Wednesday leftovers + braised cabbage, sauteed mushrooms, artichokes with beurre blanc

To accompany the leftover sausage and lentils from Sunday night, I did another round of sweet-sour braised cabbage and sauteed the last of the mushrooms from the risotto. I also steamed a couple artichokes (last things from last week's CSA box) and made a beurre blanc to accompany them.

I tried to make beurre blanc a while ago (more than a year, since it's not in my blog archives), but I winged the recipe and, surprise surprise, it didn't emulsify. This time I used the recipe from Techniques and it worked just fine. It's obvious to me why this sauce is a classic: it's wonderful. Paired with very flavorful artichokes it was even more wonderful.

For the hell of it, here's the recipe. This makes 2-3 dinner-sized portions or enough for 4 artichokes, we have leftovers that I'm going to try and salvage tonight.

1 shallot, very thinly sliced
1/3 cup water
2 Tbs white wine vinegar
a pinch of freshly fine ground white pepper
a good pinch of salt
1 Tbs heavy cream
6 oz good unsalted butter (I used Plugra), cut into 12 pieces

Put all the ingredients except the cream and butter in a small stainless steel pan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a low simmer and cook for 25 minutes, adding more water if it starts to look dry.
Strain the sauce into a cup, pressing everything out of the shallots, wipe out the cooking pan, and pour the liquid back into the pan.
If you have more than about 3 tablespoons of liquid left: add the cream and a couple pieces of butter, raise the heat to high, and boil for a bit to drive off some liquid. Allow the pan to cool for a few minutes.
Otherwise: add the cream.
Put the pan, which should be lukewarm, back over very low heat and whisk in the butter one piece at a time. Whisk thoroughly! Whisk until your arm hurts!
Stop adding butter when you're happy with the consistency of the sauce. If you need to add more than 6 oz, go for it!
Taste and adjust salt.
Serve the sauce immediately or let it stand in a warm place (near the stove, perhaps) until ready to serve. It'll hold as long as it doesn't get too hot or cool enough for the butter to start to set.