The base is red.

Sauces are so important in our meals; they provide a different consistency, flavour, colour and smell. And I wanted to share with you some knowledge about these sauces, how to make them, their variations and what to eat them with. As there are five 'mother' sauces and more 'small' sauces than I care to count this was going to be quite a project. But one I really wanted to do as I cannot imagine life without some of these wonderful concoctions. Don't get me wrong; I haven't written down all the sauces in the world, not even all the sauces in one single 'cuisine'. What I have done was provide you, I hope, with the most used sauces in most restaurants, varieties are created on an ongoing basis and with the five mother sauces now in your possession, I am sure that you yourself will be able to add to the ever-growing list.

I started this project five days ago with an article on the first of the five mother sauces, Sauce Béchamel or white sauce. A day later I wrote about the second of the mother sauces, Sauce Velouté. Two days ago I was all about the third mother sauce; Sauce Espagnole. Yesterday was devoted to the fourth mother sauce; Sauce Hollandaise. And today I finally come to the last of the mother sauces; Sauce Tomate. You will already have guessed the main ingredient in this sauce; tomatoes. Although we recognise tomato sauce on pasta and pizza, there are a few more steps involved in this mother sauce to create its full flavour.

First you have to render salt pork and then fry some aromatic vegetables. Then you add tomatoes, stock and a ham bone, and simmer it in the oven for a couple of hours. Cooking the sauce in the oven helps to heat it evenly and there is a limited chance of burning... The sauce can be thickened with roux, as was done traditionally, but the tomatoes will act as a thickening agent themselves when cooked long enough (the same as with jams and chutneys). The original recipe contains salt pork, a ham bone and chicken or veal stock but you can leave out the bone, replace the salt pork with 60 millilitre olive oil and replace the stock with vegetable stock.

Sauce Tomate

Ingredients:

• 60 gram diced salt pork
• 500 gram diced onion
• 240 gram diced carrot
• 240 gram dice celery sticks
• 1 minced clove of garlic
• 800 gram (2 cans) crushed or chopped tomatoes, including the liquid
• 950 millilitre veal or chicken stock
• 1 ham bone
• Salt and sugar to taste
• Herb sachet
• 1 bay leaf
• ½ teaspoon dried thyme
• 4 fresh parsley stems
• 8-10 crushed black peppercorns

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 150°C
2. Tie the sachet ingredients into a cheesecloth sack using a piece of kitchen twine
3. In a heavy, oven-safe casserole pan, render the salt pork over low heat until the fat liquefies (or heat up olive oil)
4. Add the carrots, celery, onions and garlic and fry for a few minutes until the onion is translucent but not brown
5. Add the tomatoes, the ham bone, the stock and the sachet, bring to a boil, cover, and transfer the pot to the oven. Simmer in the oven, partially covered, for two hours
6. Remove the pan from the oven and remove the sachet and ham bone and blend the sauce in a blender or food processor until smooth, working in batches if necessary
7. Season to taste with salt and a small amount of sugar — just enough to cut the acidity of the tomatoes
• If you are not serving the sauce right away, keep it covered and warm until you're ready to use it

The recipes below are all based on half the amount of sauce of the recipe above.

Spanish Sauce
In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, fry 250 gram chopped onions, 125 gram chopped green pepper and 1 minced clove of garlic until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add 250 gram sliced mushrooms and continue to fry until the mushrooms are soft. Add a half recipe of Sauce Tomate, bring to a simmer and cook for about 5 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and Tabasco and serve.

Sauce Creole 
In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, fry 200 gram chopped onions, 125 gram chopped green pepper, 200 gram chopped celery and 1 minced clove of garlic until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add a half recipe of Sauce Tomate, 1 bay leaf, ½ teaspoon dried oregano and the zest of 1 lemon. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes. Remove the bay leaf, season with salt, pepper and cayenne pepper (to taste) and serve.

Portuguese Sauce
In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, fry 200 gram chopped onions until they're translucent, about 5 minutes. Add 475 gram peeled, deseeded and finely chopped tomatoes (concassé) and 1 minced clove of garlic and continue to fry until the tomatoes are soft, about 10 minutes. Add a half recipe of Sauce Tomate, bring to a simmer and reduce for about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Sauce Provençale
In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, fry 200 gram chopped onions until they're translucent, about 5 minutes. Add 475 gram peeled, deseeded and finely chopped tomatoes (concassé), 1 minced clove of garlic and 2 teaspoons Herbes de Provence. Continue to fry until the tomatoes are soft, about 10 minutes. Add a half recipe of Sauce Tomate, 2 tablespoons capers and 2 tablespoons chopped black olives, bring to a simmer and reduce for about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

The mother sauce and its four small sauces are each perfect with pasta and the mother sauce itself can also be used as the base for pizzas. Sauce Provençale is perfect with grilled chicken and fish but any of the sauces can take the place of another: it is all up to your own taste and preference.

