Knife Skills Day Five, Sauces

Today we made the mother sauces, espagnole, tomato, velouté, béchamel, and hollandaise. (Wow, I didn't think I could remember all those from merely hearing them in lecture, but after making them and knowing which teams made what, I actually can name them all. See... experience does matter.) My team made espagnole and tomato and each student had to make his own hollandaise.

I told my husband I had to make eggs benedict over the weekend and got a big "Alright!" He may get surprised with some asparagus or steak too with hollandaise. Something tells me he won't mind.

The sauces generally weren't difficult. I did learn that when you think you've sweat the onions enough, or carmelized the carrots enough... you didn't. When you think you added enough oil, you'll receive an "add more" from the chef. I'm guessing this is true too with salt, but I have yet to experience it firsthand. From appearances across the classroom, the other sauces were also completed without difficulty.

The hollandaise sauce I thought would be a different story. Rather, everyone was able to make theirs without breaking it, meaning the fats/oil would separate from the egg or the eggs get to hot and scramble instead of making a nice smooth sauce. There was one example of a broken sauce, made on purpose so we'd know what it looked like.

At the end everyone had to label their bowl and the were all compared at the end. I noted one bowl was not the original bowl in which the sauce was made. Thus there were no crusty pieces on the sides or other references to the actual process of making the sauce, just the finished product in a nice and clean bowl. "Who's is that? That's sneaky!" Of course if was our class leader's (same guy who had the nice tournés) and he got a shout out from the chef for cleaning up his presentation. Not fair! I asked before putting mine out if I should strain it and got a "don't worry about it." Obviously, I should have worried about it, especially since mine got used as the example of high sides of dried egg.

Next class sounds busy too. We're making several soups and consommé. I can't wait to see the raft that forms on top of the consommé with all the impurities! After learning this was sometimes used as family meal for peasants I felt bad for all the "Eeww that's for dinner tonight, Mom?" inquiries through the years. I suppose fast food beef could be equated to the contents of the raft however, meat bits, some protein additives, flavoring, sounds like a Whopper to me. Grill up the raft and put it on a bun! (Please don't! That's NOT Dalliscious!)