Sauces

I think that this is an area I am going to spend a lot of time focusing. After reading Michel Roux’s book about sauces I became super inspired. As my love C could tell you, I’m always trying out some sauce, tweaking, refining or just trying something new. After all this reading I believe that there is a great complexity to sauces and that they can do so much to compliment a dish but can also wreck utter havoc and destroy a good intentioned dish. You know what they say; “the road to hell…”.

Beyond the obvious considerations of adding moisture or making a dish more succulent, adding visual appeal and playing with texture I think that there is much more going on with sauce. For example Michel Roux’s favorite sauce is a fairly simple cucumber sauce and this is coming from a guy who in one summer just for kicks came up with over one hundred sauces.

There are so many elements and variables in sauces that it is something I can see myself spending the rest of my life focusing on. You can dramatically alter a dish by utilizing a well executed sauce. And as a typical meal has multiple courses that gives your sauces a chance to shine, different sauces, on different plates and foods.

Again I go back to the question, what is a sauce for? It certainly should not outshine the dish that you are serving. It needs to be harmonious. It can offer contrast in terms of colour or texture but in no way should the sauce ever become the primary focus. If that was the case then you should just serve it garnished in a bowl. Thus the consideration is in what amounts, in what textures, colours, smells, sounds, tastes do you utilize a sauce to discover its full potential and harmonize the dish?

I’ve been playing with two or three sauces lately that I feel will be on my first menu. One is a Veloute based sauce. One a Espagnole and the last an emulsion. I will write about these later when I have gone further down the experimentation hole.

As it is my C’s day to shine and realize dreams I include this quote from Thoreau; “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” Today my love, YOU ARE AWAKE and so beautiful. I love you.

As for the rest of you. Wake up. Find your dream. Be inspired. Love, laugh, live and find inside yourself who you really are. Enjoy the rest of your day.

A la prochaine

SDM