Sauce Béarnaise Image via Wikipedia

Where was it that I left off?

That’s right, I was a week into culinary school and I could not yet legitimately claim to have cooked anything.

I may like my steak rare, vegetables crisp, and fish “pink on the bone,” but I’m not an impatient person, which turns out to be a positive because it would be another two weeks before it was time to put some things on the heat.

In the meantime, I think we fabricated (breaking down from primal stages to retail cuts) just about every type of protein. Not really… just the usually suspects: beef, veal, lamb, chicken, duck, rabbit (not my favorite tasting like gamey chicken), some fish, and some shellfish.

By the third week of class it was finally time to get that stainless steel on the burners. It began with stocks then sauces, and at last soups.

In the butter-cream-egg yolk league the sauces were a bonafide all-star team. Hollandaise, béarnaise, beure blanc, béchamel, allemande, mornay, and soubise, and even forestiere. Of course, one cannot forget forestiere. It was a veloute and slurry-filled cholesterol marathon, but I’m better for it. Especially if Le Grenouille comes knockin’ on the door; apparently these sauces have, for all intensive purposes, been relegated to the sauce equivalent of Madam Tussauds. Our arteries can thank the sauce gods that someone somewhere in France invented pan sauces, some time in the 1960’s… probably.

Next up were contemporary sauces, which our Chef instructor said were very popular in the 1990s. I guess by that standard the sauces were more “modern” then “contemporary.”

Finally, with our first final on the horizon, there was soup. Cream of this, bisque of that, my heart in more ways then one longed (ached!) for my mother’s chicken soup!

My first module of culinary school was about to end, and I had certainly learned a thing or two about food, which I had expected but what I learned about myself was a surprise.

I knew I liked my vegetables to taste like vegetables. I also like butter, cream, and salt, but in this case 1+1 does not equal 2. Lighter can mean richer in flavor if authenticity is what you are after. With that said here is a classic heart stopping Béarnaise recipe that is bound to impress!

Shallots (minced), 2 teaspoons

Salt 1 teaspoon

Black pepper, 1 teaspoon

Tarragon, dried 2 teaspoon

Tarragon vinegar, 2 tablespoons

White wine, 2 tablespoons

Water 1.5 fl oz

Egg yolks, 3

Clarified butter, 4 fl oz

Tarragon leaves (chopped), 1 teaspoon.

Combine shallots, pepper, salt, dried tarragon, vinegar, wine. In a saucepan reduce till almost dry and water and let cool. Combine reduction with egg yolks and wisk over a cold-water bath. Whisk in clarified butter. Strain. Add tarragon leaves and adjust seasoning