Working my way through mother sauces, trying to improve my skills. Béchamel, Velouté, Espagnole, Tomato, and Hollandaise. Roux has proven to me a little harder than expected. A proper white, blond, brown, and dark brown is not as easy as I thought. A white to brown is easy. Dark brown has given me plenty of trouble. The low and slow game is the only way to go it seems. However I have truly found a new love for piccata.
Any chicken or seafood is simply amazing with Piccata sauce (white wine lemon caper sauce, sometimes heavy cream)
I make dark roux for gumbo now and then and it’s tedious. Alton Brown had a pretty good trick - put it in the oven at 350 in a Dutch oven, until it’s @ the right color. No stirring, and it won’t burn!
Man, I hear ya. Before I saw that trick, I used to pull a stool up to the stove and stir constantly for a damn hour-ish to get dark brown gumbo roux. This makes gumbo a hell of a lot more enjoyable.
This is a cool thing to do. Being able to make a proper sauce on the fly because the base sauce is automatic is one of the things that makes cooking a joy.
If you haven’t already done demi glace that’s where you need to go next.
Btw I always finish picatta with a bit of room temperature butter off the heat. It adds richness, a nice counterpoint to the acidity and makes the sauce nice and shiny.
Sounds like the rest of the forum is as well. I always wanted to go to CIA. I don’t have the patience to work in a restaraunt, been their done that.
One of the reasons I started brewing was i found it interesting that unlike wine you can design a beer around food.
What we think of Indian Cuisine actually is Euro-Centric itself due to its colonial past.
Learning sauce making techniques translates into any cuisine. Skill begets skill.
I disagree about tomatoes in bolagnese. There is plenty of tomato but it is reduced to its essence. That is actually a chief difference in Northern Italian vs French cooking which are otherwise related: the Italians use the thickening by reduction method, you never see a roux. An Italian creme sauce won’t have any roux or starch.
Bolognese has tomato but calling it a “tomato sauce” is a disservice imo. It is a rich meat sauce with some tomato, not the other way around
Besciamella has existed in Italy for a long time, though I think mostly in the north. They put it in their lasagne but my family would call that heresy.
Funny you say that, when making pizza it’s worth noting that active dry yeast contains ascorbic acid as an anti-oxidant. And in small batch sizes, oxidation could still be a problem. Sorry, but you brought it up
I need to get some of these down at some point. For me, my basic sauce is a simple pan sauce - deglaze with beer/stock/whiskey (carefully with the last one), then add from there. Whenever I have a pan that has some tasty bits stuck to the bottom, I can’t not make a pan sauce from it.
I would agree, deglazing with whiskey is tough. But you can’t beat a rich red wine sauce.
I just want to up my game. I have been at every level of the restaurant, and I have always struggled with a balanced sauce to go with my dishes. A simple pan gravy, butter sauce, or béchamel is fine. Making a rich brown sauce, or red wine demi has been a struggle.
I would think if interested in Indian cuisine, its all about layers of flavor. From curry sauce/paste to Tikka Masala to Mattar Paneer, you are building a very rich sauce. That starts with a ‘base’ that gets layers of flavor. Grinding fresh spices for a perfect garam masala or curry, is like a creole getting the trinity/roux just right.
Obviously these are classics but I’m much more interested in exploring an Indian cookbook than mastering veal stock.