Kitchen Basics: Herb Mayonnaise (Sauce Tartare)

There are few sauces easier to make than the French classic sauce tartare, a sauce based on mayonnaise, for which reason I prefer to call it herb mayonnaise. And truth be told, this lets me add any damned herbs that I want without running afoul of those who claim that tartar sauce can only be made just so. It is a beautiful sauce for fish and seafood, chicken and poultry, and light white meats such as pork and veal.

Herb Mayonnaise (Sauce Tartare)

You'll find all kinds of recipes out there including any manner of ingredients. I prefer a pretty simple version myself using the classic fines herbes that I happen to have on hand. Which is to say, that although I have something of a recipe, each manifestation is different depending on the season and the ingredients that I happen to have.

Herb Mayonnaise Ingredients
Dill, Tarragon, Lemon, Cornichons, Chives, Mayo

The classic fines herbes are four: Italian (flat) parsley, tarragon, chives, and chervil. I seldom have chervil on hand (it's so hard to come by in the US that we used to grow it for our own use at the restaurant). I can hardly resist the temptation to add baby dill to this list if I happen to have it. I really think it adds another dimension to the other herbs, but you will almost never find this ingredient called for in classic recipes.

Although I love and use copious amounts of Italian parsley in my cooking, for the version of herb mayonnaise above, I omitted it, simply because I had so much dill, tarragon, and chives on hand that I wanted to use before they spoiled.

I aways add cornichons, finely minced, to the sauce and I will use the tiny non-pareil ("without equal") capers in brine if I happen to have them, but I do not right now in the food desert that is Central Oregon. I'm not a fan of the coarser salted capers for this sauce, but in a pinch, you can soak them well to remove some of the salt.

At home, I do not typically make the mayonnaise base as it is a lot of work for a small quantity of sauce. Of course at the restaurant when making liters of sauce at a time, making the mayonnaise is de rigueur. So at home, I typically start with commercial mayonnaise, about which I am ultra-picky. I, like most southerners and most chefs of my acquaintance, insist on Duke's. It's Duke's or bust for me.

To the mayonnaise, I add the finely minced herbs, cornichons, and capers. After mixing, I taste for three things: salt, piquancy, and acidity. Salt, you need to be careful with because both capers and cornichons are already salty. If I am using commercial mayo, I will almost always add a fair amount of lemon juice for acidity and a scant sprinkle or two of white pepper for piquancy (you cannot really taste the pepper, but it enhances all the other flavors). If I am using purpose-made mayo, I will have already added both the lemon juice and white pepper when whipping the mayo.

Herb mayo is best made in advance so that the herbs have time to infuse into the mayonnaise. I will typically make it in the morning for use in the evening, letting it mellow all day in the refrigerator. Like soup, sauce tartare is best the next day. But because it contains fresh herbs, you should only make it in the quantity that you will use within a day or perhaps two.

Other cooks, including many renowned French chefs that I admire, will add other ingredients, but those ingredients are not for me. They could include cayenne, mustard, hardboiled egg yolks, onion (yellow or green), or shallot. As I've said many times before on this blog, it's your dish and you are free and even encouraged to do it your way.

Clams on the Grill

Clams on the brain. I have had clams on the brain for a couple of weeks now and I couldn't figure out why until I just noticed a bowl of steamed clams staring back at me from the cover of the latest edition of La Cucina Italiana. That magazine, which I haven't had have time to read, is sitting on top of a stack of other culinary magazines that likewise haven't been read and nor will they, more than likely ending up in the recycle bin, unappreciated, all for want of time. But those clams have been sending me subliminal signals for a couple weeks now I suppose, sitting there atop the pile on the chair next to my desk. And so to calm the visions of clams dancing around in my brain, I finally ordered a bag from the seafood company.

When the first squash of the year arrived on Friday, I knew I wanted to eat them and the clams too, so I devised a very simple dish cooked all on the grill outside to keep the kitchen cool. Simplicity is always good on my day off.

All Prepped and Waiting for the Grill to Warm

While prepping this very first squash of the year and the other things for the grill, I also quartered a pint of local cherry tomatoes and put them in a large bowl with some extra virgin olive oil and two huge handsful of herbs from the garden: basil, purple basil, fennel fronds, garlic chives, and rosemary.

Clams, Zucchini, Kuta and Yellow Squash, Fennel, Torpedo Onion, Garlic, Chorizo

Clams roast very well on the top shelf of the grill while the rest of dinner is cooking on the grates down below.

Ready for Assembly

As each item cooked, I removed it from the grill. Once all was cooked, I chopped the chorizo and vegetables, making sure to remove the cores from the fennel, and mixed the vegetables with the tomato-herb mixture and the clams.

Grilled Clams and Vegetables

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Now that our nominal frost date has past, we have got most of the garden planted. With only three tiny raised beds (less than 100 square feet), we have to be careful about what we plant: there has to be a good food return to real estate used ratio. So, potatoes, melons, and corn are all out. They take too much room for the food they supply us. Beth is happy to sell us all these things and more.

This year, so far, we have 3 types of tomatoes, yellow squash, green squash, sugar snaps, leeks, fennel, two kinds of peppers, and yellow haricots filets. For herbs, we have rosemary, sage, two kinds of thyme, chives, garlic chives, lovage, oregano, lemon balm, dill, basil, cilantro, and Italian parsley. Cucumbers will go on the trellis when the peas come out. Thai basil will go in whenever we get around to it.

Chives, a bit past their prime

Rosemary and Sage

Sugar snap peas, struggling for height this year

And finally a couple of shots from the back yard, our little oasis where we dine when the weather cooperates.

One of our many Rudbeckia plants

Trumpet vine, for our hummingbird friends

Backyard Bounty

I had a tasting at the restaurant last evening and because of lots of other things going on, I wasn't able to focus on the menu in advance. Thursday morning dawned with no plan. But, while I was out walking the dogs, I saw that some of the locust blooms were just starting to open and that gave me the little spark I needed. I walked around the backyard with a bag and collected edibles, both wild and domesticated, for my dinner.

From the lower left clockwise: lemon balm, citrusy in a lemongrass kind of fashion; sheep sorrel, tart and lemony in that oxalic sourgrass way; wild mustard leaves and blooms, sharp and fresh just like domestic mustards; black locust blossoms, tasting divinely like a mix of green pea and honeysuckle; sugar snap tendrils, tasting just like the snap pods themselves; fennel fronds, tasting just like the yet-to-develop bulbs; lovage, like celery with a twist; and cilantro blossoms, gorgeous and tasting like the rest of the plant.

A Fair Garden

After a day of cooking Thanksgiving dinner, Ann blurted out to me in the way that only she can, "I don't want to ever live in another house without a garden where I can pick fresh parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme!" I found it amusing that the lyrics to Scarborough Fair are so ingrained in our culture that they always come out in this same order.

“Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine.”

This litany of herbs dates to the 19th century and although nobody knows for certain when this idea originated, it is very likely medieval or older. I am struck by the fact that although Ann is relatively new to fresh herbs from the garden, that she has come to value most highly four herbs that have been valued highly for centuries in Western civilizations.

I might add chives to this list, but certainly the canonical four herbs are the four that we use most out of our own garden. And they were certainly the first four herbs in the ground when we established our garden some two seasons ago. And fear not, my love, they will always be in our garden for we cannot cook without them. Fresh herbs are the sine qua non of all good cooking.

Thus from our fair garden even in this chilly season I give you: