She's Saucy

On a quest to contiually improve my cooking skills I took a sauce class with my friend Sandy. This class was an offering from David LeClaire’s Uncorked Seattle and taught by Chef Kathy Entrop of Kathy’s Kapers. Taking a cooking class, you always hope to learn something and the first thing we learned was a French phrase "mis en place" meaning everything (prepped and) in place. This is important as timing can be critical and if you don't have mis en place, then you could miss the timing of your sauce and it would fail.

We would be making 8 different sauces with recipes ranging from a time consuming seafood stock based sauce (great for a bisque base) to very simple butter sauces. We split up into teams to prep our ingredients. Each team was to prep and cook their sauce in front of the group. Sandy and I chose to make the Rosemary Balsamic Butter sauce. A simple sauce with few ingredients but definitely packs a punch. Plus, we went next to last so that meant lots of wine tasting along the way while everyone else was toiling over their sauces.

Rosemary Balsamic Butter Sauce
• 8 tablespoons cold butter, cut into tablespoon chunks, reserve two of these in the fridge for finishing the sauce.
• ½ cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 large shallot
• 2 large sprigs of fresh rosemary – kept whole
• Salt and pepper to taste
In a sauce pan over medium heat, cook the shallots in 6 tablespoons of butter until translucent, about 2 minutes. Add in vinegar and rosemary, whisking to combine and simmer until liquid is reduced to about ½ a cup, about 6 minutes, whisking as needed to keep the balsamic and butter combined. Remove from heat (sauce may separate as it cools), remove rosemary and whisk in remaining 2 tablespoons of chilled butter until the sauce is smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Now, as you read the recipe, you may wonder – salted or unsalted butter? I always thought sauces started with unsalted butter, however, Chef Kathy said she always uses salted butter. You also want to be sure your butter stays cold until you need it. No melty stuff here – no sir, it is important to keep that butter chilled so that the sauce keeps a good texture and the fat and milk solids don’t separate or you’ll get an icky mess, which of course can be resurrected by adding more butter. :)

Personally, I think this sauce would go well with a red meat. Beef, lamb, venison or even buffalo. I tried it over a pork tenderloin because I couldn’t find a nice beef tenderloin that hadn’t already been cut into steaks when I went to buy groceries. While it tasted good, the strong balsamic flavor overpowered the pork and its dark color was a bit off-putting against the white of the pork. Next time I'll try with a white balsamic.

I also learned about “beurre marnie” – little wonderballs of equal parts room temperature butter and flour rubbed together into a ball and are used to thicken sauces instead of a slurry or egg yolk. Chef Kathy recommends one tablespoon of each for a pan sauce. These little lovelies you can make ahead and chill in the fridge until you need them. Can’t wait to use ‘em because everything is better with butter!