Quick Blender Hollandaise from Leite's Culinaria

This Keda Black recipe I found on the food blog Leite's Culinaria

Keda's cookbook can be found here - Sauce Basics: 87 Recipes Illustrated Step by Step

The longer I observe myself and others both in and out of the kitchen, the more I realize we often make things harder on ourselves than need be. Take Hollandaise sauce. True, the classic is lovely. But then, so is this five-minute, five-ingredient blender rendition from French blogger, food writer, and mother of three, Keda Black. Suffice it to say it’s far less exacting, time-consuming, and messy than the classic, yet compromises nothing in taste, texture, or bragging rights. Enough said.—Renee Schettler Rossi

LC What Goes With Hollandaise? Note: Asparagus. Artichokes. New potatoes. Eggs. Steak. Steak and eggs. Eggs Benedict. Crab. Lobster. Salmon. (Shall we go on? We could. But we think you know the potential it possesses.)

Quick Blender Hollandaise Recipe

Active time: 5 minutes Total time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Let bubble for 10 to 15 minutes and then pour through a strainer lined with cheesecloth, discarding the milky solids, or simply pour off the clarified butter, leaving the milky solids in the bottom of the pan.

2. Place the egg yolks and lemon juice in a blender. Blend until the mixture is foamy.

3. With the blender running, gradually add the clarified butter in a thin stream.

4. Season with salt and pepper, and it’s ready! The sauce should be served immediately.

Read more: http://leitesculinaria.com/74247/recipes-blender-hollandaise-sauce.html#ixzz1Tvr1uibV

Book of the Month: The History of Eggs and Other Assorted Food Lore

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What is the history of the egg?

"Eggs existed long before chickens," according to On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. "The first eggs were released, fertilized, and hatched in the ocean. Around 250 million years ago, the earliest fully land-dwelling animals, the reptiles, developed a self-contained egg with a tough, leathery skin that prevented fatal water loss. The eggs of birds, animals that arose some 100 million years later, are a refined version of this reproductive adaptation to life on land. Eggs, then, are millions of years older than birds. Gallus domesticus, the chicken more or less as we know it, is only a scant 4 or 5 thousand years old."

Amazon.com's Book Review

Now, 20 years later, McGee has taken his slightly outdated volume and turned it into a stunning masterpiece that combines science, linguistics, history, poetry and, of course, gastronomy. He dances from the spicy flavor of Hawaiian seaweed to the scientific method of creating no-stir peanut butter, quoting Chinese poet Shu Xi and biblical proverbs along the way. McGee's conversational style—rich with exclamation points and everyday examples—allows him to explain complex chemical reactions, like caramelization, without dumbing them down. His book will also be hailed as groundbreaking in its breakdown of taste and flavor. Though several cookbooks have begun to answer the questions of why certain foods go well together, McGee draws on recent agricultural research, neuroscience reviews and chemical publications to chart the different flavor chemicals in herbs and spices, fruits and vegetables.