Vegetable melange with beurre blanc
A beautiful side dish of a mix of vegetables with a rich beurre blanc sauce. It’s the perfect accompaniment to simple grilled fish.
Ingredients
- 10–12 waxy new potatoes, scrubbed
- few sprigs fresh mint
- 12 asparagus spears
- 400g/14oz broad beans, removed from the pods
- 12 small baby carrots, scrubbed
- 8 baby turnips, halved
- 1 bunch spring onions, trimmed
- 2 bulbs wet (new season) garlic, trimmed and sliced lengthways
- 50²µ/1¾´Ç³ú butter
- good pinch caster sugar
- handful mixed fresh fines herbes (chervil, chives, tarragon and parsley), chopped
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the beurre blanc
- 50²µ/1¾´Ç³ú shallots or onion, roughly chopped
- 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 4 tbsp dry white wine
- 6 tbsp water or fish stock
- 2 tbsp double cream
- 175g/6oz unsalted butter, cut into pieces
Method
Boil the potatoes in salted water with a few sprigs of mint until tender, then drain.
Bring a large pan of water to the boil and take it in turns to blanch the asparagus, broad beans, carrots, turnips, spring onions and garlic for 1 minute each; removing from the water using a slotted spoon and plunging into ice-cold water to refresh.
Heat the butter in a wide pan over a low-medium heat, add the carrots and turnips, a pinch of salt and a really good pinch of sugar, and cook for 5 minutes or until al dente.
To make the beurre blanc, put the shallots, vinegar, wine and water or stock in a small pan, bring to the boil and simmer until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Strain into another pan to remove the shallots. Add the cream and boil to reduce a little more, then remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the butter a little at a time until it has all amalgamated and the sauce has the consistency of double cream. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Bring the large pan of water back to the boil, add the potatoes, asparagus, broad beans, spring onions and garlic and cook for a few seconds, then drain well.
Arrange all the vegetables on a platter and scatter over the chopped herbs. Serve with the beurre blanc.
Recipe Tips
You can also make the sauce by reducing the shallots, vinegar and wine and adding the cream as above, then adding a couple of tablespoons of water, bringing the sauce to a rapid boil and whisking the butter into the boiling sauce. This will produce a slightly less light sauce. It is also the way to reconstitute a sauce which has got too hot and separated.
At the restaurant, when serving beurre blanc with fish, we use well-reduced fish stock, which gives the sauce roundness.
