Mastering sauces : the home cook's guide to new techniques for fresh flavors

482 Pages·2015·6.15 MB·English

by  Susan Volland

For Jeff. Thank you for showing me how wonderful life is when you flavor, texturize, and season it with
good friends and family.
CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION
Thoughts on Contemporary Sauces
Tools and Equipment
A Note About Ingredients
THE THREE FUNDAMENTALS OF SAUCE MAKING
Maximize Flavor
Manipulate Texture
Season Confidently
TURNING WATER INTO SAUCE
Infusions
Stocks
Broths, Jus, and Very Thin Sauces
Reductions
TURNING WHOLE FOODS INTO SAUCES WITHOUT ADDING
THICKENERS
Fresh Vegetable and Fruit Sauce Purees
Sauces That Start with a Can of Diced Tomatoes
Beyond Pesto—Green Sauces, Pastes, and Bases
Nut Sauces
Curry Sauces
Salsas, Relishes, and Fresh Chopped Sauces
SAUCE ON THE SIDE
Dressings
Cooling Condiments
Table Sauces
Barbecue Sauces
Chile Sauces—Not Just Hot
RESPECT YOUR MOTHER—UPDATING THE CLASSIC FRENCH
MOTHER SAUCES
Demystifying Roux
The Mighty Demi-Glace
Cheese Sauces
Slurries—Pourable Starch Thickeners
Cold Thickeners
Emulsified Egg Sauces and Their Modern Alternatives
Butter . . . with Restraint
SYRUPS AND SWEET SAUCES
PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER—MAKING SAUCES LIKE A PRO
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
MASTERING
SAUCES
INTRODUCTION
S
auces make foods taste “right.” Order a piece of chicken or some noodles
anywhere in the world, and you’re going to get pretty much the same thing.
Unembellished ingredients tend to have a global uniformity. Add sauce, and
everything changes. Dishes become regional and familial. Turkey gravy is meant
to taste like Grandma’s. Football gatherings aren’t the same without Dave’s
game day enchiladas. Summer doesn’t officially start until Evelyn’s famous
macaroni salad appears. Even people who may proclaim ambivalence to sauces
will customize their sandwiches with light mayo or extra-strong mustard. Lovers
of plain steak still choose their favorite salad dressings and baked potato
toppings. Sauce is personal. It’s everywhere. And it’s not always fancy.
Mastering Sauces is about confidence, control, and customization. It’s a
reminder that the “right” way to make sauce is your way. For today’s cooks that
often means sauces that feature fresh, seasonal produce, international
ingredients, and variations for alternative diets and food sensitivities. The first
hurdle is to step away from the temptations of jars and packets. Sauces may be
uniformly accepted as tasty, but unfortunately, sauce making is often perceived
as being a special skill.
I make sauces like a chef. That means I usually make my sauces
spontaneously, with drizzles of this, pinches of that, and lots of pan rattling. I
have fun with it. When I suggest to other people that they should make their
sauces with similar vim, they either nod enthusiastically in agreement or look at
me like I’ve asked them to sprout wings and fly. There isn’t a lot of middle
ground.
Curious cooks who venture into the world of traditional sauce making often
find themselves barraged with French terms, obsessing over cauldrons of
simmering bones and subtle color gradations of toasted flour, and awash in
seemingly endless quantities of eggs, cream, and butter. Sauce making, like
baking or preserving, is often presented as a culinary canon. It is presumed that
if you want to get good at it, you need to take it very seriously and start with the
classics. That’s partially true. Having a solid culinary foundation is what gives
me the freedom to make sauces with confidence. But to casual cooks looking for
dinner ideas, the old lessons can seem practically prehistoric. Modern cooks
want teriyaki and tikka masala, not jugged hare. Tastes have changed.
Unfortunately, the lesson plans haven’t quite kept up with the times.
Mastering Sauces is meant to be as liberating and lighthearted as sauces
themselves. My goal is to get more people to cook. Cooking brings people
together. It’s creative. No matter how many sets of matching pigments and
paintbrushes you distribute, no two people will create the same work of art.
Sauces are the same—they just adorn a different kind of blank canvas. I believe
that laughing and finger painting with friends is as important as visits to the
Louvre. I will forever appreciate the liberty that came with my classical
education, but I believe the best way to get more people to cook sauces is to
remove a layer of formality and freshen things up. The best sauces are those that
fit your lifestyle, not the other way around.
Several years ago, my nephew, Greg, set out to find the perfect combination
of warm breadsticks and marinara dipping sauce. He was a ridiculously picky
eater. Suddenly, though, instead of just shaking his head and refusing to taste
whatever was set before him, he started actively looking for good food
experiences. His quest took him to new places. He smelled and saw new things.
He compared restaurant A with restaurant B and weighed their merits. We even
spent time together making our own breadsticks and sauce from scratch. (Both
were judged just “okay.”) Best of all, he consciously tasted his food and thought
about what he was eating.
Sauces are a part of our daily lives. Sometimes they are best delicately ladled
from heirloom china; other times it’s all about dipping warm, chewy breadsticks
into a marinara that has just the right balance of garlic, oregano, and tomato
flavor. If it can be enjoyed while blasting aliens, all the better.
When it comes to cooking, I have strong ties to both the old and the new. I
learned my craft from formal women wearing starched caps at the London
Cordon Bleu Cookery School. My fellow students were from all over the world
and young by decree. We felt a bit ridiculous having to address our peers
formally as Mr. this and Miss that. For the first three months, we were not
allowed to use any equipment that was plugged in other than the stovetop and
oven. In the mornings, we all cooked the same small portions of classic recipes
on home-style equipment: omelets with tiny, buttery croutons; timbales of
creamy fish mousse; trembling sherry-laced jellies. Each dish was tasted and
individually critiqued. In the afternoons, we crowded into a stuffy room for
demonstrations and to collectively recite the basic quantities of common recipes
by rote. The thought of our formal quarterly exams still makes me shudder with
anxiety. Three school directors would loom over your work space with their
spoons, picking through your dishes and scribbling notes on their clipboards.
You were required to keep all of your trash in a small bin, and after your food
was judged, the high priestesses would tip it out to see whether you had peeled
your potatoes wastefully or used too many paper towels. Eggshells were to be
reserved, because they could be used to help clarify tomorrow’s batch of