Student Blog

Jo Horner, a CSCA Professional Program student, shares some of her experiences during the past semester.

Posted 4/30/2006 by Horner, Jo Basics 14: Sauces Lynn and I arrived as usual at the crack of dawn (an hour early) for class. We hung out in the sun in the doorway drinking our coffee and pondering the upcoming midterm practicum and written exams. The last class of Basics is run differently. We get a brief lecture on all of the mother sauces to reinforce what we learned over the 14 weeks and then we all head off to the kitchen to make the five mother sauces. Those trained at CIA or Johnson & Wales will scoff at one of our five sauces, but Roberta, the school director and founder, was taught by Madeleine Kamman, who had a very old school French background. Our five mother sauces are Hollandaise, Mayonnaise, Béchamel, Velouté and Espagnole. The controversial sauce here is Mayonnaise, which many consider to be a cold small sauce of Hollandaise. They would include a tomato sauce instead. The debate rages on. There were 7 of us and 10 burners, 4 of which had stock simmering and butter clarifying. It wasn't a pretty sight. I spent much of the time making the dark roux for my espagnole by holding my spoon in the air to get in between the shoulders of someone who was making an acidic reduction for a hollandaise and another who was trying to make her roux for her béchamel. Chef Tony was trying to make some of us break our sauces so that during the practicum we would know how to fix them. For poor Sharon he dumped all of his oil into his mayonnaise at once, Heather had hydrolysis in her espagnole and needed to use an alternative starch to fix it, she also made 'scrambled eggs' twice when trying to make her hollandiase, but in the end everyone made it through unscathed. Do me a favor, just don't mention the word Hollandaise to Brian okay? While we were all shoving and kicking and spitting at each other to get our sauces out, our TA's were busy making us lunch. Yeay, they had to cook for us, alas, we had to do all the dishes. Ah well. They made grilled steaks, a nice sauce made from our espagnole, grilled asparagus, using our béchamel they made some awesome scalloped potatoes, and then they made a chocolate mousse for dessert. We just won't mention the wild mushrooms that they forgot to cook. One of the tough things about going through such an accelerated program is we don't all get to do each technique. We 'see' it done by someone in the class, and we are expected to know how to execute all of the techniques for our practicum, but ultimately we are expected to practice on our own. I have been doing this all along and can make mayonnaise, hollandaise, velouté, and béchamel without blinking an eye. Braises? No problem. Dry poaching? Been there, done that. Pilaf? Pffffft.

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