You Saucey Sauce, You!

So, we devoted a whole month to sauces, which will probably turn into a few blog entries. Talk about information overload!!!

What is a sauce?

• Liquid + thickening agent + seasoning (spices, herbs, etc.)
• A sauce is thicker than a soup, but uses a similar process to soup to create it - prep, saute veggies/herbs, add liquids, add thickening agent, finishing touches and serve.
  

We covered the five mother sauces, plus buerre blanc/rouge, salsas, coulis and compound butters. This blog will discuss the five mother sauces.

Do you know the five mother sauces?

1. Bechamel: Considered a white sauce. Made by adding heavy cream or scalded milk to roux (some sources say white roux, some say blonde roux - we used blonde). The cream or milk is often flavored with onion and clove or onion and bay leaves and strained before adding to roux. A bechamel sauce should be rich, creamy and smooth and is often used in pasta dishes, vegetables dishes and egg dishes. There are several versions of a bechamel - cheese sauce, cream sauce, mornay sauce (guyere and parmesan and cream added to base bechamel - recommended for chicken scallapini), nantua (cream and seafood butter), soubise (extra butter and onions) and many more.

• Our instructor said you can add almost anything to a bechamel to make it into a flavorful sauce.
• Any cream sauce should not be heated past 190 degrees F. The ideal temperature range is 170 degrees F to 190 degrees F. You add roux to the sauce when it is 170 to 180 degrees F.
  

2. Veloute: Considered a clear sauce. A sauce made by thickening a veal, chicken or fish stock with roux. Veloutes are smooth, rich and lump free. You match the stock with the dish (i.e. fish stock for a fish dish). Veloutes should be thick enough to cling to food, but not overpowered by the roux used to thicken it. Examples of veloute sauces include allemande sauce (eggs yolks and lemon juice), supreme sauce (mushrooms), and bercy (shallots and white wine with fish stock), etc.. Like a bechamel sauce, you can make a myriad of veloute sauces with different ingredients.

• Chef does not recommend the allemande sauces b/c they have an eggy taste. So, why not use a hollandaise sauce instead.
  
• Chef most commonly uses a veloute with meats, casseroles, vegetables and seafood (crab and shrimp) dishes. A true veloute sauce always uses a meat stock in the sauce.
  
• Chicken picatta is an example of a veloute sauce dish.
  
• The supreme veloute is a creamy sauce while others are not creamy.
  

3. Espagnole Sauce (Brown Sauce): This full bodied rich sauce is the base for almost all brown sauces. You would not serve a dish with a plain brown sauce. Espagnole sauce is brown stock, brown roux, mirepoix, tomato puree and herbs (bay leaf, parsley stems, thyme and black pepper). Here are some common sauces that started off as brown sauces - chasseur (mushrooms, white wine and shallots - delicious!), chateaubriand (white wine and shallots - best served over filet Mignon), chevreuil (bacon, red wine and cayenne pepper), mushroom sauce, poivrade (pepper, vinegar, white wine, mirepoix) and many more!

• If you've heard of a demi glace - it is a thickened brown sauce that was reduced over time. Demi glace is a 1:1 ratio of brown stock and brown sauce.

4. Tomato Sauce: Now who hasn't had tomato sauce! We technically learned to make a marinara sauce because our sauce did not have any animal fat (pork/bacon grease) in it. Traditional tomato sauce apparently has some sort of animal fat in it. If you want to add animal fat for flavor, wait to do it until you determine the type of meat you will serve with the dish. The recipe we used included mirepoix, tomatoes, herbs, white stock, sugar or honey and animal fat. Like the other sauces, there are several variations on tomato sauce - milanaise (mushrooms, butter, ham and tongue (ewe!!!)), spanish (creole sauce with mushrooms and onions), creole (green pepper, hot pepper), etc, etc..

• I've never used fresh tomatoes before to make a tomato sauce, but we did. You bring water to a boil - enough to submerge a tomato. On the non-root end of the tomato, score it with an X about 2" long. Submerge the tomatoes in the boiling water and allow to roll around until you see the tomato skin start to curl in the water. Pull from the water, peel the skin off, remove any seeds and rough dice the tomato. This is called tomato concassee.
• Tomato paste is a sauce with the water removed.
  

5. Hollandaise Sauce: This is an emulsified sauce - meaning a chemical reaction in the ingredients brings the sauce together into the final product. If you mess this sauce up - over or under cook, it won't work and you have to START OVER. Hollandaise is a smooth, buttery, rich sauce that is light yellow colored. It is not as heavy as mayonnaise. Hollandaise has egg yolks, water, vinegar/wine/lemon juice (an acid), butter, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It's optional to add Worcestershire sauce and/or hot sauce. The lecithin in the egg yolks serve as the emulsifier to bring the sauce together.

• For an individual serving - using two egg yolks, whisk 1 T water and 1 T acid (wine or vinegar) with the yolks. Once you place on the heat source - you continuously whisk the egg yolks until they thicken and have a texture like uncooked pudding.
  
• Use the double boiler method for heat source because this sauce is SO temperamental! It's not uncommon to pull the bowl off the heat source to cool and whisk and place back on heat.
  
• Whisking the egg in the beginning is very important. You need to get enough air into it. I'll admit, I didn't whisk enough air into my eggs, so I had to start over.
• Once you reach the pudding consistency, pull from heat and SLOWLY add melted, warm butter to the yolks. Whisk, whisk, whisk the butter in and DON'T cook the eggs. Once butter is added, add lemon juice and any other flavor components.
  
• Do not heat a hollandaise past 150 degrees F because the eggs will cook and make the hollandaise grainy. On the flip side, do not cool past 45 degrees because the butter will solidify.
  
• Do not hold a hollandaise past 1 1/2 hours because it won't survive! Keep it warm, room temperature, not hot temperature.
  

That was a quick and dirty version of a hollandaise sauce. I could type a dozen more bullets, but do not have the time, so I shared the most important lessons from our chef.

That's all for now folks. Stay turned for the next blog on sauces.