Condiments

            Condiments are a type of sauce and are made like sauces.  Condiments are used to add flavor to a dish or moisture to a sandwich.  We have already covered mayonnaise.  Condiments are often bought prepared and bottled, but many can be made at home. 

 

Dipping Sauce are also condiments.  Every culture has its own dipping sauces. They are used with vegetables to meats to sweets.  The right dipping sauce should enhance the dish, not cover it up.

 

Salad Dressings are sauces or condiments for salads. The purpose is to enhance the flavor of the salad.  But again dressings should not overpower the salad. 

 

 

This Week’s Challenge - Make a from salad dressing of your own creation

 

            Choose an oil, an acid, and seasonings for your dressing.  You may want to choose ingredients that you have never used or rarely use.   Think about how the flavors will go together.  Think about the salad.  I like to use walnut oil in dressings and you can complement it with walnuts in the salad.  You may want to use raspberry vinegar in the dressing and fresh raspberries in the salad.

 

Tip for this Week - Homemade is better

 

            Learning to make your own condiments, dipping sauces and dressings can be very rewarding.  You know exactly what goes into your sauce.  There is no need for preservatives and chemicals.  The taste is fresher and clean.  I think it is healthier to make your own. 

 

 

This Week in Punkin’s Kitchen

 

Papa’s Tartar Sauce

 

Baked cod with tartar sauce with
cauliflower and cheese and oven
roasted acorn squash and a dill pickle.

            This is great made with homemade mayonnaise.

 

1 C      Mayonnaise

1 T       Green onions, minced

1 ½ t    Dill pickles, minced

1 t        Sweet pickle juice

 

The Ingredients

1.    Finely mince all the ingredients and blend into the mayonnaise. 

 

Half a Kosher dill pickle, cut into strips

Dill pickle diced.




Green onions should be used, but I used
chives this time.

 

Add to the mayonnaise and stir to blend.

 

 

2.    It is best if this sets a little while before using. 

 

The finished sauce ready for the fridge.

 

3.    Garnish with a little chopped dill, if you like.

 

The completed dinner of baked
cod, cauliflower and acorn squash

 

Soup of the Week

 

            This is great to serve on St. Patrick’s Day.  What makes it Irish is the Irish beer and cheese. It is a sharp soup.  Serve it with more Irish beer and Irish Soda Bread, posted on March 12, 2016.

 

Irish Beer Cheese Soup

 

Irish Beer Cheese Soup, served
chunky with Soda Bread

32 oz              Irish beer, Harp’s is recommended (3 bottles)

12 oz.             Vegetable or chicken stock

1 T                   Onion powder

1 t                    White pepper

1 lb.                 Potatoes, peeled and diced

1 T                   Cornstarch

¼ C                 Water

1 lb.                 Irish cheddar cheese, grated

Salt and pepper to taste

 

The ingredients

1.    Add the beer, stock, onion powder and pepper to a large soup pot.

 

Beer, stock, onion powder, sand white
pepper added to the soup pot.

 

2.    Over medium heat bring to a boil.

3.    Add the potatoes and cook until soft.

 

Add the potatoes and cook until soft.

 

4.    Combine the cornstarch and water in a small bowl and add to the soup and reduce the heat.

 

Mix the cornstarch with the water and
let it stand a few minutes.  This should
remove lumps.  Add to the soup.

Cornstarch added.

 

5.    Add the cheese a handful at a time.

 

Cheese added.  At this point the
soup is ready to serve or it can be
 pureed until smooth just before serving.

 

6.    Ladle into serving bowl and serve with Irish Soda Bread.

I left this chunky and served it with soda bread.

 

 

Also this Week

 

            Lent started this week so for the next few weeks we will be looking at fish dishes and vegetarian food.  People celebrate Lent with different types of fasting.  I don’t eat meat on Friday and Wednesday.  I do have fish or vegetarian meals on those days.  I eat normally the rest of the week.  So I hope you look forward to more fish dishes and some vegetarian meals.

 

Happy Cooking!

 

Enriched Sauces

Basically enriched sauces are a liquid that is emulsified with egg yolks.  The liquid can be one thing, like clarified butter in Hollandaise Sauce, or another sauce thicken or enriched, as with Allemande sauce.  These are rich sauces that should not be over used, a little goes a long way.  Often seasonings are added to the sauce.

 

Allemande or Hollandaise are the two most common enriched sauces.  And you should be familiar with making them.  You may even want to try to making or inventing your own enriched sauce. 

 

It is important that the eggs you use should be fresh.  Some sauce call for just the yolk, others for the whole egg.  Some sauces are cooked and others are not.  So inspect your eggs carefully and the fresher the eggs the better.

 

Types of sauces in this category are Aioli Sauce, Remoulade, Mayonnaise, Butter Sauces, Andalouse Sauce, Bearnaise Sauce, Bohemian Sauce, La Varennes Sauce, Tartar Sauce, Mousquetaire Sauce, Cambridge Sauce, White Wine Sauce, Gloucester Sauce, Gaibriche Sauce, Malliese Sauce, Noisette Sauce, Dijon Sauce, Choron Sauce, Foyot Sauce, Mousseline Sauce, Maltaise Sauce, and Russian Sauce.

