New recipe

Normally, I'd photodocument a recipe worthy of a blog post, but I didn't realize this would be one of those recipes so I didn't take pictures.  I cook a lot, and not every grilled item or slightly novel sauce is worth spending the time to photograph and write about....

Honestly I don't like this sauce at all.  I think it's pretty horribly disgusting.  However, I have a second opinion in the house now and he happened to love this sauce more than anything else on the table, and so I will share in case you happen to have a similar palate in your own home.

To start with, I was crunched for time and I was making spaghetti squash (recipe and post to follow) and I knew the "other palate" in the house positively despises the flavor of cooked tomatoes as in a robust marinara sauce.  I figured I should whip something up to make him happy, so I first looked in the fridge and saw half a bottle of aging white wine and some sour cream, and then looked up "white wine sauce" on foodnetwork.com.

Bobby Flay was the first hit, and so I thought I'd try his recipe.  He said saute shallots and garlic in some olive oil, add some cream, then add butter.  I missed the part about straining the sauce, though.

Anyway, I had no shallots, so I just sauteed half an ordinary yellow onion in some olive oil, then added a few tsp of canned minced garlic, and let that saute while I found the wine.  I added 1 c cold wine, then went to the living room to organize paperwork and watch my show until the wine evaporated down to about half a cup.  Because I didn't hover over the pot stirring, the onion and garlic that sunk to the bottom browned up, let's say "nicely," shall we?  Then I added a couple tablespoons of sour cream, because I didn't have real cream, and stuck the concoction in a food processor attachment to my immersion blender after learning how big a mess an immersion blender can make when it is not fully immersed.  Let's just say it's a big mess and move on, shall we?

After that, I stopped reading the recipe.  I remembered 2 each cream and butter, and assumed both were measured in tablespoons.  If you read Bobby Flay's recipe, you'll see he meant 2 tablespoons cream and 2 sticks of butter.  Butter measured in sticks rather than tablespoons?!  This is looking like a Paula Deene recipe!!  I stuck to 2 tablespoons of butter, and when I tasted the sauce it needed salt, so I added some.  I also thought, "Wow, this tastes a lot like old socks and the only redeeming characteristics are the butter, onion, and garlic; this sauce SUCKS!!"

Well, the "other palate" loved it, so apparently I am either out of touch or just way too picky about my cream sauces.  To recap:  I took a tried and true recipe, bastardized it by using substitutions, then further bastardized it by not using anywhere near enough butter, the main ingredient, and somehow ended up with one of those rare, "I would request this meal again" ratings from my pretty picky judge.  All this when I positively hated the sauce....

Ingredients:
1/2 small onion
2 Tbsp canned minced garlic
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 c dry white wine (chardonnay or something, pick a cheap wine you'd be willing to drink if the apocalypse hit and it was all you had left)
2 Tbsp sour cream
2-4 Tbsp salted sweet cream butter

Protocol:
Saute onion in hot olive oil until tender, add garlic and cook just until you can pry the cork out of the wine bottle and pour it into the measuring cup.  Add wine and bring to a boil while you go clip your fingernails, water your garden, hang up the laundry to dry, or whatever it is you do while you wait for things.  When the volume is about half of what it was, add sour cream and stir until mostly blended, and finish the operation in a small food processor to break the onion down into small enough pieces that your local onion hater will not notice the presence of onion.  Put back in the pan over low heat, and whisk in butter.  Because your local onion hater will invariably be late by 30 minutes to two hours, pour sauce into a pretty oven-safe bowl and put it into an oven set to "warm," typically about 175 F, unless you have gas heat, and then just turn the stove to "low" and google your favorite blog to pass the time until he finally shows up hungry.  Take pictures even if you hate your sauce, because you never know, this could be a "I love this meal enough to ask you to make it again" opportunity.