion skins, carrot peels, rice, noodles, etc., etc." that do not belong tossed into the garbage disposal.  I did ask Justin just why we have disposals if we can't put those things down there...his reply was something along the lines of "To keep me in business."  Hmmm...am thinking those "starch and string-related items" are probably going directly into the garbage can here from now on.  Hindsight and all. 

     Please note:  The photo shows the meal on a small salad plate, i.e. those are not the largest French fries in the world, but rather I like to use the smaller plates for myself, so if you are gauging size/portions, please keep that in mind, it is not a regular dinner plate.

      Next Week (July 2) from Le Cordon Bleu at Home 
                • Sauce Mayonnaise (Basic emulsified sauce) page 31
                • Salade Messidor (Summer Harvest Salad) page 30-31

Whisk Wednesday: Hollandaise Sauce and Moutarde Sauce

      Whisk Wednesday...what, you ask is that?  Well, something special.  Something exciting.  For me anyway...and my family who will hopefully enjoy the flavors of such whisking efforts. 

      Through the Tuesdays with Dorie bake-along-blog, I met a fellow baker whose name is Shari.  Shari has a food blog that interested me very much because she had set for herself the goal of cooking through a cookbook entitled Le Cordon Bleu at Home and was sorta kinda following their school curriculum, inviting others to join her.  I knew then and there that I would be one of those joiners as finally, here was someone who wanted to cook with the old methods, no fake ingredients, learning the basics from the beginning in the French manner of cooking, and with a sense of excitement that I knew I could definitely get on board with in a split second. 

      So, Shari and I cooked up an agenda over the past week (actually I did very little of it as Shari had already thought it all through and it sounded just great to me, but we sort of cheered each other on to get this up and running THIS WEEK.)  This week?  Really...this very week?  This very week when I was out of town for some of it, crazy busy for some of it, and just plain uncertain that I could get my act together by Wednesday, let alone cook and post.  BUT, I did not want to miss Hollandaise week, so we are off and running.  (Shelley is joining us...she always says she doesn't know how to cook, but she really does...and she has at least made homemade mayonnaise before, not so myself.)  Shari is actually on Week 12 of this curriculum, so I am going to go back to her first week and work forward throughout the summer, hoping to have done the first 11 weeks by the end of summer and then be current from then on. 

      So, Shari, Shelley, and I are going to post our Whisking bits on Wednesdays.  You can tune out if you aren't interested, or you can hop over to Shari and Shelley's blogs (and anyone else opting to join us...how about you???) and see what their efforts netted each week.  Shari has a very nice write up about the history of the Hollandaise sauce, etc. because Shari is a cooking/writing/photographing/posting genius!  So, hop on over to Shari's blog and check it out (on the left bar of this blog you can click on Shari's Whisk: A Food Blog site; and for Shelley's blog, click on the Insomnimom site). 

      Here's what went on in my kitchen (besides cooking for 5 priests and another family of 3 today, that is...whew!).  Hollandaise to me is Eggs Benedict.  A definite splurge in the calorie department...possibly another of those cholesterol poster child's nightmare dishes, but maybe sorta kinda okay if eaten only occasionally.  Like today...probably okay since the last time I had it was at Christmas time...the year before this past one.  I have never made it before...always just ordered it at a restaurant every other year or so, at a holiday time, as I figured it was much too fussy for me to "try this at home."  I had English muffins...I had some really nice Tuscan bread...I really wanted to use that Tuscan bread toasted instead of that English muffin, but I didn't want to get kicked out the first week, so I toasted the muffin and thought "next time, the Tuscan bread!"  Canadian bacon...well, the best that could be had at the market today as I was on the run and running out of time, fresh eggs...good on that one.  Poach the egg...fun...love poaching eggs and watching all those swirling bits solidify (takes very little to entertain me on a daily basis). 

       I made the Hollandaise pretty much like the recipe Shari posts at her site (for copyright respect, only Shari will post the recipe ingredients with proper credits, etc. each week and you will want to check out her blog because her photos, etc. are wonderful...don't hold me to anything like that, please).  If you want the recipe directions, they are on pages 274-275, so you will need to BUY THE BOOK, as it is copyrighted and we are trying to stay on the right side of the law here.  I didn't use clarified butter, however, as I didn't have time to mess with that and I like a creamier sauce, whereas the one with clarified butter is more oily because the milk solids are removed.  I like milk solids and it produces a creamier looking sauce.  I also did mine in a double boiler as I am just not that trustworthy when it comes to watching eggs over direct heat, unless of course you like them sunny side up or scrambled.  The double boiler had the added benefit of being able to turn the burner down very low and keep the water at a just-barely-simmering level which keeps the sauce together while say you are putting together the little muffin/c.bacon/poached egg assembly.  Delicious.  Fairly easy.  A keeper. 

      The next recipe, well, if you want to call it that, was just drizzling it over steamed asparagus, which is very decadent and can turn a perfectly healthy calorie-friendly veggie into one of pure sin.  Delicious.  Extremely easy.  A keeper.  I did notice that the sauce thickened a bit, which was good, when I was working between the recipes.  Normally I would not make all three recipes at once, but this week I did not have time to spread it out, so Mark had a very interesting meal this evening...he's usually willing to roll with the punches of whatever is going on around here.  (Note on these plate sizes:  they are small...I am big on small plates, so the food may look huge, but actually it is the plate that is small.) 

      The last recipe is making the Hollandaise into a Moutarde (mustard) sauce by adding Dijon to taste.  (And taste, and taste...)  This sauce was delicious, and we served it over a small steak.  Delicious.  Fairly easy.  A keeper. 

      Go ahead, try it...easier than you think and you can bandy about words like Hollandaise and Moutarde like you can't imagine not knowing how to make these. 

      So far, so good...week one.  Let's just wander over and visit Shari and Shelley and see how they did today....

      Next week from Le Cordon Bleu Cooks at Home is Sauce Béarnaise (Warm emulsified sauce derived from Hollandaise sauce) on page 250, Coeur de Filet Henri IV (Filet mignons with artichokes and Béarnaise sauce)...come and join us!