Rouses Everyday - May & June

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15
Béchamel Sauce
Makes about 5 cups
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 shallot, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
½ cup flour
5 cups milk
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Rouses salt and pepper
HOW TO PREP
In a large saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.
Add shallots and carrots and cook for 5 minutes.
Whisk in flour and cook 2 minutes. Whisk in milk
and bring mixture to a boil. Reduce to low heat and
simmer, whisking occasionally, until sauce is thick,
about 20 minutes. Add nutmeg and season with
Rouses salt and pepper.
Turn this into Mornay Sauce by adding
Gruyere cheese or Soubise Sauce by adding
sautéed onions and tomato puree.
Velouté Sauce
Makes about 2 cups
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken or veal stock
Rouses salt
Freshly ground white pepper
HOW TO PREP
In a medium saucepan melt butter over medium
heat. Stir in flour to create a roux, and cook for
2 minutes. Whisk in stock, ½ cup at a time, until
completely combined and sauce is smooth. Season
with salt and pepper. Bring sauce to a boil, reduce
heat to low, and cook for an additional 15 minutes.
Normandy Sauce adds mushrooms and a
mixture of heavy cream and egg yolks. Bercy
Sauce is great too, with white wine, shallots,
parsley and lemon juice.
FRENCH
The Mother Sauces
by Chef Chaya – Rouses Bakery Director
One of the first things you learn in
culinary school is that French food is
all about the sauce. And French sauces are
all about that base.
In the 19th century, the chef Marie Antoine-
Carême, the founder of the haute cuisine,
catalogued the list of French sauces into four
foundational or mother sauces. Béchamel is a
white sauce made with butter, flour and milk;
it’s the secret to great macaroni and cheese
and creamed spinach. Velouté is a light sauce
similar to a Béchamel, but made with fish or
chicken stock. Tomat is made with chopped
or puréed tomatoes, that can be smooth
or chunky, depending on your taste. And
Espagnole is a classic brown sauce made
with a darker roux and tomato purée.
In 1903 Auguste Escoffier, another great
French chef, added a fifth foundational
sauce when he published Le Guide Culinaire.
Escoffier’s textbook and cookbook was
my bible when I studied at the Culinary
Institute of America. His fifth sauce would
strike fear into the hearts of young culinary
students like me. The dreaded Hollandaise,
an emulation of egg yolks, lemon juice
and butter, had to be whipped just right,
or it breaks or separates. I love it on eggs
Benedict, but to this day I get a little
anxious when I think about my first attempt
at making it.
THE FRENCH QUARTER
When I was 18 I did my extern from the
CIA at Arnaud’s on Bienville Street in
the French Quarter, where I was often
assigned to help the saucier make huge pots
of mother sauces. We would make roux
using 50 pound sacks of flour, Béchamel
in steam-jacketed kettles as tall as me, and
Hollandaise in a stand-alone mixer. My
favorite was Espagnole. It would simmer
for 24 hours, so we could extract every bit of
deliciousness from its ingredients.
I will never forget standing over the kettle
with a paddle that stretched all the way to
the floor, the steam billowing up around me,
quoting a line from Apocalypse Now, “I was
a great Saucier in New Orleans.” I felt like I
was a part of history.
Arnaud Cazenave, a French wine salesman,
openedArnaud’s on Bienville Street in 1918,
but there are French Creole restaurants in
the French Quarter that date back even
further. Guillaume and Marie Abadie
Tujague, originally of Bordeaux, France,
opened Tujague’s in 1856. Jean Galatoire,
a native of Parides, France, opened his
Bourbon Street restaurant in 1905. The
oldest French restaurant in New Orleans,
Antoine’s, served its first meal 175 years
ago. Antoine’s menu was originally written
entirely in French. Today’s menu is half in
English, half in French, but the sauces are
still all French.
The old line Creole-French restaurants are
famed for the French sauces. At Antoine’s
you can order steak with Marchand du
Vin, a classic red wine sauce; Béarnaise, a
variation on Hollandaise that’s seasoned
with tarragon and white wine; or Aliciatore,
a Béarnaise sauce flavored with sweet
pineapple and lamb or beef that is named
after the restaurant’s founder. Espagnole is
the base for Antoine’s Colbert sauce, which
is the finishing touch to the restaurant’s
famed fried oysters foche.
Mayonnaise, which falls under the category
of Hollandaise, is the base for both maison
sauce (crabmeat maison is a must at
Galatorie’s) and red and white versions of
remoulade. You can’t go wrong ordering
shrimp remoulade at Antoine’s, Galatoire’s,
Tujague’s or Arnaud’s.
THE RECIPES
Once you learn a handful of bases, you can
customize them into hundreds of different
sauces. I scaled these recipes down for home
use. You can turn them into classic sauces,
or innovate by adding your own flair. Either
way you will be creating, and eating, history.
photo courtesy Arnaud’s Restaurant by Sara Essex Bradley