The chef’s secret: sea buckthorn beurre blanc

Rosah van Schendelen reached the final of MasterChef Netherlands several years ago and currently works as head chef at A Beautiful Mess restaurant in Amsterdam’s Bijlmer Bajes. In The chef’s secret, Rosah explains how you can apply a high-end cooking technique in your own kitchen. This week: a sauce made from a berry you can pick yourself.

I’m a huge fan of everything that comes from our own soil. Being able to see how something grows, pick it when the time is right and eventually use it in a dish. During a walk through the woods or along the beach of my personal favorite, the Wadden Islands, you come across all kinds of things. Think samphire, cranberries, shore crabs, oysters and, of course, sea buckthorn berries. The bright orange berries grow in the dunes, on a tree covered in sharp thorns. It takes quite a bit of hard work to get a decent amount of sea buckthorn into your pockets, but the hard work is definitely rewarded.

AA

When I first tasted sea buckthorn berries, they mainly reminded me of the flavor of the AA energy drink. That may sound excessively sweet and disrespectful, but with the right dosage, the fresh flavor can really elevate certain dishes. At restaurant Breda, I began to truly appreciate the berries. For example, processed in a dessert with rice cream, yogurt meringue, kaffir lime leaf oil and sea buckthorn sorbet. The “having to taste everything all the time” that we chefs have to do was really a treat then.

Christmas dinner?

What I particularly like is that you can still find them in winter. And that you can use them in all kinds of ways. So you still have plenty of time to come up with a flavorful dish for the upcoming Christmas dinner. For example, make a dried apricot tarte tatin with sea buckthorn caramel, or a white chocolate cheesecake with sea buckthorn curd.

Or make a deliciously fresh salad with grilled chicken, spinach and sea buckthorn dressing. Or what I personally find incredibly delicious: a beautiful seasonal fish from a local fishmonger, fried in beurre noisette, served with sea buckthorn beurre blanc. And that is exactly the recipe I’m going to share with you.

Method

1. Make the sea buckthorn juice by pressing the berries or grinding them in a food processor and passing them through a fine sieve. Taste the juice beforehand so you know how sweet or sour it is. If the juice is very sour, you can make it slightly less tart by adding a little powdered sugar. Be careful to keep the juice fresh and, above all, not make it sweet. Of course, you can also buy it! Look for a juice that isn’t sweet, or even a vinegar. Fresh sea buckthorn berries are also available from various suppliers.
2. Finely chop the shallots and put them in a small saucepan together with 230 ml of the sea buckthorn juice, the bay leaf and peppercorns. Reduce until one-third remains.
3. Strain the mixture and add the cream. Bring to a boil and reduce until two-thirds remains. Add the cold cubes of butter and the remaining 20 ml of sea buckthorn juice. Taste the sauce and add salt and, if desired, a little lemon juice.
6. Now fry the fish until nicely cooked in the beurre noisette.
7. Serve with the beurre blanc and finish the dish with some briny, briefly fried samphire and potatoes fried in butter.