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Butter and white wine ... already you know this is good!

These are the key ingredients for beurre blanc (literally "white butter"), a traditional French sauce with simple ingredients. Quite elegant and versatile for many dishes, it's full of garden flavors.

Brown an onion in some olive oil. Add salt and pepper for flavor and then add garlic once the onion begins to caramelize. This is the background and foundation of your sauce; the caramelized bits of onion and garlic are the keepers of amazing flavor. The wine will deglaze the pan, releasing the browned goodness of the aromatics. Allow the wine to come to a simmer and reduce by a third. This step, reducing the wine, intensifies the flavor of the wine, concentrating the bouquet and natural essence of the wine. Tossing in a couple bay leaves awakens the sauce and steeps their flavor in the wine reduction.

Now for the namesake: butter. Add the cubed butter in shifts, whisking the butter into the sauce and allowing it to thoroughly melt. Once the butter has thoroughly melted into the wine, the smooth sauce can now be livened up even more with fresh lemon juice and zest. White pepper makes a great complement to this easy sauce as well.

With the basics of this sauce under your belt, this sauce can be created year-round and then flavored with the best of each season's garden produce. That's the essence of garden living: taking a standard dish or sauce and altering it to suit each special time of year.

Whether you make your beurre blanc in the summer and infuse the sauce with summer herbs, make it with toasted pecans in the fall, with rosemary in the winter, or parsley and chervil in springtime, prepare this sauce as a toast to the season!

The Farmer's Beurre Blanc

Extra-virgin olive oil

1 large Vidalia onion (or any other white onion will do)

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