Learnings

My little brother is one of my favourite people in the world. So, when he began to show a real interest in food an cooking a couple of years ago, it made my heart grow two sizes. See, I've been cooking since I was about 12, and the romance has never waned, whereas his relationship with food has been indifferent at best.



Lately, he's been paying extra attention to what he's eating, with a greater focus on fruits and vegetables. When he asked if he could come over and cook with me, I jumped at the opportunity to ensure his foray into the world of produce would be a tasty and enjoyable one.

We did a tasty pureed vegetable soup, as well as a cous cous with asparagus, and a form of white sauce I've never seen before. Actually, both the recipes we used seemed unnecessarily complicated, imho, but the end results were quite flavourful.

The cous cous and asparagus parts of the dish were as straightforward as you'd imagine. Cook the cous cous in a vegetable stock, and steam the asaparagus.  The sauce, however, called for two hard boiled eggs, which I found a little odd, as, when it came right down to it, it's really just an herbed white sauce. Other than protein (the recipe was from a vegetarian cookbook), I don't think the eggs added anything.

Basically, you hard boil two eggs and blend it with milk until perfectly smooth. Meanwhile you sautee minced garlic in 3 tbsp of butter, add 3 tbsp flour and then blend in the egg/milk mixture. Once that's fully incorporated,  you add parsley, dry mustard and 2 tsp soy sauce, and continue to heat and stir until it starts to thicken.

Really, it's the herbs and seasonings that make this sauce, which is really, really tasty. But yeah, you could totally leave out the egg step, and just do a traditional white sauce. I could also see this sauce going really nicely with a white fish or chicken.

I'm looking forward to the next cooking night with my bro, and imparting more culinary tips and knowledge to him. Welcome to the family, baby bro.