Week Eight: Small Sauces

tigertailkitchen

“God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.” – Mallory Ortberg

Happy Last Days of Pride Month!! Trans rights are human rights ❤ ❤ ❤

As temperatures climb into the 100’s this summer, I am thinking more and more about the physical toll of cooking. Indeed, the physical toll of creation, in general. There is nothing more painful than creation. Even the tiniest something-from-nothing (a sauce in an intro culinary school course, perhaps) requires invisible labor, time, struggle, and frustration. What you get is sometimes so little to show for it. While uploading these pictures from this week, I thought, “That’s IT?!?” But that is the magic of a perfect sauce. She’s unassuming, subdued, elegant, and you may even think she’s boring. When she’s allowed to shine and you take that first bite – BOOM! You see her for the star she is.

Building off the Mother Sauces, we made Small Sauces (once known as “Daughter Sauces”) from our previous work. First, though, because culinary school is as brutal as it can possibly be, we had a timed knife cut quiz.

Delicious carrots, uniformly cut, but a little short. My consistency is better, but I’m still not quite hitting the proper sizing.

Sauce-making is a lot of “hurry up and wait,” as Chef says. You prep your ingredients, get everything hot, and…watch…and wait…and wait…and watch. Things can change from hot to scorched in a heartbeat, so you can never let your pots go unattended. The result is rows of culinary students staring at burners for hours. It also feels pointless when you don’t fully understand the final results. I struggled this week as I stared at opaque white and opaque brown pots. What was the point? I didn’t understand. Until I tasted the final results.

Mornay sauce is a cheesy enhancement of Bechamel. Sauce preparation is a lot of dipping a spatula and watching it drip, striving for that ideal nappe consistency.

The result, when done properly, is incredible, though! The Mornay sauce is akin to the fanciest mac and cheese sauce you’ve ever had. I took mine home, refusing to lose a drop.

Mornay Sauce I brought home elevated little broccoli cuts to heavenly.

We also made Bearnaise, a version of the accursed Hollandaise. This plate was one of my first attempts at presenting a whole plate at the correct temperature. I par-poached the eggs, set them aside, prepared the Bearnaise and brought it to temperature, then finished cooking the eggs. I managed to plate them all hot at the same time – NOT an easy thing to do.

I DID IT!!!! Perfectly poached eggs with a Bearnaise sauce (an enhancement of a Hollandaise).
The sauces don’t look like much just sitting on the burners. These are Lyonnaise (top) and Chasseur (bottom). Both have Velouté as a base. Lyonnaise is reduced with onions and Chasseur with onions and tomatoes. They packed an incredible flavor punch. I was stunned at how different the final taste was, despite both being from the same Mother Sauce.
I adore mushrooms, so I could not let my Chasseur go to waste. I brought it home and used it over roasted tofu slices and herbed cabbage.
Things are getting more intense in the kitchen as we need to prepare multiple products.

Sauces (and soups, next week) need to be served in hot bowls with clean edges. Juggling pots, burners, ladles, and the serving utensils is a massive undertaking. I’ve said it before. Even the simplest restaurant dishes are the result of hours of painstaking planning, execution, and diligence from workers pushed to physical limits. The next time you go out, and enjoy even one bite of your plate, I encourage you to think about all the bizarre and arduous steps that it took to bring you that joy. Tip well, praise often, and eat out ❤

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