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Cucumber Sauce
Cucumber, a plant that seems to be most adaptable to fish, can be treated as follows: Mince 1 cucumber, add to it 1 tablespoonful of vinegar and a pinch of salt. Stir this into Hollandaise sauce, and serve.
A compound sauce that assumes you already have hollandaise on the stove; the cucumber is the only thing described. The whole success of it rests on getting water out of the cucumber before it meets the emulsion.
- Drain the cucumber firstMinced cucumber sheds a great deal of liquid, and that liquid will thin or break a hollandaise. Salt the mince, let it sit 15 minutes in a sieve, then press or wring it in a towel before adding the vinegar.
- Peel and seedPeel and scrape out the seed core, or use a Persian or Lebanese cucumber, which needs neither.
- The pinch of saltIf you salt the cucumber to draw out water as above, the salt in the recipe has already been used. Season the finished sauce at the end rather than adding more blindly, since hollandaise is already salted.
- How much hollandaiseNone is specified. One medium cucumber, drained, gives roughly half a cup of mince, which would suit about a cup of hollandaise (3 yolks, 6 oz butter). Much more cucumber than that risks thinning the sauce.
- VinegarThe book does not say which vinegar. A plain white wine vinegar sits most quietly against the butter; cider or malt will read sharper and fruitier.
- Add off the heatStir the cucumber in at the last moment, with the pan off the burner. Hollandaise is unstable if overheated -- keep it well below a simmer -- and cold cucumber dropped into a hot emulsion can split it.
- Egg safetyHollandaise is only lightly cooked and may not reach a pasteurising temperature. Use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised.
- Yield and servingRoughly a cup, enough for four to six portions of fish. It suits poached or baked white fish and salmon; serve it warm, and do not attempt to hold or reheat it.