Eric Ripert's Port and red wine sauce

[Fish]

In his book "A Return to Cooking", Eric Ripert has a delicious recipe for halibut with grapes and a port-red wine reduction sauce. I've made this sauce on my own several times, and was never sure what the consistency was supposed to be. I suspected the liquid I got was incorrect (though it tasted delicious), and I've since confirmed that with someone who has had the dish prepared by Ripert. Has anyone else tried making this and gotten a nice thick creamy sauce ? What's the secret ? I've tried reducing the port and red wine mixtures by more than the half recommended, and that didn't help: both were still very watery when I was done reducing them. Does this thickness come entirely from the butter ?

Suggestions ? Anyone ?

- S

[Steve Martin]

One of the best ways of thickening without compromising the colour too much is a fecule of arrowroot. Only a little is needed and it is clear when warm.

I think this sauce will need butter as well, but wine sauces can get a bit grey looking with too much.

Reducing well will help the colour as well as thickness.

[paul o' vendange]

When I've run into a consistency problem (but like the taste as is - don't want to concentrate flavors more than they are by further reduction), I go along with Chef Pepin's suggestion of potato starch. It's very cheap, a pure starch (much like arrowroot, thickens beautifully without the glossiness/slickness of corn starch). Available in kosher sections of grocery stores.

Edited July 1, 2003 by paul o' vendange (log)

[hotle]

never tried the recipe, but it sounds yummy!

couple thoughts: first, the amount of liquid you add at the beginning may make the sauce 'watery'; if you add a cup of red and a cup of port, and reduce by half, you've still got a cup of liquid, which could be 'watery', and you'd need to add a whole lot of butter to thicken. or, to get the 'right' amount of liquid remaining for the butter to thicken, you'd have to over-reduce. if you're at a half cup of each, then you're left with a half-cup, which can be thickened with a couple tablespoons of butter.

i like the idea of arrow root......doesn't add any cloudiness, and will indeed give a nice sheen to the sauce without altering flavor.

how soon are you adding the grapes, and is their liquid 'contributing' to the sauce itself? if you're peeling the grapes (hard work, but i've seen it done), or halving the grapes, and cooking them a long time, then you'll add water to the sauce from the grapes.

finally, the type of port you're using, or the mix of port and red wine, could change the thickness. while port is indeed a 'heavier' fortified wine, different ports have different 'thicknesses' (couldn't spell viscos....viscous....ah, what the heck!). my guess is that you're using 'vintage character' port, not the 'good' stuff (vintage or lbv), and not tawny (10yo, 20yo, etc.), but i'm not sure. you might mess about a bit with the brand of port you're using, or the type, or the mix between red wine and port. or, you might muck about with the reduction time for each (add the red wine first, reduce by 1/2, add the port, reduce the remainder by 1/2, add the grapes?), though that may already be part of the recipe.

don't know if you've tried this already, or if any of the ideas help, but i thought i'd try!

matt

[Aquitaine]

OK, I'm going out on a limb here, not having made this, not being a chef, and rarely making sauces with butter...and not having the Ripert recipe, but....

...I wonder whether the temperature of your butter is cold enough before you add it, and whether you are adding it slowly enough, i.e., adding each piece only when the previous one is incorporated? Like for a beurre monte. (And there would be NO need for any thickening agent, e.g., arrowroot....) In other words, I think it's a question of technique, not ingredients....

You might want to check out the recipe for beurre monte in "The French Laundry Cookbook."

On the other hand, in the Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2000, Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman wrote about making a wine reduction WITHOUT butter. Definitely an article worth retrieving from the archives...

[paul o' vendange]

Actually, I spaced out and overlooked you were making a butter-based reduction. I would tend to agree with Aquitaine. Provided your reduction has proceeded enough (and not completely liquid - most of my wine sauces are almost a glaze by the time I "monte" la beurre), keeping the temp low (and steady), and carefully incorporating the cold butter chunk-by-chunk would probably do it.

[Jinmyo]

Has to be butter. Of course the published recipe wouldn't talk about the terrifying quantities of butter that restaurants actually use.

[paul o' vendange]

Has to be butter? Do you mean has to be the butter technique, or the recipe (or wine sauces require butter?). Presume you mean the former.

Edited July 1, 2003 by paul o' vendange (log)

[Steve Martin]

Ahh. Has to be butter. NO need for thickeners.

How silly of me.

[paul o' vendange]

Jinmyo wrote:

Has to be butter.

Actually, Steve, I was not sure what Jinmyo meant by the above. Sorry, should have been more clear and posted the quote.

I am not sure whether Jinmyo means that wine sauces require butter, or that the butter technique used by Fish may have been at issue. For thickening, I agree butter is not needed, if starch is used as liaison, but agree with you and would use a bit of butter regardless - evens out any rough corners from wine acidity.

Edited July 1, 2003 by paul o' vendange (log)

[Michael Laiskonis]

I recently had the opportunity to witness Eric finishing this sauce, though on a grand scale- enough for 120 portions. I didn't get a true sense for the ratio of butter used for the couple quarts or so of reduction, though the process was at once beautiful and somewhat amusing. Mounted a la minute, of course, it required the hands of five or so cooks, Eric and Coco (his chef de cuisine) included. Imagine a bunch of grown men, red faced and sweating, rythmically rocking large saucepans on the hot flat top, the silence pierced only with cries of, "Now. More butter."

Nice sauce.

[Jinmyo]

Heh.

No, I certainly did not mean that no other thickener is required.

Just that if something was missing, it had to be butter. Lots of cold butter.

[Steve Martin]

No problem, Paul. I noticed your 'Has to be butter' had a question mark.

Leaving the particular recipe aside, one of the most satisfying, yet elusive, ways to thicken a fish dish is by the natural action of the albumin in the fish bones.

