SOME SAUCES

Recipes from the book I'm working now.

Quick Tomato Sauce

Photo Courtesy of David Tanis from Cooking New York Times

People I respect tell me it is just fine to cook with canned tomatoes.

I just can’t see it. That scene in The Godfather notwithstanding.

Others tell me there are very acceptable tomato pastes, but I am still waiting to taste a good one. If you must have tomato sauce in winter, buy fresh tomatoes at the peak of the season, put them in plastic bags, and freeze them whole.

The benchmark for tomato sauce is the one made from tomatoes growing in and around Naples in that volcanic soil. In the summer, the whole plant is uprooted and hung upside down in the sun outside a south facing kitchen door for few days. Then these concentrated tomatoes (already packed with flavor) are cooked for fifteen minutes in olive oil and herbs before being poured, still in big pieces, over the pasta.

This quick sauce can be mixed with olive oil for cold sauces or finished with butter for a hot sauce.

Yield: 2 cups

1 onion, peeled, finely chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small herb bundle or bouquet garni

4 cups chopped skinned tomato

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Sweat the onion, covered, over low heat in the olive oil with the bouquet garni or herb bundle for 10 minutes. Add the tomato and cook, uncovered, over medium heat for 10 minutes. Turn up the heat to high and cook, stirring or tossing constantly, until the tomatoes have just dried out, about 5 minutes. Discard the bouquet, purée the tomato mixture and sieve it. Hold until needed. To finish as a sauce for hot food, heat and whisk in the butter until it is incorporated. Season as you like.

White Sauce or Béchamel

Photo Courtesy of My Anosmic Kitchen

The secret to a smooth, ethereal, and delicious white sauce is to cook it for at least 30 minutes and better for 45.

This is the way the classic sauce gained its reputation. Then lost it to Home Economics recipes telling you to stop cooking once the sauce thickens.

Resulting in that pasty, floury, and lumpy horror it can be. Not just the long cooking, but constantly stirring so it doesn’t stick and burn, or put in a double boiler and stir occasionally.

Most recipes call for grated nutmeg, and that makes a Béchamel instead of plain white sauce, but I prefer it without because I may not want that flavor in my fresh Jumbo Lump crabmeat gratin.

Makes 1 quart

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 tablespoons flour

4 cups whole milk

Salt and freshly ground white pepper

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add the flour and stir or whisk until smooth.

Turn the heat to medium and while still stirring, cook for another 5 minutes. Meanwhile heat the milk to the boiling point but do not boil. Pour the milk into the butter flour mixture, whisking vigorously. Make sure you get any stuck in around the bottom edges of the pan using a spoon. Bring to a boil and simmer gently, whisking occasionally, for at least 30 minutes. Preferably 45.

Season with salt and pepper.

Hollandaise

The sauce that I can and do eat with a spoon all by itself.

“Hollandaise” was the first French word I could remember and pronounce.

Asparagus with hollandaise being an early passion. It is a pure sauce, and I feel purist about it: lemon juice, salt, pepper, butter, and egg yolks are its proper components.

The sauce is made with five to seven yolks (depending on egg size) per pound of butter, and the question of whether to use clarified or whole butter is easy to answer, to my mind. Clarified-butter usage comes from nasty habits of restaurants and hotels, which have endless vats of clarified butter on the backs of their stoves. It produces hollandaise more quickly, but the result is oily in texture, less fresh in taste, and not very digestible.

Here are the secrets to a successful hollandaise: Make a sabayon-like base first by beating the yolks with the lemon juice and then cooking slightly over simmering water. Never let the sauce get too hot or you will have scrambled eggs. Add the butter gradually and keep the sauce slightly warm when finished. If the sauce breaks, start the process again with a couple of yolks and add the broken sauce gradually. A tablespoon of hot water does wonders for critical moments (breaking sauce) and texture (too thick).

Make this sauce with imported French butter and you will become an addict.

5 large egg yolks

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

½ teaspoon salt

1 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into tablespoon-size chunks

1 pinch cayenne

Makes 3 cups

Put the egg yolks, lemon juice, and salt in a stainless steel, enamel, or other noncorrosive bowl over simmering water and whisk until foamy. Continue to whisk until the yolks thicken and increase in volume like a sabayon. Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter one piece at a time. After the first 2 pieces of butter, return the sauce to the water and continue whisking in the butter. If you think the eggs are getting too hot, remove the bowl from the water and let them cool a bit. After all the butter has been added, remove the sauce from the heat and season with the cayenne.

Check to see if it needs more salt or lemon.