Recipe: White Miso Sabayon

a savory sabayon for most anything under the sun

I’m cooking out at a winery outside of Portland, Oregon for the summer called No Clos Radio, and we’ve been getting in beautiful Hakurei turnips from nearby Zephyr Farm. One of my first tasks was to put a new vegetable dish on the menu, and I wanted to come up with something that played on both the natural umami and creaminess of the turnips. A savory sabayon, a sauce I’ve seen on menus in Portland, Charleston, and Paris recently, seemed like a perfect fit. Sabayon is traditionally a sweet sauce, a way to take leftover wine and make it creamy and decadent, and is generally served with fresh fruit or cake. It does a lot of work all at once: a slight acidity from the wine, a richness from eggs, sweetness from sugar, and sometimes a little butter mixed in at the end for good measure. The whole thing is something of a miracle, emulsifying and expanding into a foamy mass in a double boiler as you whisk and whisk and whisk.

Savory versions do all of that too but only incorporate a touch of sweetness. This is my version, made with a touch of white miso, dashi, and brown butter, and it could go with a whole lot of things. Turnips, of course: I cook them at the winery by cutting them into wedges, leaving the greens attached, and searing them in sesame oil on both exposed sides before adding a bit of dashi to the pan and covering to finish cooking them through, which is another way to say that putting the same care and technique that one uses with meat and applying it to vegetables yields great results. But the last of the season’s asparagus would work beautifully as well, and green beans in summer, and pumpkin come fall. Chicken or white fish are also natural fits for this–I had a beautiful dish at Le Servan of trout and carrots seared with lemon and served with a brown butter sabayon.

One note: this sauce will keep in the fridge, but the foamy ariness will dissipate as it sits, and it can get grainy as well when the butter solidifies. It’s always best served fresh, but you can put it back in a double boiler and whisk again to bring it back to life. Should it break and separate, add another splash of wine or dashi and whisk til smooth

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White Miso Sabayon

makes a little over 1 pint

Ingredients:

1 large egg + 2 egg yolks

1 ½ Tbsp white miso

⅓ cup (80g) dry white wine–leftover, oxidized wine is great for this, but anything will do

½ cup (about 120g) dashi, chicken stock, or veg stock

2 tsp honey or maple syrup

127g (1 stick + 1 Tbsp) butter, preferably browned, at room temp

1 Tbsp lemon juice

Salt to taste

Instructions:

Whisk the egg and yolks together with the miso in a bowl that can fit atop a double boiler. Add in the wine, dashi, and honey and whisk until smooth. Place over a double boiler and cook, whisking constantly, until it begins to turn pale and thicken. It should grow in volume as air gets incorporated into the cooking eggs. As soon as the mixture can coat the back of a spoon, remove from the double boiler and whisk in the butter a little bit at a time. Whisk until smooth, and add in the lemon juice to finish.

Taste and see what it needs: if it needs more salt, you can add more miso or simply kosher salt. Add in another few tablespoons of butter, if you want it richer, or more wine or dashi if you want it lighter. If you’re serving this with something very rich on its own, like a fatty fish, add in a touch more lemon.