Sauce verte

The sauce verte or green sauce, has often been the label of other green sauces, such as the Spanish green mojo or Mexican salsa verde. This recipe is based on classic French cooking traditions and also is the most widely used.

Recipe for 12-15 people:

• 40g baby spinach leaves.
• 40g watercress leaves.
• 20g flat parsley leaves.
• 20g chervil leaves.
• 20g tarragon leaves.
• 4 egg yolks.
• 6 dl vegetable oil.
• 1 tablespoon of good tarragon vinegar.
• 8g salt.
• 1 good pinch of freshly ground pepper.

Pick and wash thoroughly all the herbs. Dry them, then blanch them. When cooled, make sure that the herbs are properly dried. This part of the recipe needs to be done very carefully as the final colour of the sauce depends on the herbs keeping their nice green colouring at this point.

Reduce them into a fine paste into a food processor.

Make the mayonnaise in the usual way and at the end add the herb puré spoonful by spoonful.

Make sure to keep this sauce verte at a stable temperature as it can very quickly split.

The more you eat, the less flavour; the less you eat, the more flavour.

Chinese Proverb

Vegetarian, nut free, dairy free, coeliacs.