Homemade Sauces - The Finishing Touch - Le Cordon Bleu

Today we were learning all about stocks and homemade sauces.  

As I have no formal training, it was wonderful to be in this environment, watching stocks being made from scratch, hearing the stories that our Chef, Marc Thivet, loves to tell, and then making sauces and dishes with the resulting stocks or les fonds.  Some stocks take a long time, as you will see, and we were assured that a good quality cube or power from a supermarket was fine to use if you don't have time to make your own but, of course, home made is best.


Our translator was Deborah and she was excellent. Deborah is Amercian, but lives in France, she is also a chef.


The dishes we made were: 

Chicken Breasts with Sauce Supreme(Blancs de Volaille Sauce Supreme) - unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the finished dish. We boned our own chicken breasts for this dish, which was great! The breast are delivered by the butcher whole and still on the carcass. Great learning experience.

Magret Duck Breast "A L'Orange"(Magret de Canard A L'Orange)



This dish was easier than I expected and the sauce was delicious, I didn't eat the final dish, but Monique gave it the thumbs up!!




















Prawns and Langoustine "a l'Americaine" Lightly Flavoured with Lemongrass (Gambas et Langoustine a L'Americaine et Leger Parfum de Citronelle).

It was really interesting watching the "fish fume" and "shellfish fume" coming together, I have never been a big fan of fish stocks/sauces, however, it doesn't meant that I shouldn't be making them for those that do.

The coral, roe or egg sack from the langoustine is a beautiful turquoise blue/green colour, it is a shame it doesn't stay that way after cooking.  All of this goes into the stock ... of course.




The resulting dish, doesn't look so attractive in the foil container, however, when it was tossed through some thin spaghetti with some fresh herbs it looked pretty good!  Definitely one for the menu.

We also made a "pistou", which is basically basil pesto and a Bordelaise Sauce, perfect for meat.

The Bordelaise Sauce, before it has been strained - two bottles of red wine reduced to a syrupy sauce.


The stocks we we made were for meat, fish and chicken.

The recipe for the meat stock is below.
 






Stock for Meat Jus (Fond Pour Jus de Viande)

Principal Ingredients

600g beef trimmings
600g veal trimmings
500g veal bones, broken up as small as possible
200g carrots, cut into mirepoix
300g onions, cut into mirepoix
1 shallot
3 garlic cloves
1 small celery stalk
2 very ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 tsp tomato paste
1 bouquet garni (parsley stemps, thyme, bay leaf, wrapped in the green part of a leak)
10 black peppercorns

Cooking time: approx 6 to 9 hours.


Method

Roast the bones/trimmings in the oven, or over medium heat on the stove without burning, using a neutral oil such as peanut oil.
Remove roast trimmings from the pan, keep warm in the oven, and return pan to heat.
Add the vegetables and sweat for a few minutes. Small shallots can be left whole, as can the garlic cloves.
Drain the vegies and bones/trimmings through colander/large sieve to remove the excess oil and fat. 
Add tomatoes and tomato past to the roasting pan and allow to sweat/saute - this will help to release the caramelised proteins (suk) from the bottom of the pan, then deglaze the pan with a little cold water.

Add bones/trimmings to a large stock pot and cover with cold water, add peppercorns and transfer tomato juices from the pan, bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer.  This will need to be cooked for between 6 and 9 hours.


Then the bones etc are strained resulting in your stock.  Obviously, the length of the cooking time determines the volume and strength of the stock. This recipe produces approximately 300 ml of stock.