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In French cuisine there are five mother sauces, the first of which is Béchamel. To make this sauce you start by melting butter, and once it is completely melted you whisk in an equal volume of flour. Now you have to continue to whisk non-stop for five minutes as you watch the sauce go through several stages. At first it is a very dry and lumpy mess of flour, but after a little less than a minute it begins to smooth out and turn into a creamy, light-colored sauce. Over the course of the next four minutes the color gradually darkens into about a medium-tan color and is very rich and thick in texture while still barely remaining a liquid.
Now here is the important point.
When the time comes to add in the milk to thin down the sauce, you must not stop whisking. I cannot emphasize that point enough. If you stop, even for thirty seconds, the sauce is completely ruined and you have to start over.
In my case I was making a cheddar sauce from the base Béchamel. Gradually adding the milk, as well as some very finely chopped onions and a little paprika, the whole thing simmered for ten minutes. On my first go-around what I had at this point was a nasty off-white sauce with dark brown speckles floating in it. On the second go-around what I had was a beautiful creamy golden brown sauce. That thirty seconds of not whisking made all the difference in the world.
Temper in an egg, and then add the shredded chedder with a little bit of salt and pepper for seasoning, and I was the proud creator of a lovely cheese sauce ready for baking with the pasta.
So remember kids, a sauce is a very important thing and not to be trifled with or it will turn around and bite you on the ass.
Now here is the important point.
When the time comes to add in the milk to thin down the sauce, you must not stop whisking. I cannot emphasize that point enough. If you stop, even for thirty seconds, the sauce is completely ruined and you have to start over.
In my case I was making a cheddar sauce from the base Béchamel. Gradually adding the milk, as well as some very finely chopped onions and a little paprika, the whole thing simmered for ten minutes. On my first go-around what I had at this point was a nasty off-white sauce with dark brown speckles floating in it. On the second go-around what I had was a beautiful creamy golden brown sauce. That thirty seconds of not whisking made all the difference in the world.
Temper in an egg, and then add the shredded chedder with a little bit of salt and pepper for seasoning, and I was the proud creator of a lovely cheese sauce ready for baking with the pasta.
So remember kids, a sauce is a very important thing and not to be trifled with or it will turn around and bite you on the ass.
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From:
Re: Soooooo...
Still and all, it was a very good cooking experience. I have always found it much easier to learn new skills by first failing miserably at them. In tonight's lesson I learned some valuable things about sauces, which I am sure will serve me well in the future. That the final dish itself was kind of blah for me is really just trivial footnote. The more important thing is that I acquired a new building block. Cooking really doesn't seem much different than writing code. Any fool can copy a bunch of "Hello World" code from a textbook and make it run, just like any fool can read from a cookbook. To be good at something you have to be able to extract the underlying important concepts and re-arrange them into something new, unique, and pleasing to you. I swear someday I will actually be a good cook.
But I'll probably make a lot of bad dishes before I get there.