Anti Cholesterol Vegetarian Starter

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The other day my physician congratulated me : 'In less than three months, you have eaten all the cholesterol you will need for this year'. It felt really good at the time, but then a friend suggested I reduce my cholesterol intake. 'Yes, but how?' , I asked. 'Simple, just eat vegetables.' So I looked for a truly vegetarian recipe in the hope it would keep me out of the Guinness' Book of World Records under the heading 'Cholesterol'.

Read and learn how to poach an egg like a Swiss chef and how to make Béarnaise sauce like a French chef

Béarnaise Avocadoes
As a starter for 4
Or a light dinner for myself
2 mature avocadoes
5 eggs
100gr butter
Fresh chervil, tarragon and parsley
2 shallots
1 bay leaf
White wine vinegar
White wine
Pinch of salt
1 tsp crushed peppercorns
Kitchen string, plastic foil, a couple pots
This recipe was served as a first course 40 years ago as Avocats Fermont at Le Chanzy, a restaurant in Arras, France.

I will use this fancy copper bain marie pot to prepare the béarnaise sauce, but you can use any salad bowl placed on a pot of boiling water. I've been eyeing this pot for 5 years now at Mora and Dehillerin in Paris, and managed to snatch one on Ebay from a French lady who barely used it. It is made in two parts with the water downstairs and the sauce upstairs, with a ceramic ring between the two. Unless you spill some, the food is never in contact with the raw copper.

Anybody can do a béarnaise sauce by following my recipe. Béarnaise [bay-ar-nayz] is a member of the hot emulsion family of sauces, where fat is emulsified using egg yolks on a low heat. Béarnaise is a cult sauce, everybody's favorite and always a hit with cardiologists. It is flavored with tarragon infused in vinegar and then reduced. You can also use clarified butter instead of regular butter. But, as we are dieting, we'll use plain butter today.

Start by dicing finely 2 shallots.

drop them into the pot. Here I am using the bain marie (pot on a pot of water) also for the reduction, but it would be quicker and more rational to use a regular casserole and only use the bain marie when the egg comes into play.

Add the wine and vinegar. Their job is to provide acidity to balance the butter's heavy blandness.

A bay leaf now.

Finely snip the tarragon and chervil.

Add the herbs with parsley stalks (the part that is usually discarded when you snip parsley) and a teaspoon of freshly crushed pepper.

Let the vinegar boil until is reduces to a few tablespoons of liquid.

Filter out the herbs and discard them. Do not mourn these herbs, they have served their purpose and given their very best to the vinegar reduction. They can now rest, content of having fulfilled their ambition in life.

If needed, let the filtered vinegar, now flavored with paradisiac herbal fragrance, boil some more until you get about 2 tablespoons of liquid.

Pour the reduction into the bain marie pot. Make sure whatever you are using to cook this is not placed directly over a flame but rather on a pot filled with boiling water, otherwise your sauce will break as the egg yolk coagulates and the béarnaise will be on you and your children for 777 generations. With the acidity increase due to the vinegar, the yolk might not coagulate before you reach 91°C / 195°C. But when the yolk has coagulated because your pot was just too hot, then your sauce is lost, kaput, FUBAR and TOFUED, and you can order some Chinese take-away for your guests. So please do watch the temperature!

Wait until the vinegar has cooled down a bit, then add the egg yolks. If the vinegar's temperature exceeds 68°C, it might coagulate as you drop it in the vinegar. If this happens to you, just filter the egg out, wait until the vinegar has cooled down some more, then start again with another yolk.

2 tablespoons of cold water are added so that we get an oil-in-water emulsion when we later add the butter.

We will now add, tablespoon by tablespoon, butter at room temperature, and whisk it into the egg, water and vinegar mixture. Since they are collectively more numerous than the little of bit of butter we add, the butter's fat will emulsify using the egg yolk and make tiny fat droplets surrounded by water molecules. That is what we want.

As soon as one tablespoon of butter has been fully absorbed in the sauce and you again have a smooth mixture, now one shade paler, if not lighter, continue with another tablespoon of butter. Continue until you run out of butter. Finish by adding some freshly snipped herbs into the sauce. Some people will tell you that this sauce is heavy, but as my Mom always says, 'It is not the béarnaise sauce that makes people fat, but rather what they eat with the sauce.

Now we will poach the eggs. Most people fear egg poaching and would never dream of doing this for guests by fear of ending up with egg white shrapnel soup. Well, from now on you will be able to poach eggs like a chef with no fear in your heart. Here is how Philippe Rochat poaches his eggs. It is burger-flipper-proof.

Take one egg per guest, a very small bowl or glass, kitchen string and plastic foil. Place a large square of plastic foil inside the bowl (bottom left), slightly oil the plastic foil inside the cavity to ensure the egg won't stick. Break the egg into the bowl.

Carefully remove the plastic paper like a little bag.

Tie it up with a piece of string. Do not worry, the hen inside the yolk won't get out. Proceed with three more eggs.

You can also add a few tarragon leaves inside the bag with the egg (look closely above the yolk).

Poach in hot water for 3 minutes or 300 minutes, as you like your eggs.

Remove, cut the string and open. If you forgot to grease the plastic with a little oil, some of the egg white might stick to the sides like it did here. But no big deal, and perfect poached eggs every time!

Cut your avocadoes in half, then use the blade like I do above to remove the pits, unless you plan to plant them. I'm told that if the avocadoes you found are too hard, you could simmer then in hot water for a few minutes. Frankly, I have never done this and like my avocadoes so mature that the grocer often hesitates to charge me. Sincere avocado gerontophilia, as Gérard Oberlé would have it.

A spoonful of béarnaise sauce...

...then an egg...

... and then more béarnaise sauce.

That's it. I could eat half a dozen of these, as a vegetarian first course.

You could serve this with salad, but then it would become a real calorie bomb. Let's keep reasonable here.

Book tips: For an excellent discussion on béarnaise and many more detailed, serious explanations on fundamental cooking techniques, Madeleine Kamman's The New Making of a Cook is a must and worthy investment for anybody serious about cooking. For a more scientific angle, Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen is the best available in English.