Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Alright, alright, now I’ve gotten everybody all overheated about my mystery guest.  Time for a reality check – and more clues.  This mystery guest is not a celebrity chef.  This mystery guest, however, was featured on one of my earliest entries as a guest writer, via hypertext. That should do it. Last night we had broiled salmon steaks with Sauce a la Moutarde and Endives a la Flamande.  Eh.  The Sauce a la Moutarde turned out exactly right, at least.  That may because there’s not much easier than Sauce a la Moutarde.  All you do is mash together some butter and flour, pour some boiling milk over it, stir, boil a minute or two, then stir in some butter and mustard.  That’s it.  And it tastes good.  Only problem is, we got one of these Julia problems here, where she tells you how to make a sauce, but not a lot about how to serve it.  Her only serving suggestion was “broiled mackerel, herring, tuna, or swordfish.”  Well, the fancy-ass grocery near my work, my only option at the stupid hour I got out of work, didn’t have those things.  (“And you call yourselves a fancy-ass grocery….”)  So I made do with the only steaks they did have, salmon.  I was dubious, but what could I do?  Besides, I knew that my dear husband has suffered silently lo these many years with my relative distaste for all things fishy, and though now were on a more expansive path, I thought he deserved a big thick fish steak.  Well, I broiled the fish, like the woman said.  Coated it in a little olive oil, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and threw it in the broiler, three minutes per side.  And Eric says it came out fine – moist, a little flakey.  I thought it tasted very much like fish, a taste I don’t like very much of.  The mustard sauce helped.  I guess that’s the French way – “I don’t much like this – pass the gravy boat.” (ah, for a gravy  boat….)  But when I really wasn’t impressed with what was underneath it, the sauce began to seem like a trick.  I felt so dirty. With the endives, I just put them in a pot with a bit of water, some butter, salt and lemon juice.  I let them simmer on top of the stove for twenty minutes, then covered them with one of my rounds of wax paper (have I mentioned I love making rounds of wax paper?  Why, yes, Julie, I believe you have….) and stuck them in the oven for half an hour. Only, just as I’m writing this, I realize that I think I forgot to add the butter. That explains a lot. When they were done, I poured a couple of tablespoons of butter over them (that much, at least, but it can’t replace the 5 tablespoons I forgot) and served. I’m not so particularly perspicacious when it comes to matching foods.  I mean there are great tastes that taste great together, of course, but generally I’m not all that sensitive to mismatched flavors.  But I gotta tell you, endive and salmon are not the Reese’s of the future.  The endive made the fish taste fishier, and the fish made the endive more bitter.  It was extremely not good.  I ate a lot of rice napped in Sauce a la Moutarde. Ah well.  Everybody deserves an off day.  7:39:36 AM    comment []