We got down to it this week: making mother sauces or as Kevin said they are now called foundation sauces. We started by making 3 roux: white, blond and brown. The white we turned into a Bechamel sauce which I loved. I could just drink it as is. The only difference between the roux was the amount of time they needed to cook, the blond 15 minut
es, the brown 45. The blond and brown will start cooking on the bottom and the whisking gets more vigorous as you loosen the cooked parts and whisk it into the top layer. The proportions for a roux are 1 to 1. A cup of flour is 5 ounces so for 10 oz of butter you need 2 C flour.
For the Béchamel Sauce
1 Cup butter, 8 ounces flour, 1 onion chopped
3/4 gallon hot milk
1 bay leaf, 1 whole clove, salt to taste white pepper to taste
We also made tomato sauce from canned tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, and tomato paste, to which we added bay, thyme, a clove, and mire poix. You can use the sauce for pasta but we turned it into Cream of Tomato Soup by adding the Béchamel. Donald doesn’t like tomato soup and loved this one. Subtle and creamy.
Kevin had Lobster shells boiling on the stove for 8 hours or so before we arrived at the Victoria Inn’s kitchen. We got to sample the final product: Lobster Bisque: 3 shells crushed, 2 quarts water, mire poix 1 – 1½ C, a tomoato , wine: 1 to 1 ½ Cups. Cook til it gets syrupy and add 1 ½ Quarts cream.
We made ginger-carrot 
and 
potato-leek soups but the piece de resistance was the brown mother sauce also called Espagnole. 
I put it over fresh cashews the next day and was in heaven. To the brown roux we added tomato paste, a bay leaf, thyme, parsley and a clove of garlic, mire poix and beef stock.
Enjoy and keep cookin’
a big thank you for the Béchamel picture and the Espagnole picturehttp://culinaryarts.about.com/od/sauces/r/bechamel.htm
Away at Chez Boucher 