Introduction to Gravies and Sauces: Add Taste to Your Meals

Introduction to Gravies and Sauces - Add Taste to Your Meals

Table of Contents
Introduction
Gravy
Classic sauces – The Mother Sauces
How to Make the Perfect Sauce
Starch Thickened sauces
Roux
Flour and Butter Thickeners
Liquids used in making Sauces
Why “Season to Taste?”
Béchamel Sauce
Veloute Sauce
Tomato Sauce
Tomato Chutney
Tomato Sauce – Bottled Variety
French dressing –Vinaigrette
Cream Cheese Salad Dressing
Spiced Tomato Chutney/Sauce
Allemande Sauce
Butter-based and Egg Thickened Sauces
Sauce Has Separated?
Traditional Hollandaise Sauce
Blender Mayonnaise
Aïoli sauce
How to Make Traditional Gravy
Conclusion
Author Bio
Publisher

Introduction

Why would anybody want to write a book on gravies and sauces, you may ask? After all, you know everything about sauces, there is tomato sauce, soybean sauce and chili sauce readily available in the market. And gravies are what you make to thicken up a dish and give it more body.

Well, the interesting thing about gravies and sauces are that for millenniums, they have been used in cookery to add body, spice and flavor to otherwise bland dishes. In fact, the world-famous Worcestershire sauce also managed to be “discovered” or as you may say “invented” through sheer chance. It seems during the time of the British stay in India, one of these sahibs enjoyed a sauce which the locals made. It had vinegar, molasses, spices and other ingredients added to it.

So when he went back to England, he took the recipe along with him, and asked one of the grocers to make up that sauce and place it in a wooden cask. The sauce was very strong, when he tasted it. Being very disappointed in the end result, he went back to India, where he would eat the original sauce to his heart’s content, and wonder where he went wrong.

And the sauce kept mellowing in the wooden cask, all this while. When the Sahib came home on his next leave the grocer asked him what he wanted done with that cask. “You mean you have not thrown it out, man?” He said, and asked for another taste.

And to his great astonishment and wonder, the sauce was exactly right, spicy and delicious. And so the famous Worcestershire sauce was born, to make them both very prosperous. This is the sauce, which has been marketed so successfully by Lea and Perrin for the last 200 years.

All right, let me tell you the secret of many of the ingredients put in the original sauce, which went into the making of Worcestershire sauce. These included tamarind pulp soaked in molasses , vinegar, garlic, chilies, cloves, onions and shallots , and sugar, among other exotic Eastern herbs and spices.

Tamarind is a flavor used extensively in the Western and southern part of the Indian subcontinent. So I would not be surprised if the Sahib asked his grocer about the traditional recipe for that particular chutney, and was answered by “Laats aaf tamrind Sahib, you know, very so-wer.” This particular taste cannot be obtained from lemons.

Of course we cannot allow our sauces to mellow for a year or more, in this day and age to get a product which may possibly be, not what we set out to make in the first place. This is the world of Hurry and scurry because many of us are so pressed for time. That is why we are going to go to the nearest supermarket and take the first sauce, which catches our eyes.

Fresh herbs and spices have long been in use in the making of sauces and gravies.

And with so many marketing brands from which to choose, we are often spoilt for choice.

Really good fresh food does not need sauce, but it is a very pleasant addition to many dishes, including fish, poultry and meat. The best sauce is not going to be very thick. Nor is it going to be very thin. It is going to be served piping hot.