During the great shopping excursion, I'd found asparagus rather cheaply. And the girls had been clowning around with a pair of lemons, rubbing them on their butts (only my kids, sigh) so I had to buy those.
So while cooking dinner last night, I thought I'd try making hollandaise sauce for the asparagus.
I don't actually know how to make hollandaise sauce. But while I'm cooking, I'm also on the phone with my sister, whose husband is a Gourmet.
"How do you make hollandaise sauce," I ask her.
"You open the envelope and stir in some water," she replied.
Not the answer I was looking for. But hey, my hubby's been cooking professionally on and off for twenty years. This should be No Problem.
"Honey," I ask, "How do you make Hollandaise sauce?"
"You open the envelope and stir in some water," he replied.
Aaargh! "That's not what I want. I want to be able to make it from scratch," I continued, and I glared (a bit) at this point. "And you should already know how to do this!"
"Why?"
"Well, what would happen if the apocolypse came and there were no envelopes and you wanted hollandaise sauce?" A pause. "You have to be prepared for anything, you know!"
He laughed. (This is probably why we're still married, after all these years)
We found a recipe in my old betty crocker book, one that is so old it is missing both covers and most of the beginning: it starts exactly on the appetizer page and ends on the Z page of the index now.
It came out thick and very, very lemony -- far more lemony than I've ever experienced before, but apparently all the hollandaise sauce I've had before has been borne out of envelopes, so now I have no idea what it is supposed to taste like.
Classic Hollandaise Sauce
2 egg yolks
3 tbs lemon juice
1/2 c butter
Over low heat, whisk together egg yolks and lemon juice. Add half of the butter, and stir CONSTANTLY until the butter melts. Then add in the other butter and stir CONSTANTLY until that melts.
Supposedly this yields one cup, but we got less than that. It is VERY tangy. I'm thinking it might be good on fish.
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