When you get right down to it, most of the ingredients in our food our quite dull: meat, starch, veg. If you want to improve them you have to dress them up. Onions and nuts to the rice, butter and lemon over the broccoli, and hollandaise over the meat (and everything else for that matter.
In short it is the sauce that matters. Most people could eat a block of wood if it had hollandaise on it.
There are a zillion variations on the theme out there, but I love summer because you can get fresh herbs. I grow them through the winter in pots but I haven’t installed a grow-light, and the lack of sunshine in December usually finishes my herbs off till the spring.
Bored yesterday with my cooking I picked up some snapper on the way home and put together a quick mustard sauce that worked beautifully. It took about 3 minutes to prepare, and tasted great. I think it would go on just about everthing including beef.
– 2 to 3 tbsp (30-45 ml) dijon mustard
– 2 tbsp (30 ml) fresh dill
– 2 tbsp (30 ml) fresh mint
– 2 tbsp (30 ml) tart white wine (sauv blanc, pinot grigio, vernaccia etc.)
– 5 mls olive oil
Chop the dill and mint. Stir into the mustard. Add enough white wine to make it less gluey. Add a dash of olive oil.
I applied it to the snapper and grilled the fillets for 5-10 minutes. Accompanied the snapper with a non-descript Californian Sauv Blanc.
I ate the sauce from the prep bowl as I was doing the dishes. It’s great and has a wide range of applications. Capers might be a nice addition.