This is the last article about the five mother sauces; I hope they will be helpful, whether you have been cooking for years or are just starting to cook. Each of the sauces can be adapted to your own tastes and preferences and most of them can be adapted for special diets but, let's face it, a sauce will always be to enrich a meal so making them fat free is nigh on impossible: you need the fat for flavour and texture.

Sauce Espagnole and Sauce Tomate keep well in the freezer and only need reheating and a good stir once hot. Sauce Béchamel can be frozen but needs a little bit more elbow grease once defrosted, meaning that you will have to whisk it whilst reheating. Demi-glace (made from Espagnole) can be frozen or kept in the fridge where it will solidify slightly, which means you can literally take out a tablespoon to add to soups, stocks and gravies as and when needed. Sauce Velouté can be frozen but, like Béchamel, needs a little more work whilst reheating. Sauce Hollandaise needs to be eaten as soon as possible after it is made and does not keep well in either fridge or freezer.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this 'project' as much as I have had creating it. Until the next time and the next project?

Enjoy

The base is white.

Some meals just wouldn't be the same without a bit of sauce. Just think of Lasagna, Fish Pie or Eggs Benedict; you just wouldn't eat it without a sauce. The Romans used sauce to mask the flavour and smell of ingredients that were... let's say... less than fresh.

Did you know that there are five sauces, called mother sauces, that are the basis for most other sauces? The mother sauces are: Sauce Béchamel, Sauce Espagnole, Sauce Velouté, Sauce Hollandaise and Sauce Tomate. The reason that they are called Mother Sauce (Sauce Mere) is because each of them is the 'head of a unique family' of sauces. The sauces based on the mother sauce is called 'small sauce'. Velouté is the exception as this has three 'daughter sauces'.

1. Sauce Béchamel: milk-based sauce, thickened with a white roux
2. Sauce Espagnole: a fortified brown stock sauce, thickened with a brown roux
3. Sauce Velouté: light stock-based sauce, thickened with a roux or a liaison, a mixture of egg yolks and cream
4. Sauce Hollandaise: an emulsion of egg yolk, butter and lemon or vinegar
5. Sauce Tomate: tomato-based

So, what is a sauce exactly? In principle it is a liquid that is combined with some sort of thickening agent and flavourings. Each of the five mother sauces is made with a different liquid, and a different thickening agent — although three of the mother sauces are thickened with roux, in each case the roux is cooked for a different amount of time to produce a lighter or darker colour.

Roux is melted butter (or fat) and flour: melt butter in a pan until 'frothing', add an equal amount of plain flour and stir (using a whisk is the best method to prevent lumps) until a thick paste forms, cook at least until the raw flour taste is gone (it will start smelling biscuit-y).
How long you cook it for depends on which type of sauce you want to make. How much butter and flour you use depends on how thick you want your sauce to be:

• Pouring sauce: one tablespoon each of butter and flour to 240 millilitre of milk
• Medium sauce: two tablespoons each of butter and flour to 240 millilitre of milk
• Thick sauce: three tablespoons each of butter and flour to 240 millilitre of milk

Sauce Béchamel, or white sauce, is one of the easiest to make and seems 'boring' to a lot of people but, made well, can be very tasty and is a must if you want to make Lasagna or Fish Pie.

Sauce Béchamel

Ingredients:

• Butter
• Flour
• Milk
• Salt and white pepper
• Flavourings such as onion (studded with cloves), bay leaf and nutmeg are all optional

Method:

1. Add milk to a pan with a whole onion (studded with a few cloves) and a bay leaf and bring to a simmer
2. Remove the flavourings (if used)
3. Make a roux as above
4. Add the warm milk as soon as the roux starts smelling biscuit-y but is still white or pale-yellow
5. Whisk the milk into the roux and leave for a couple of minutes to thicken
6. Season the sauce with salt and white pepper and a pinch of nutmeg (optional)

Sauce Mornay

Make a medium sauce béchamel and add 60 gram grated gruyere. Mix the cheese well with the sauce and leave to melt.

Sauce Moutarde (or Mustard Sauce)
Make a pouring sauce béchamel and add one tablespoon of whole grain mustard. Mix the mustard into the sauce and leave for a further minute to cook off the harsh flavour.

