‘No more excuses about the difficulty of Hollandaise. Nico Ladenis’s whipping technique makes a pretty much fail-safe, gorgeously airy sauce to eat with summer asparagus and the first wild sea trout’
Rose Prince
Sauce hollandaise
Extract from Nico Ladenis’ s My Gastronomy
Published by Ebury Press in 1987
To serve 4-6
Ingredients
5ml (1tsp) mignonette pepper
5ml (1tsp) vinegar
4 egg yolks
200g (7oz) butter, melted and very hot
Salt
Juice of half lemon
Cayenne pepper
Hollandaise is a sauce that we prepare in my kitchen twice a day without fail-once for the lunch service and once for dinner. Although hollandaise can be served very successfully with fish (it has a special affinity with steamed turbot), I prefer to use it as a sauce for vegetables or as a glaze for a tartelette filled with a mushroom purée.
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Method
Mix together the mignonette pepper, vinegar and 45ml (3tbsp) of water. Heat through well, strain through a cloth and tip into the warmed bowl of a mixer. Add the egg yolks and beat thoroughly until they have doubled in size. Tip this into a stainless-steel sabayon bowl.
Bring the hot butter to the boil and tip it slowly onto the frothy egg mass, whisking all the time. By doing this, your hollandaise will be made very quickly and will also be very fluffy. Add salt, lemon juice and cayenne pepper to taste.
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