Lesson 19- Balanced Menu / Thickening a Sauce with Egg Yolk
Fall/ Autumn has most definitely arrived at Paris, with
temperatures hovering stubbornly around 10C (50F) and the sun setting at 7pm.
Time to say good bye to those endless days of sunshine and hot nights with cool
breezes. Thank you summer 2013, you’ve been beautiful.
Perhaps it is fitting for the cold weather that today we made a traditional veal stew, garnished with button
mushrooms and pearl onions made A l’Ancienne,
which is similar to glazing but without drying out the cooking liquid or
coloring the product. We served this with a Rice Pilaf.
Boom
In French cuisine, when you see the word “traditional,” you
can bet that there will be an excessive amount of butter or cream (or both) incorporated. In this case, there’s a mind-blowing amount of cream in the stew
sauce. There’s even butter stirred into the Rice Pilaf (Pourquoi?!). I have to admit, though, that this dish is really
delicious. Just don’t eat more than 1 bite and you’ll love it.
The interesting part of today’s dish is that we thickened
the sauce with White Roux (equal parts of melted butter and flour), cream and
egg yolk. The egg yolk is the trickiest because it prohibits the cook from ever
boiling the sauce again or the egg yolk will coagulate.
Review of my dish: Flavor was good. Veal was tender. Mushrooms
and onions were well cooked. The only problem was that my sauce wasn’t thick
enough. For whatever reason, despite following the appropriate ratios, my sauce
came out too liquid. The chef recommended that I put some beurre manié to
thicken it, but then you need to boil the sauce to activate the thickening
agent, and that would cook the egg yolk. Great. Also the chef said I put too
much sauce on my dish, but isn’t this suppose to be a stew dish?
No quote from today’s class, but I’m sad to report that I
said “Oui, chef” to the train
conductor when he asked for my ticket on my train ride back from Bordeaux the
other day. FML.
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