With Sean Demers
This pistachio maple butter goes well as a spread on breads, such as the Fig Coconut Bread, or it can be drizzled onto seafood or other dishes. It is actually a “beurre blanc” sauce, a classic French sauce made with reduced white wine, vinegar and shallots - into which butter is whisked over a low heat so that the butter emulsifies in the reduction, maintaining its creamy consistency. It is a good sauce to know how to make because if you need to you can whip it up quickly. All you really need is some white wine and butter.
The renowned food and cooking reference book Larousse Gastronomique highlights that there is a discrepancy as to whether the sauce originated in Nantes or Anjou. The story goes that “a chef from Nantes called Clemence forgot to include eggs when attempting to make a béarnaise sauce for the Marquis de Goulaine. It was nevertheless a success.”
Sean Demers, Executive Chef at Keon’s Bistro, demonstrates this play on a beurre blanc which starts with a base of heavy cream. This is called a beurre monte, which is a beurre blanc without the acidity. The addition of heavy cream makes the sauce much more stable; it allows the emulsion to take place without the acidity and, as Demer’s explains, helps the butter not to separate.
Still, as he also points out, it can be a little tricky at first because it is very sensitive to temperature. The butter must be whisked in over a very low heat and once the sauce is made it must be kept at a constant temperature - which is not too hot or too cold; some suggest 110 to 120 F. If you are not using the sauce straight away, Demers suggests that you keep the sauce on a shelf over your oven in your kitchen. If that isn’t possible, you could place the saucepan in a bain marie of luke-warm water.
Demers adds pistachio and maple syrup to his emulsion, which he says go very well together and “in the application that we use them at the restaurant, on the scallop dish”. He also suggests trying it with fish or French toast and explains that it is a rich sauce well suited to cold weather.
This sauce, according to Chef Demers, encourages experimentation - “you can use really any other nut that you like”. Depending on what you are serving it with, you may like to take this further, replacing nuts and maple syrup with finely diced tomato and basil, as in a champagne beurre blanc, or with dill, capers and a squeeze of lemon. Bottom line - it is a very versatile and easy sauce that allows you to experiment.