Sauce Soubise
Heat 30 gram butter in a frying pan and add two roughly chopped onions. Fry the onions until soft and translucent. Add the onions to a blender and puree until smooth Make a medium sauce béchamel and add the onion puree.

Sauce Nantua

This is by far the most complex sauce, not because it is difficult to make but because there are several more ingredients and steps necessary to make this sauce but the effort is well worth it.

Ingredients:

• 30 gram butter
• 1 carrot, finely chopped
• 1 onion, very finely sliced
• 250 gram raw shrimp or crawfish (with shells and heads on)
• 2 tablespoons cognac
• 125 millilitre white wine
• 375 millilitre fish stock
• 2 teaspoons tomato paste
• pinch of cayenne pepper
• pinch of ground paprika (mild)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 fresh sprig of thyme
• medium sauce béchamel

Method:

1. Heat the butter over low heat
2. Add the carrots and onions and fry for 2 minutes
3. Chop the shrimp/crawfish and add them to the pan
4. Turn up the heat and fry until the shrimp/crawfish turn bright red, about 3 minutes
5. Add the cognac and white wine and reduce the liquid by half
6. Add the stock, bring to a boil and reduce the liquid by half again
7. Add the tomato paste, cayenne, paprika, bay leaf and thyme and cook for 30 minutes
8. Stir in the medium sauce béchamel and let bubble a further 10 minutes
9. Remove the bay leaf and thyme and pour the contents of the pan into a blender and blend
10. Strain the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing with a ladle to get as much of the 'juice'
11. Pour the sauce back into a pan and return to the boil
12. Reduce the sauce by a third and season to taste with salt and white pepper

So now you have the perfect sauces but what do you use them for? Here is a list of ideas:

1. Sauce Béchamel
• Cream of ... soup - thin out the sauce with a little more milk or good stock and add fried mushrooms, asparagus, chicken, or anything else you fancy
• Lasagna
• Souflé (use the thick sauce for the best result)
• Gratins
• Meat croquettes (use the thick sauce for the best result)
2. Sauce Mornay
• Gratins
• Cheese souflé (use the thick sauce for the best result)
• Eggs
• Vegetables
• Chicken
• Seafood
• Veal Prince Orloff
3. Mustard Sauce
• Cold cooked meats
• Vegetables
• Fish
• Steak
• Pork
4. Sauce Soubise
• Vegetables
• Chicken
• Fish
• Cold roasts
5. Sauce Nantua
• Fish
• Shellfish

Four different sauces for any occasion and all based on that simple, classic, white sauce. But there are many more varieties: Parsley sauce, Crème sauce, Cheddar sauce, Mushroom sauce to name but a few.

Tomorrow I will post the next mother sauce, so stay tuned and, most importantly

Enjoy

We can all use them, from time to time

Cookery shows on TV; you either love 'em or hate 'em. On the whole, I love them. It gives me great ideas for recipes, although I never follow them to the letter. As with all my recipes, they get adjusted to my own preferences and availability of ingredients. At the same time, however, there is something that thoroughly annoys me about them. Cookery shows want to help people cook certain food, eat better, waste less, eat healthier and so on. And so they fill you up with recipes and how to cook the dishes. That's all fine by me, what annoys me is that they don't tell you the numerous amount of hints, tips and tricks they have (there are some exceptions, but these just confirm the rule). And believe me when I say, chefs have practically a trick for everything they do. From chopping veg to juicing fruit, from rolling out pastry to seasoning food. And for everything in between...

Some of these hints, tips and tricks are being taught in college but mostly they are picked up when working in a professional kitchen. And I am going to share what I know with you, so 'Keep calm and Be a Chef'. That last part is a bit of a lie, by the way. As was pointed out to me by my husband... More accurately would be 'keep confidence and be a chef'. Which brings me to the best tip I can ever give: 'keep calm and hire a chef'...

I will add to the list below on occasion, so if ever you are stuck, come back here and see if I have a hint, tip or trick ready for you. Or leave a question in the comment section and I will come back to you. Any hints, tips and tricks you have are more than welcome too.

