Despite the fact that decent wine is vastly cheaper here in France than in most places, it just seems sad to pour perfectly drinkable wine into sauces where you're going to cook off a good part of the flavor anyway (unless, of course, you're practicing the 'some for the sauce, some for me' method, which I entirely approve of).
But getting back to my bargain cuisine discovery. Today, I was making a classic beurre blanc sauce. To start a classic beurre blanc calls for both vinegar and wine to cook the shallots in, as the first step. Every time I make this stupid sauce, it tastes too vinegary at the end, so today, I left out the vinegar . . . and bingo! Delicious sauce.
The magic? I realized that the crappy white wine that I use to cook, a few days after having been opened, actually does double duty for the wine and vinegar flavors.
Now there's a solid argument for the value of two buck chuck.
Also:
In my ipod this week-
A little bit of knowledge from This American Life: the first half is great
A list of books from The New Yorker Fiction Podcast
The forgetting Sarah Marsall soundtrack (still) - especially the cover of These Boots are Made for Walking in Hawaiian
And
Garden update!
After a week of fear that I had totally killed all of my 12 seedling plants, it turns out that they're actually all thriving! My carrot plants even have little baby carrot leaves! I have got to find my camera (also to document my hypercolor cat).
Double And!
My cat gets a girlfriend (Two, actually!)
Today at cooking school I mentioned that there was cat hair on my apron while changing. A girl in my class jumped on me - 'You have a cat?' (yes), 'Boy or girl?' (boy), 'Is he neutered?' (no, guiltily). "I have two female cats who have been in heat for three months and they really need a boy cat!"
Her cats are Persians. I mention that mine is an undersized stray that changes colors. She says "As long as he's a cat, I accept him."
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