January 25, 2012

Today was classical French sauce day.  Even though many classical French sauces are not used today due to the time and ingredients needed, the techniques and flavors are imperative for every chef to know.  We each made the classic white sauce, Bechamel, that inclides, a white roux, milk, onion piquet and salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.  This sauce is used to make tasty mac and cheese, just add gruyere and parm to make the Mornay sauce and you have a perfect creamy cheese sauce to use.  The theme of today was all about how to make a sauce and turn it into others by simply adding different ingredients.  Amazing how many sauces you can make from one simple base. Everyone tackled the scary sauce, the Hollandaise -Make sure not to scramble your eggs!  Made correctly, the sauce is delicious and tangy and not at all heavy and goopy.  By adding shallots and other ingredients we turned the hollandaise sauce into a bearnaise and then into choron by adding some tomato paste.  The French had it all figured out.

onion piquet - half onion, 1 bayleaf, 2 cloves

                       

My Hollandaise

Hollandaise + Bearnaise + tomatoe paste = choron
 (would be great with cold crab)

My Bechamel Sauce