Hints, Tips & Tricks

Pastry:

1. The easiest way of rolling out shortcrust pastry is, probably, to roll it out between baking paper:
• This is great because you avoid using flour. Any additional flour will make your pastry taste less buttery, and most importantly there's no need to clean up any floury mess afterwards. Also, if you happen to be making pastry on a hot day and it's becoming too soft to roll out, you can simply slide the pastry into the fridge for 10 minutes to rest instead of having to scrape the soft pastry off the work surface. The golden rule when making pastry is to handle it as little as possible, otherwise it goes rubbery and tough. Using the baking-paper tip will certainly help achieve the perfect pastry
1. Cut off a piece of baking paper and place this on your work top
2. Place the pastry on top and cover with a second piece of baking paper
3. Roll the pastry out to the required size and preferred thickness
• Don't have baking paper? Cling film works equally well but sticks slightly more to the pastry
• Another great thing about this is that it makes lining a baking tin so much easier:
1. Peel of the top layer of the baking paper and lift the pastry (with the remaining bottom piece of baking paper underneath) onto 1 hand
2. Flip the sheet over, on top of the prepared baking tin (so that the pastry is inside the tin)
3. Gently ease the pastry into all the nooks and crannies (with the paper still on top)
4. Gently peel of the remaining paper and bake or fill as normal

Tomato-based sauces and soups:

1. Tinned tomatoes
• Using tinned tomatoes for a soup or sauce? Try adding a pinch of sugar to take away the acidic flavour. Use the sugar as a seasoning, so don't go overboard...
2. Fresh tomatoes
• Need to peel and finely chop fresh tomatoes?
1. Cut a tomato in half
2. Grate the flesh through the large holes of a vegetable grater until you get to the skin (hold on to the skin to keep it intact before discarding it)

Seasoning:

1. The reason most restaurant food tastes better is the correct use of seasoning. Chefs use salt, pepper and spices throughout the cooking process and season at every stage. Jacob Kenedy, Chef patron of Bocca di Lupo in Soho, once said: 'To live a long life, use less salt. To live a happy one, use more. Salt is the West's MSG – it gives food more flavour. "Correct" seasoning, to a chef, is as much salt as you can possibly get into the dish without it tasting too salty.'
• To achieve this, add (especially) salt at the beginning of the cooking process and then at every next step (with the exception of stocks destined for reduction). Make sure to taste before you add salt and add only a pinch at a time, tasting as you go 
• If you happen to over-season, you can try to bulk the dish out by adding something (barley to a soup, for instance), or to balance the salt with acid (a squeeze of lemon or dash of vinegar), or to kill it with fat (fat mutes flavours – so add butter or oil).

Tenderise (tough) meat:

1. To tenderise meat you can bash away at it with a 'meat tenderiser' or cover the meat with a piece of cling film and bash it with a heavy-based pan (brilliant if you want to work out some frustration, but you need to be careful as you don't want to wind up with pulp).
2. There is another option. You can use acid, such as lemon juice or vinegar, or kachri powder to tenderise meat. However, you should use either option sparingly, as it can leave a slight tangy taste if used excessively.

Juicing fruit:

1. To get the most juice out of oranges, lemons and limes, try warming them up slightly:
• Place the fruit in direct sunlight for half an hour or stick them in the microwave for 5 seconds on high

Stock:

1. Stocks are great to have on hand as they can be used as the base for soups, sauces and gravy. There is nothing wrong with using a stock cube but making your own needn't be difficult:
• Take lots of kitchen vegetable trim (celery, fennel tops, onion, garlic, carrot peelings) and place in a pot with all your bones
• Cover with water, then cling film and tin foil it
• Cook overnight at 140°C in the oven or cook on top of the stove for at least 3 hours
2. Want a clear stock?
• By cooking it in the oven (as above) all the impurities, that you would usually remove through skimming, stick to the bottom and sides of the pot
• If you have cooked the stock on top of the stove things become slightly more laborious but not more difficult:
1. When you put the pan on the heat, avoid boiling the liquid and do not stir (if you can). If you do have to stir, use a balloon whisk and try not to disturb the ingredients too much
2. During the cooking process, skim off the foam that forms on top (with a slotted spoon)
3. Leave the stock to cool completely: the top of the stock will look clear as all the heavier particles sink to the bottom of the pan (this will happen quicker if you haven't stirred)
4. Ladle the clear liquid gently into a jug or a clean saucepan without disturbing the sediment
5. Chill it until any fat has set into solid clumps
6. Remove as much fat as possible
7. Pour your stock into a large, shallow freezer safe container
8. Line a perforated tray, flat based colander, drum sieve, or other drainage utensil that has a flat base with cheesecloth or a clean fine-weave tea-towel or dishcloth (ideally, the container that you freeze the stock in should fit into the sieve or perforated tray lying flat)
9. Place this onto another catchment container underneath (the container underneath the sieve or tray should be wide and deep enough to gather the fluid without spillage)
10. Remove your stock ice block from its original container and place into the lined drainage tray or sieve
11. Cover with cling film and put aside, preferably in the fridge overnight if you have time
12. Allow the block to melt and the stock will filter out, leaving ice and the fine particles that would make it cloudy in the cloth
• For an even richer stock, follow from step 7 onwards for a second time
3. Freeze stock into an ice-cube tray. Whenever you need to add a bit more flavour to a soup, sauce or gravy, take out an ice-cube and add it to the pan. Let it dissolve, give it a quick stir and taste to make sure the seasoning is 'just perfect'