Poach fish steaks on the bone in the sauce. Remove and cover the fish, then reduce the sauce down in a shallow, straight sided pan. A little butter could well be added, if the sauce suggests it.

The fish is returned to the pan over a miniscule heat and the pan gently shaken (rocked) to and fro. The lapping against the side of the pan forms a viscous sauce, by the emulsifying effect of the fish bones. Any garlic or onion in the sauce also provides some albumin.

Another alternative to butter is to reduce down very well and whisk in olive oil, over a very low heat. On two occasions, I have reduced too far and actually formed a robust mayonnaise, without any egg. Not intended, but gob-smacking nevertheless.

Many chefs will use arrowroot or potato flour (the default fecule) rather than over-reduce and many are using less butter, to keep the flavours 'clean'.

Anyone mixing some butter into their glass of wine? I thought not.

[Jinmyo]

As for myself, I tend to use potato starch. But then, I don't often thicken sauces except by reduction.

[Suzanne F]

I can tell you FOR SURE that it's the butter AND the technique of working it into the sauce. ( I learned to do that sauce when I did my externship at Le Bernardin.)

Remember first of all that the port reduction will be rather syrupy already -- all the sugar in it will be well on the way into caramelization.

Now: when Ripert says:

Add the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter and off the heat, shake the pan in a back-and-forth motion, as though you were popping corn, until the butter melts.  Do not stir or whisk to incorporate the butter.

yes, the butter has to be cold -- as it always should be when you monter au beurre. And he's not kidding about the shake it back and forth, that is truly the motion used. You won't wreck the sauce if you swirl it a tiny bit, but really, you just push the pan away, pull it back, push it, pull it, again and again and again.

I didn't get to see it live, but one night there was a big party, and everyone in the kitchen -- all the cooks, the pastry department, the diswashers, EVERYONE was shaking those pans. Must have been some sight.

[Fish]

Remember first of all that the port reduction will be rather syrupy already -- all the sugar in it will be well on the way into caramelization.

I don't suppose you remember what kind of port was used ? LBV, Tawny, Ruby ... ?

Thanks everyone for the great info - I'll definitely be trying this again soon.

- S

[Suzanne F]

Specifics, no, other than it was ruby. So the color comes from both the wine reduction AND the port reduction.

Oh, and one other thing about the port reduction: once it gets down to about half, you have to watch it very carefully. I can't tell you how many pots I've had to de-carbonize from port that boiled out

Edited July 2, 2003 by Suzanne F (log)

[duckduck]

And the color was amazing...so ruby port, the good stuff and the wine??? What type?

[Michael Laiskonis]

Fish, I'll answer your PM here...

While I was on the sidelines, merely milling around, wiping the occasional plate, waiting to do my own course, one of our sous chefs (among the pot rockers) confirms that the reduction was "almost a syrup", of which they began with maybe three or four quarts, to which, in total eight to ten pounds of butter was added. When I asked what particular wine or port was used, he said that the reduction was made ahead at Le Bernardin and shipped with the rest of the mise en place.

For this dinner, I believe the sauce was used with red snapper and mushrooms (which ones I don't recall).

[Chef Fowke]

There is something really beautiful about creating a sauce, al a minute that does not include any artificial thickeners. Try these proportions with your recipe and see how it works.

8 shallots, very finely chopped

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

4 tablespoons dry white wine

8 ozs good (not salted or frozen), cold butter

Salt and white pepper to taste.

Place the shallots in a heavy saucepan on a very low heat with the vinegar and the wine and soften them until they almost turn to a puree. Add the butter 1/2" cube by 1/2" cube and whisk until the sauce thickens.

We use a little veal jus in our port sauce on our menu monkfish. It adds a nice, unique flavour that is extremely complimentary with firm, meaty fish.

As well, do not be scared to use your electric hand mixer and whip some extra air and froth into the finished product. It will help to thicken and finish the sauce with a desirable texture.

[Jason Perlow]

This was such a popular topic that that Fish and I asked Michael Ruhlman, the co-author of "A Return to Cooking" (and the author of the "French Laundry Cookbook") to do an eGullet Q&A on August 4. So if you guys still can't figure out that sauce, you can yell at him then!

[pixelchef]

Oh how I've missed eG. That Q/A kicks ass.

Edited July 4, 2003 by pixelchef (log)

[Steve Klc]

Brian--in that first sauce of yours, how important is the quality of the vinegar, wine and butter to the resulting sauce? Or is the amount of the shallots so great you realistically can't taste the difference as long as you use "decent" stuff? For instance, what would you use at Fortes--and what would you use if you had a dinner only 75 seat restaurant? The same stuff?

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Reduction+butter sauces finally made sense to me after I read one simple caviat: the cold butter must be incorporated into the hot reduction...without entirely melting. It is this just-not-quite-melted butter that makes the sauce thick. It should be served as a warm sauce, not a hot sauce.

[Chef Fowke]

Brian--in that first sauce of yours, how important is the quality of the vinegar, wine and butter to the resulting sauce?  Or is the amount of the shallots so great you realistically can't taste the difference as long as you use "decent" stuff?  For instance, what would you use at Fortes--and what would you use if you had a dinner only 75 seat restaurant?  The same stuff?

The general rule for beurre blanc and beurre rouge is that you use the same wine you are drinking with dinner as you cook with.

We cook with a second label (VQA) wine packaged large format (16l). My cooks will tell you it tastes good. I bust them at least once a month 'sampling' the cooking wine!

And the butter is important! Spend the extra money and buy sweet butter that has not been frozen. 99% of all salted butter is from grade B dairy and has been frozen. When you add salt to butter it covers up a lot of imperfections.