Conquering those stove-top bullies: classic sauces

Hollandaise sauce is mine; I have conquered it. Same with Sauce Robert, mornay and an array of other leading and small sauces in the repertoire of classic French cooking.

Even that stubborn stove-top bully beurre blanc has been felled.

What they call in culinary school a competency exam, also known as a practical exam, was held today for sauces. I proved competent in all four, as did every other member of my class in Culinary Foundations II at the California Culinary Academy.

Laying down French sauces as the basis for a culinary education is a smart approach. They feed (pun intended) most of what will follow in fairly rapid order, starting with soups.

Chef Dan Fluharty dove in today, immediately after the competency exam and cleanup. He demonstrated classic French onion soup -- "It's still in vogue, and it's a national soup: French," Chef declaimed -- and cream of mushroom soup simultaneously. There's that darn multi-tasking again.

On Monday, he had sneaked in a demo of the classic of classics in soups, the consommé. It's a highly flavorful clear broth, and most chef educators and restaurant chefs would agree that it's one of a handful of fundamentals that a chef needs to know.

(Photo shows the remnants of my sauce practical exam. That's beurre blanc in the top pot, foreground.)

Drawing a blank on beurre blanc

Two tries in practice and two broken beurre blanc sauces. That means I will go into Tuesday's sauce competency exam in Culinary Foundations II having to do it right for the first time under the pressure of being graded.

The good news is that I know what I did wrong both times in making the sauce. I neglected to "pat the head and rub the belly" as Chef Dan Fluharty taught the coordinated, simultaneous double motion needed to make the butter form an emulsion in the pan.

While today's practice session left me without a successful beurre blanc, I did complete the other three required sauces -- mornay, hollandaise and Sauce Robert -- in fine fashion and with plenty of time to spare. Adhering to that timeline will allow for two tries at any one sauce -- if any, it will be beurre blanc -- during Tuesday's practical exam.

Sauces challenge comes to a boil

All those sauces we learned and practiced last week will be on the agenda again Monday and Tuesday in Culinary Foundations II class. Only this time, it's for real.

Chef Dan Fluharty is generously giving us Monday as a dress rehearsal for making four key sauces -- mornay, Robert, hollandaise and beurre blanc -- in a timed exercise of 90 minutes. On Tuesday, we will have 90 more minutes to make them for grading, with 10 points for each sauce (4 for consistency and wheter it is emulsified or broken, 4 total for the right levels of seasonings and acid, 2 for temperature).

The practical exam will be 40 points total, or about 7% of our grade.

My Sunday has included practicing hollandaise, for a breakfast of eggs benedict. The effort went well until the end, when too much heat "broke" my sauce, meaning the emulsified egg yolk and butter separated. My second effort ended with an intact sauce, but it was too thick and would not have passed muster with Chef Dan.

Multi-tasking: making 3 sauces at a time

Chef Dan Fluharty has set a pace of production work in Culinary Foundations II that demands multi-tasking. The idea is that it's what happens in restaurant kitchens, so we best learn it now.

And learn it we are. On Tuesday, we made fish fumet (a fish stock) and prepped the ingredients for veal stock at the same time, followed quickly by making roux.

Today, we stepped it up: Three white sauces to be made to appropriate texture and flavor in 90 minutes. From a béchamel base, we made mornay sauce; from fish velouté, we made vin du blanc; from chicken velouté, we made sauce supreme.

An aid to multi-tasking is that the three sauces include several common ingredients, starting with white roux (butter and flour thickening agent), and including cream, butter and lemon juice.

Chef pointed out that the classic French sauces have foundations that are created over and over, with dfferentiation coming from introduction of flavors from other ingredients. Fo example, the supreme sauce is based on chicken velouté with cream and butter added for flavor; the vin du blanc is fish velouté with a white wine reduction.

Thursday comes an accelerated challenge: four sauces in 90 minutes. We wll be visiting the deeply flavorful family of brown sauces and a tomato sauce.

(Photo shows my versions of sauce supreme at lower left, vin du blanc at top center, mornay sauce at lower right.)