Five simple ingredients, one delicious sauce

Booking a hotel with a kitchen is a great way to save money while on vacation.  Unfortunately, most hotel room kitchens do not come fully stocked with all of the basics that an at-home kitchen contains...creating the potential need to re-invest in many of those basics in order to create delicious meals.  This creates a bit of a conundrum: do I spend money on seasonings to keep the food delicious, or do I save and run the risk of cooking something bland and boring?

Neither.  I have a solution to the problem!

Or rather, I should say, the French have a solution.  The answer is "beurre blanc", an emulsified butter sauce that requires a mere five ingredients:

-dry white wine
-lemon juice
-shallot (or a small onion)
-butter
-salt

(Some recipes also use cream, which helps prevent the sauce from breaking.  I might go this route if I made the sauce again at home, but while on vacation the fewer ingredients I had to buy the better!)

Bonus: This is a sauce that goes particularly well with fish, and fish is a meat that goes particularly well with white wine...meaning that the rest of the bottle won't go to waste.  Also, lemon juice is merely a suggestion...you can really use any kind of citrus (or vinegar) in it's place to change up the flavour.

To make a beurre blanc.....

1) Combine 1/4 cup white wine, 1/4 cup lemon juice, and 2-3 tbsp finely chopped shallot in a small saucepan.

Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and let simmer until the liquid has reduced by about half and has a syrupy consistency.

At this point you may choose to add heavy cream in order to prevent the sauce from breaking.  If you do go that route, add 1/3 cup of heavy cream and bring the mixture back to a boil for 1 minute.  Then continue with the next step.

2) Cut 1 cup of chilled butter into tablespoon sized pieces.  Add butter a few pieces at a time, whisking constantly, and adding new pieces before the the previous ones have completely liquefied.

Don't let the mixture get too hot or else the sauce will break.  To prevent that from happening, lift the pan from the heat occasionally to cool the mixture.

3) Once all of the butter has been added your sauce should have a thick hollandaise-like consistency. Some people like to strain the sauce to remove the shallot, but I don't think that's necessary. (Plus, what kind of fancy hotel kitchen has a medium-mesh sieve?)  Season to taste with salt, and serve warm.

Like I said....delicious with fish!

The quantities given above are only a suggestion, and result in about 1 cup of sauce.  If you don't need that much simply try reducing the quantities by half.  Also, you don't have to use half white wine and half citrus juice: you could just as easily use all white wine or all citrus...it won't change the process, just the flavour of the final sauce.  Feel free to experiment and, as always, enjoy the deliciousness that you have created!!