Salsifis à la Crème

Salsifis à la Crème (salsify in cream) teaches the à la crème finish, one of the quiet grammars of the classical vegetable kitchen. The root first cooks in a blanc, an acidulated flour-water poaching liquid that keeps its flesh pale, then meets butter and cream. One true thing decides the dish: the cream must reduce until it coats the salsify. Stop early and it slides off into the serving dish.

The book's brief direction assumed a vegetable cook with blanc ready, a saucier's instinct for reduction, and enough burners to hold one pot while another finished each order. At home, a nonreactive saucepan and a wide sauté pan do the same work for four people. The brigade's holding pot and separate finishing station are scaffolding and can go; the blanc and the reduction stay because they are the dish. No stock or salamander belongs here. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Dry the cooked roots thoroughly before they meet the butter. Water thins the cream and delays its coating point, while dry salsify takes on a faint butter-gold edge and holds the sauce properly. Then watch the pan rather than the clock: when a spoon drawn through the cream leaves a clean wake and each piece gleams, you are finished.