Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Tuesday Tarragon Cream Sauce

I asked myself what to make for dinner on the eve of Thanksgiving eve, and somewhere within my deep unconscious self a voice answered,

"Tarragon Cream Sauce."

I've never made a tarragon cream sauce. I'm not even sure I've had one in a restaurant. I Googled it. A recipe from Real Simple came up, promising to deliver a creamy tarragon sauce fit for a vegetable, chicken or fish dinner in three simple steps. And the first ingredient is a half bottle of wine. Sold.

Chopped onions, tarragon sprigs and said wine went into a pan, up to a boil, and back down to a simmer for 20 minutes. The smell of boiling wine is new to me - not many tarragon cream sauces get made in our kitchen. Something about the wine and herbs bubbling on the stove gave me that reassured feeling of "Yes! I'm cooking! Nothing has gone wrong!"

Step two calls for a cup of heavy cream and more simmering. I like the very hands-off pacing of the recipe. It gave me plenty of time to devote some attention to a block of brie cheese and more of the wine. As the sauce thickened a bit, I put a garden-variety piece of Atlantic salmon on the stove.

Once the sauce was done, I added the rest of the tarragon and some salt. Voila. I brought the sauce and the fish together to get acquainted. They got along fabulously.

On its own, the sauce is slightly bitter (all those onions, all that wine) but finishes creamy-sweet. Coupled with the salmon, it was a really good, really simple Tuesday night meal. And an excellent excuse to pick up a bottle of wine.

2 comments:

Brian Vanaski said...

Looks great, thanks for sharing!

WestEnder said...

and a cool little plate, too!