 

This Week’s Challenge - Make a Hollandaise sauce

 

            Go online and research how you will use your hollandaise sauce. Then choose a recipe that will meet your needs.  Put together a meal around your hollandaise sauce.  Remember to record it in your journal

 

Tip for this Week – Mayonnaise

            Mayonnaise is a basic sauce and condiment and is very easy to make fresh.  This requires a blender or food processor.  You want to use very fresh ingredients.  Since you are making the mayo fresh, it doesn’t have the preservatives that store bought mayonnaise has and will not keep long in the refrigerator. The trend today is to use flavored mayo and you can do this with your homemade mayonnaise.

the Ingredients

1 whole very fresh egg

¼ t dry mustard, but prepared mustard can be used

½ t salt

Place in a blender and whip to mix.

 

 

Place the eg in the blender.bhgfg     vbnnn

 

 

            1 T lemon juice or vinegar

I use white wine vinegar, sea salt
and Dijon mustard.

The vinegar solution added to the egg
in blender.

Add half the vinegar and blend.

            ¾ C light oil like canola or safflower

I used canola oil, but try different oil.

The egg mixture will slightly thicken.

While the blender is going add about half oil is a continuous thin stream.  The mixture should thicken.  Add the remaining lemon juice and then continue with the oil until the oil is used up.  Flavorings can be added at the end.

Add the oil in a thin stream while the
blender is running.

            This makes about one cup of mayo.  The type of mustard you use, the kind of acid (vinegar or lemon juice) and the type of oil all add to the flavor of the mayonnaise.  I use dry mustard, prepared mustard has some vinegar in it.    I prefer lemon juice, but vinegar, particularly flavored vinegars, add flavor.  The oil is very important.  The lighter in color and weight the oil, the more white the mayo.  Oil does add flavor and any kind of oil will probably work.

The mayonnaise will thicken and turn white.

Remove the mayonnaise from the blender.

            Some flavorings I heard of are siracha, wasabi, sweet pickle juice (the flavoring in Miracle Whip) horseradish, hot sauces, mixing different mustards with the mayo, and the list can go on and on.

I flavored half the mayo with sirachi

A little sirachi goes a long way

It turn the mayo into a beautiful
light pink.

This Week in Punkin’s Kitchen

 

Allemande Sauce

            This sauce is also call Blonde Sauce or Sauce Parisienne. It is basically Velouté sauce emulsified with egg and is good for use with veal, poultry, fish, shellfish, eggs and vegetables.  The recipe for velouté was posted on October 7, 2016.



Allemande Sauce

 

2 C      Velouté sauce, veal or chicken

¼ C     Heavy cream

1          Egg yolk

            Salt and white pepper to taste

            Squeeze of lemon juice

            Bread crumbs for garnish

 

The ingredients

1.    Make the velouté sauce and continue to cook and reduce to the desire amount.

 

Beat the egg yolk very thoroughly

.

2.    Beat the egg yolk in small bowl.  Temper the yolk with a tablespoon of the hot velouté.

3.    Add to the sauce and whisk quickly to incorporate the egg in the sauce.

 

I used chicken veloute.  Work quickly
to incorporate the egg yolk before it
curdles. 

 

4.    Add the cream, salt and white pepper and taste.

 

Whisk to incorporated the cream and
seasonings

 

5.    When the sauce has thickened, remove from the heat and add the lemon juice.

6.    Plate the meat or what you will be serving the sauce over.  Pour the sauce over.

I served the sauce of slices of roast turkey.

7.    Garnish with a dusting of bread crumbs.

8.    Serve remaining sauce in a gravy boat or side dish.

 

Turkey with allemande sauce, mushroom
 risotto and sliced baby bok choy.

 

 

Soup of the Week

Red Lintel Soup

 

2 T       Olive oil

1 lg.     Onion, peeled and finely chopped

2          garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

32 oz. Vegetable broth

8 oz.    Tomato sauce

¼ C     Red lentils

1 med Carrot, peeled and finely chopped

10 oz. Pumpkin or orange winter squash, diced, fresh or frozen

1 T       Cumin, ground

1/8 t     Cayenne pepper

            Juice of ½ lemon

            Salt and pepper to taste

¼ C     Plain yogurt for garnish

¼ C     Cilantro, peeled and finely chopped, for garnish

 

The ingredients

 

1.    In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat.

2.    Add the onion and garlic and cook stirring occasionally until soft, about 5 minutes.

 

Saute the onion and garlic

 

3.    Add the broth, tomato sauce, lentils, carrot, pumpkin, cumin, and cayenne.

 

The carrot added to the onions

 

 

The broth added.  I used vegetable broth.

 

The tomatoes, lentils and pumpkin added.
I had some pumpkin in the freezer and used
it instead of winter squash.

4.    Increase the heat and bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium. 

5.    Cover and simmer until the lentils are soft, about 25 minutes.

6.    Stir in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.

 

I used a stick blender to puree the soup.

The finished soup

 

7.    Serve as is or puree in the soup pot until smooth.

8.    Add enough broth to cover and bring to a boil adding a little water if it is too thick.

9.    Serve in soup bowls and garnish with a table spoon of yogurt and sprinkling of chopped cilantro.

 

Serve with yogurt and a sprinkle of cilantro

From: The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet, by Barbara Rolls, p. 200

 

Happy Cooking!