Feeling Saucy
Melissa and I took a "Classic Sauces" class at the California Culinary Academy yesterday. This class, much like the knife skills class I took a while back, might seem superfluous to someone who's been a passionate cook for several years. But as with the knife class, I was looking for some of the solid fundamentals I've missed being an autodidactic chef; I shouldn't have to think about how to make a sauce, I should just know.
The class was only four hours long, so clearly the scope had to be somewhat limited. The focus was just the five mother sauces defined by Escoffier: bechamel, velouté, brown, hollandaise and, oddly, tomato. The teacher started out by explaining how each basic sauce is made, and then how more specific sauces are created out of those. Then she did a demo of the best way to incorporate liquid into a roux, and how to make hollandaise.
But the CCA requires each of its Saturday classes to get a bunch of food ready for the 1:00 lunch, so we got to work on that. While this was a great chance to practice our new skills for the knife class, it was an annoyance in this one; I didn't want to take time away from making sauces to make crab cakes. I would have much preferred a class exempt from getting lunch ready which spent its time making all the different sauces, seeing how they're related and the best techniques for making them come out right.
And Melissa, who doesn't cook, did quite well (I had signed up to take the class by myself, but the original class got cancelled so the school allows you to bring a guest). In fact, she turns out to have a strong whisking arm, and was able to produce great hollandaise. I'm hoping for Eggs Benedict some day.
It's hard to say if it was worth the money; most of the stuff I knew, but it enforced a more instinctual understanding of how to make the sauces come out right. We'll see how my next bechamel comes out, and then I'll have a better opinion!
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