Ginger:

1. The easiest way to peel ginger is to use a teaspoon. This might sound silly but if you use the edge of the spoon (like with a knife) you can scrape the skin off the ginger very thinly without having to cut off all the knobbly bits (this saves you loads of time and ginger)

Spices:

1. If you, like me, use a lot of spices, it is cheaper to buy whole spices and grind them yourself as and when you need them. The flavour of the spice stays very vibrant for a longer time then with ground spices and you can crush just the amount that you need. The best way to grind them is the old-fashioned way; with pestle and mortar.
2. For the best flavour in your dish, add a ground spice at the end of cooking (to give it a little lift) or you can add them in whole at the beginning. Or toast ground spices in a dry frying pan until they become fragrant before you add the rest of your ingredients (make sure not to burn the spices as they will become very bitter)

I hope these hints, tips and tricks will come in useful. Let me know how you get on...

But most of all, no matter what you are making:

Enjoy

'Stealing' recipes

Cookbooks and recipes; I love them. For me, they are a source of inspiration, wonder, disgust (I don't care how much alcohol you pour over liver, it remains liver), anticipation, joy. Funds don't allow me to buy every cookbook I see (how very annoying) but if I find a recipe that I would really love to try, I will quickly write down the ingredients and the outline of how to make it. It is the one reason why I have always got some paper and a pen in my bags.

Even dining out, like we did last year when we were in Scarborough, recipes are never 'safe'. We had been informed, by the owner of the B&B (The Kenton) we were staying at, of a nearby Turkish restaurant called Az. As it was our wedding anniversary, and we both love our food, we decided to give it a try. This year we went back and I just had to try the salad again (???) that I had tasted the previous year. Although in the past I have asked for (and received) the recipes of something I had really enjoyed from the chef, being with my husband and all I decided to just write down the name of the dish and see what I could find on the internet. To my relief and utter enjoyment I found it.

At Az they called it a salad; it is usually eaten as part of Turkish Mezze:

Zeytinyağlı Taze Fasulye

or

Turkish Green Beans

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of fresh green beans or 1 pack of frozen green beans
• 1 big onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, sliced or chopped (or 2 teaspoons grated/minced garlic)
• 2 big fresh tomatoes, finely chopped, or 1 tin of (diced) tomatoes
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar (use more if the tomatoes are too acidic)
• 1/2 cup olive oil (8 tablespoons)
• 1/2 cup hot water (8 tablespoons)
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• salt (to taste)

optional

• 1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
• pepper/ crushed pepper (to taste)

Method:

1. If you're using fresh green beans: clean and trim the beans to 1 to 1½ inch pieces
2. Heat the olive oil in a pan and cook the chopped onions and garlic until lightly brown
3. Add the tomato paste and stir for a minute
4. Add the beans and stir them until they slightly change colour (about 6-8 minutes)
5. Add the tomatoes, cook for 5 minutes, then add sugar (cumin and pepper), water, and salt
6. Cover the pan and cook with low heat until the beans are soft (about 30 minutes with frozen beans - 45 minutes with fresh ones)

Do you have a pressure cooker? Add all the ingredients to the pan and cook for 15 minutes on medium heat.

This is traditionally served cold, but it is also very tasty when eaten warm.
Variations:

• Try using half-and-half green beans and (thinly) sliced runner beans
• As a matter of fact, try using a pound of sliced runner beans (instead of the green beans)
• No green beans (or runner beans)? Try using 5 or 6 finely chopped tomatoes (of your own preference) (skip step 4) and cook until the tomatoes start to fall apart then add 1 or 2 chopped tomatoes and warm through

At home, we had it for our tea with Patlican Salatasi (a Turkish aubergine salad [remind me to put the recipe up]) and Izmir Köfte (Turkish 'meatballs'). As the next day the flavours were even more developed, I enjoyed it at work: I had prepared some plain couscous and spooned over several tablespoons of the 'salad'. Together with some pita bread and crumbled feta cheese; it was delish...

As they say in Turkey:

Tadini çikarmak

or (in English)

Enjoy