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Thursday, July 26, 2012
Tartar Sauce
Tartar sauce is one of the easiest condiments to make. It's a creamy white sauce with a mayonnaise base with herbs, spices, and other ingredients to give it character an depth. It was traditionally used in the Europe to bring out the flavor of steak tartare, but here in the Philippines, we often use it as a condiment to fried or battered fish or seafood.Ingredients
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 tbsp finely minced shallots (sibuyas tagalog)or red/white onion
- 1/2 tbsp pickle relish
- pinch of salt and pepper
Optional ingredients:
- 1 tbsp lemon juice or
- 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1/2 tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped (for seafood)
- 1 tsp mustard
If you have a smallest and cutest little food processor, preparing this sauce will be a breeze. Just peel and slice the onions, add in all your ingredients, and pulse until the onions are chopped finely but not pureed. If you don't have one, then don't worry. Just sharpen your knife, use some elbow grease, and finely mince away.
If you're cooking for a party and you need a big batch of this quick, then by all means -use that expensive food processor that's just been gathering dust in your cupboard! I know someone who spent so much money and bought a top brand of food processor, yet absolutely, positively, adamantly refuses to get even a single finger print on his beautiful equipment. Hey, if you're going to buy something, use it right? It just makes sense that way.
Optional Ingredients
You have your list of optional ingredients there, and it's really up to you if you want to use either one, or all of it. Word of caution: lessen your acids (lemon and vinegar) by half if you intend to use both, and do so with caution. Dill is a good herb, and can go really well with your sauce if you're going to eat seafood - better than parsley in my opinion. Mustard gives your sauce some added zing and flavor, which will actually give your condiment a breath of life.
Making one is easy to make, and the key here is the "curing" time. Your mayonnaise needs to embrace all that flavor and the high fat content will definitely make the diffusion of flavors in the sauce be like a turtle race. Once you get all your ingredients in, cover your container with cling wrap and store in the fridge at least an hour before serving. Overnight is even better.
What Can Go Wrong
You can't go wrong with tartar sauce unless you don't know what you're doing. It's just mix and store away for "future" use. However, accidents can still happen, right?
- Condiment is too salty - did you add more than a pinch of salt in the mix before you stored it in the fridge for cooling? As I've said earlier, the spread of flavors in emulsified fat is very slow, so tasting the condiment before you store it and trusting that flavor to be your condiment's taste when you serve it is suicide. Let the flavors come together, then taste your condiment before serving to see if you do need to add more salt. For me a pinch of salt is already fine, especially if you're going to serve it with a salty dish.
- Condiment has "chunks of skin" - You did not cover your container before storing it in the fridge. Or, you stored your sauce in the fridge for too long and did not seal your container properly. If you have to store your condiment overnight, you should place a cling wrap directly at the surface of your condiment to prevent a skin or film from forming.
- Condiment is breaking apart - you added your acid too fast. You have to drizzle your acid and whisk or mix rapidly in order to prevent the acid from breaking the emulsification of fat and protein of your mayo. Pretty technical, so I won't go Alton Brown on you and go all scientific - I'm boring that way. ;)
So, now you got a really easy, really tasty tartar sauce for fish fillets, calamari, and even chicken fingers or chicken lollipops, and chicken morcon.
Thank you for visiting my blog and I hope you enjoyed reading it.
See you around!
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