Today:
Les roux – blac, blond, brun (white, sandy, and brown roux)
Buerre manié (butter and flour paste)
Sauce béchamel
Sauce crème
Sauce persillée (parsley sauce)
Sauce velouté
Sauce espagnole
and for presentation: Blanquette de veau a l’ancienne et riz pilaf (traditional white veal stew and braised rice!)
For the veal, we trimmed and cut it and then cooked it in chicken stock with mirepoix, crushed white peppercorns, garlic, a bouquet garni, and mushroom trimmings, then drained the veal in order to create the sauce made from a sandy roux, the veal stock, and then enriched with cream (on the heat) and egg yolks (off the heat). Make sure to season your sauce properly while it’s still on the heat so that the salt will be dissolved. Once you take it off the heat to add the egg yolks (too much heat=scrambled eggs=worst sauce ever), it’s too late to season your sauce!
Our garnishes were glazed pearl onions, sautéed button mushrooms, and rice pilaf. For the pilaf, sautée onion and shallots in butter and then add the rice. You want to hear the rice cracking on the heat! Add a bouquet garni and 1.5 times the volume of rice in chicken stock, throw a cartouche (parchment paper cut to the shape and size of your pan) on top of the rice, cover with aluminum foil, and the just toss the rice into the oven for 15-20 minutes! When the rice has cooked thoroughly, dot the rice with some butter and gently stir the butter into the rice (a meat fork works wonders so that you don’t break the grains of rice) and you end up with some very tasty, beautifully shiny rice! (Don’t forget to remove the bouquet garni!)
My sauce was good! My sauce was good enough that Chef took an entire tablespoon full of straight sauce from my pan when it came time to taste my dish! After that, the fact that I overcooked my veal a little no longer mattered to me at all. Keep an eye on your veal! After you’ve trimmed the fat and tendons from the meat, it cooks in no time!