week seven: fear no white sauce

February 17, 2009

in this era of dieting, béchamel sauce has become the enemy. we shudder at the sight of butter, cream and cheese and the cholesterol and calories they represent. to be fair, béchamel evokes a certain grand cuisine-style richness. still, there is something pure and impeccable about a well-made béchamel, which comes together through the aid of sweet and pungent aromatics, heat and a thickening agent. the final product forms the basis of some wonderful shellfish and cheese sauces that have their place in fine dining and good old home cookin’.

my favorite part about making béchamel sauce was adding the traditional onion piquet for flavor, which, according to Chef Pierre, typically isn’t used anymore. to flavor a quart of white sauce, you tack a bay leaf to a peeled, halved onion using a few whole cloves, and drop it into the milk as you heat it to scalding, allowing the onion and spices to ooze flavor while the sauce maintains its flawless, silky white color. Chef said we could chop the onion any way we liked, dump in the bay leaf and cloves and just strain the sauce later. however, for me the onion piquet conjures an image of a parchment being tacked to a board with a nail in the middle of the town square. thus, i vow to use it every time i make béchamel.

Chef obeyed tradition and reluctantly studded the onion, dropping it into the heated milk to simmer for about 15 minutes before he added some salt, white pepper (mind the color) and a hint of freshly grated nutmeg to the sauce. “you don’t need to use too much of this,” he cautioned as he passed around the nutmeg for us to smell. the egg-shaped, brown seed gave off a warm, sweet nuttiness that made my mouth water. its perfumy and woody aroma would round out the savory, tangy richness of the white sauce, making it an ideal partner. but a little goes a long way, Chef warned.

next Chef slowly whisked a cooled white roux (equal parts by weight of flour and fat, cooked to remove the raw taste) into the hot sauce.

to make a roux, Chef heated four ounces of butter in a saucepan and whisked in four ounces of flour, continuing to stir as the mixture came together to reach a thickness resembling that of peanut butter. the color demonstrated how long it had cooked: the darker the roux, the longer it cooked.

as he whisked the roux, my classmate adrienne commented that it smelled like bacon. “if we keep cooking the roux, it is going to smell nutty,” Chef replied, unsurprised by her observation. i realized that combining heat with even the simplest ingredients makes them come alive and change. a white roux cooks for just a few minutes, and its subtle color won’t tarnish the ivory béchamel. more importantly, roux thickens the sauce to its proper consistency, which Chef demonstrated by dipping his wooden spoon in the sauce after it had bubbled for several minutes. it completely coated the back of the spoon with a smooth white film. and, i must admit, it tasted fabulous.

we created our own white sauces back at station, adding variations like swiss cheese, mustard seed and parmesan cheese; or cheddar cheese, dry mustard and worcestershire, to make cheese sauces suitable for a breadcrumb topping and bed of macaroni noodles. i was beginning to respect the fundamental importance of the leading sauces, not as sauces to be served as is, but as the bases for the complex soups and sauces we try so hard to deconstruct when we eat out.

*thank you, classmate mariano, for your impeccable presentation of the three types of roux. you are an inspiration to all non-food scientists who have not a single PhD to speak of…