06 Basic Skills pt. 2:
weeks 2-3

Tuesday November 2, 2004

After a relatively tame Week 1, Week 2 finds us firmly entrenched in stocks, soups, and sauces, “les fonds de cuisine” (the foundations of cooking). The CCA promises to teach its students classical French cuisine, and as a result, we focus on the five mother sauces and their derivatives.

One day we make béchamel, a milk-based sauce thickened with white roux (equal parts butter and flour, cooked 3-4 minutes), and Mornay sauce. The Mornay sauce extends the béchamel, its mother sauce, by including cheese and additional cream. Another day we reduce brown veal stock (which alone takes 6-8 hours of slow simmering) to make demi-glace, the secret ingredient that makes brown sauce so tasty (another mother sauce). Although demi looks rubbery and gelatinous when cold, when heated and used in a sauce with, say, reduced wine, shallots, and mushrooms, the heavens open and the angels sing. It really is all the best flavors from a cow, reduced into one brown, murky, wonderful substance.

Chris and I breeze through the first few days of sauces, “monter au beurre”-ing here (adding a little whole butter to a sauce off heat just before service, thereby making it shiny and rich), and emulsifying egg yolks and butter there (for Hollandaise). Towards the end of the week, however, we meet our match in beurre blanc, a creamy yellow sauce that emulsifies copious amounts of whole butter with white wine, vinegar, and shallots that have been reduced “à sec” (almost to the point of complete dryness).

The proper procedure for beurre blanc is to quickly whisk in small pieces of cold, whole butter into the pan with the hot vinegar reduction. The butter emulsifies with the vinegar, making a creamy, buttery sauce that’s perfect for fish. The trick is not to let the sauce get either too hot or too cold, since either extreme will cause the sauce to irrevocably break into a runny mess of melted butter.

The first time Chris and I attempt the sauce we think we’re doing an excellent job whisking in the tiny pieces of butter, until Chef Steve comes by our range and points out that the sauce has long since broken. “See those little yellow bits of butter floating around?” he asks. “That’s the butter that’s escaped from the emulsion. You don’t want to see those bits--the sauce should be smooth and creamy.” He suggests that we try again over lower heat.

Somewhat cowed, Chris and I gather the materials for our second attempt. This time, we take the sauce off the heat completely as we start to whisk in the butter, and sure enough, it appears much creamier than our first attempt. We begin to feel good about ourselves again, continuing to whisk in the butter off the heat until the cooler temperature forces us to put it back over the burner in order to get the butter to melt. We set the smallest possible flame and continue whisking. Three pieces of butter left….two…one. Just as we think we’re ready to season it and present it to Chef Steve for tasting, the sauce grows looser in the pan and the glorious folds of sauce turn into a yellow, fatty puddle. We’ve broken it again.

I’m beginning to get a little frustrated.

We try yet a third time, with the same result. The clock is showing that it’s nearly time to clean up our station, and this sauce has thoroughly and utterly flummoxed us. It’s no use giving up – we’ll be responsible for making it as part of one of our competency exams at the end of Skills, and we need to figure out how to get it right. Chris and I stare at each other, not quite sure what to do.

Like an angel of mercy, Richard Blue, the 30-40-something dread-locked black man from Las Vegas, shows up by our table and asks us how it’s going. He’s clearly finished for the night, and is in the process of cleaning up his own station on the other side of the room. When we explain our plight, he quickly offers his advice, like a bookie sharing a tip with a favorite client.

“Here’s what you do,” he begins in a low voice, “I learned this by watching my chef in Vegas. First, you get your reduction and you keep it on low heat, see? Use the lowest heat possible, but keep it on the heat – that needs to be constant. But then, instead of whisking all frantically, just spear a big hunk of butter on the end of your whisk and just gradually run it in circles in your pot so that it’s always moving and melting. When that piece is almost melted, spear another one on and keep going. You should only break your butter into a few pieces. You’ll see – it works every time.”

At that point, Chris and I would probably make the sauce while hopping on one leg if someone told us that it would help prevent the sauce from breaking. We get our ingredients together for an unprecedented fourth attempt and begin to follow Blue’s advice. We chop up our butter into only 6 pieces, rather than the 10-12 that we’d been using, and instead of frantically whisking the butter in, we just make gradual turns with the butter stuck onto the end of our whisk. One by one each piece of butter melts into the sauce while Chris and I peer down into the pot like nervous parents. Before we know it, the last piece of butter is incorporated, and we’ve just made our first successful beurre blanc.

“Coming through! Coming through!” we cry out as we rush up to the front of the class with our pot in hand. Even though we’d finally been successful, we weren’t about to let our sauce break while waiting for Chef Steve to come taste it. If Chef Steve won’t come to the beurre blanc, let the beurre blanc come to Chef Steve.

With a dunk into our pot Chef Steve gets a spoonful of sauce and peers off into the distance while he tastes it, moving it around his mouth a little to get a good feel. “Good texture, good consistency,” he starts, “Beurre blanc shouldn’t be too thick, it should be nice and smooth like this…seasoning’s good…maybe a little heavier with the salt, but otherwise, good. Good job.” With a smile and a nod, he sends us off.

Chris and I are a little too worn out to be overly enthusiastic. While it’s just beurre blanc, it’s a little exhausting to make the same thing four times in a row. We just thank God for Richard Blue – exhibit A for why having experience in a restaurant is often better than any studying you can do in a book.

Next: 07 Food Science
Last: 05 Basic Skills Pt. 1

Unlike plain melted butter, beurre blanc should be creamy and smooth, without any traces of grease.