One of the things I love about the finer foods in great restaurants are the sauces, perhaps that is why I chose to focus my culinary studies on the art of sauce making, a.k.a. saucier. A good sauce is a rich, creamy and velvety smooth liquid that is bursting with a myriad of flavors and depth, and the key to any great dish. And a good saucier knows that without properly made sauces, the food he or she is preparing is average at best. For it is not the way a roast is cooked or a chicken is grilled or a salmon is poached that makes a chef great, it is the bath of carefully defined flavors that accompanies the dish that makes the chef so great. Sure, you cannot be great if you burn your roast or char your chicken or boil your salmon, but in the event that you do - a good sauce can make up for the mishap by disguising the error.

Now, I am not advocating that anyone should overcook their food - on the contrary, red meat should still be red and chicken should be juicy not dry and salmon should be tender and pink - but not everyone is equipped to accomplish this feat properly, not everyone has the skill set needed to “see” the inside of a roast without cutting it open. It is for this reason that the need for a good sauce is paramount to all else, especially because at the end of the day, beef tastes like beef and fish tastes like fish and chicken tastes like frog legs (well, it does!). Certainly there is a thing to say about the taste of grass-fed, free-range cattle or Kobe bred cows to the stable meat usually served in butcher shops, but its all beef, and if it is not flavored well, its just going to taste like beef.

When I had my own restaurant in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan I made the restaurants name by focusing on all things liquid - sauces, dressings, soups - from the pastas to the fish to the pizza to the salads, everything needed to have a unique flavor and that came from the sauces. The key to the success of the dishes I served was the subtle flavorings that hid beneath the silky sauces, essences of things that were familiar to the palate, but hard to identify in the overall composition. They acted as enhancers to the dish, making a lemon caper sauce special because it had a tiny hint of fennel in the background and a mango velouté sing a Don Ho song because of the gentle presence of coconut and macadamias. And while I gladly took credit for the compositions, the technique which allowed me to do this was old and commonly used.

A sauce needs something to bring it all together, to serve as a binding agent that melts everything down and establishes a new, more formidable creation - like what iron and coal do in the process of making steel. For chefs making a sauce, this comes in several forms - for the purpose of this entry, we will focus on one, the roux. A roux (pronounced roo)is a simple mixture of flour and fat - preferably butter - in equal quantities and sautéed to varying degrees of color from blonde to brown. The darker the roux, the nuttier the flavor (if you are using butter), but it is not solely for the flavor that you color a roux. The pigmentation has more to do with the color of the intended sauce than anything else, you would not put use a dark roux for a white sauce as if you did, your sauce will not be white. The shade of the roux is inconsequential here, it is what the roux can do for you (and your sauces) that makes it my favorite thickening agent.

A properly made roux can take fifteen ingredients and coalesce them into one - it is the effect of the grains of flour which literally soak up the fat and liquid around it - a work of science that creates works of art. Take my mango velouté which I mentioned above, the primary ingredient in the sauce are mangos, but it also has stock, pineapple pieces, red onion, sweet red peppers, lemongrass, coriander seed, coconut and a crushed macadamia nuts. The roux helps meld the ingredients together, making all the individual ingredients harmonious - allowing the mango to shine by adding the flavors of all secondary ingredients around it and making it one.

And a roux can also turn a chicken soup into a cream of chicken soup, it can turn a blah tomato soup into hearty bisque, and it can turn macaroni and cheese into a pasta béchamel. In the coming entries I will refer to a roux regularly - if you did not know before what it was, now you do. To make a roux and hold it over is not necessary unless you plan on using it daily - but in case you are curious, here is the process.

Basic Blonde Roux

Blonde-Roux, great for cream sauces like beschamel

Brown Roux - excellent for tomato and chicken based sauces - a shade darker and it would be great for gravies.

8 ounces butter (2 US Sticks; 1 Big Israeli Stick) or 8 ounces oil (if you must)

1/2 cup sifted flour

Preparation

In a sauté pan, melt the butter over low heat - do not brown - add flour and stir until all the flour is incorporated into the butter. Stir regularly while cooking for a minimum of 2 minutes (blonde roux); the longer you cook it after here the darker it will get. The smell (if you are indeed using butter) as it cooks will resemble cooked nuts, this is most prominent as the butter browns and turns the flour a deep golden color (brown roux) and this is best used for dark, rich sauces. I prefer to keep the roux blonde as it allows for me to darken it later if I need it.

Let the roux cool thoroughly and place in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and stick in the refrigerator to use as you need.

I would say BatayAvon here but if you eat this as is you will throw up.