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Summer and spring is the time of my favorite fruits. Some of them although they are available year around are pretty much taste like cucumber, with fruit flavor. Take for example the case of the peaches, the blueberries and the apricots. All of them can be available year around it the major markets, but during the winter they never tasted good. That ‘s why it is essential to capture the essence of those fruits, the aromas and the flavors. And there is a major method to do so. Making jam, preserves and jellies.

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This is going to be a short entry and I will have it here, just because is the perfect compliment to the dish I described right before, the butternut squash raviolis. First however lets see what is a salad. Usually a salad is a dish that mostly, or exclusively, contains vegetables, usually in a cold state, hold together by a liquid that again usually contains a form of fat, and an acid. You see that the salad is very well, but also very loosely defined. That ‘s the meaning of the world usually. But I have develop some gold guidelines on how a salad should be made, or what it should contain. I think of it as the yin-yang of the food world. So let ‘s see the so notorious golden rules.

It ‘s been months since my last post, and even longer since I posted a recipe. I feel I should be back to posting what I like the most. I recently found a new inspiration that pushes me to discover new frontiers in food and in taste and flavor. The following dish, is one of my favorites. Simple but elaborate, elegant but humble, sweet sour and salty. It is the food that reminds me of fall, somewhere around October, when the trees are shedding their leafs, the sky becomes gloomy and the breeze is a little colder. I would not have much to say about the history of the dish or the ingredients. Just a few words about the butternut squash. Butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata), also known in Australia as Butternut pumpkin, is a type of winter squash. It has a sweet, nutty taste that is similar to pumpkin or sweet potato. It has yellow skin and orange fleshy pulp. When ripe, it turns increasingly deep orange, and becomes sweeter and richer. It grows on a vine. The most popular variety, the Waltham Butternut, originated in Stow, Massachusetts, on what is now the Butternut Farm Golf Club.

Since I was a kid, I remember a strange commercial. A man looking at the sunset with a glass of brandy next to him looking at the sun, without doing really anything. His eyes where just traveling like he was expecting something. And when the sun finally set, he grabs the brandy and enjoys it while the narrator was saying, “Metaxa, the only spirit that waits for you to mature.” Back then my taste buds where not as trained to very strong and earthy flavors, and I didn ‘t really liked the taste of it. And while the time was going by, I grew up and the taste of that Brandy became, from bitter, interesting, good, and finally complex and exceptional. It is a staple in the greek tradition with about 160 years history along side with the greek nation. It is my grandmothers favorite treat and the only spirit that still occasionally drinks. 

In the last post I talked about wine glasses and how the shape, size and overall construction, are enhancing the overall experience. I left out the beers and I debated quite long time if I should have a similar entry for beer. You see, although for instance white wines share many common characteristics although they are different, in a way, beer although it is the same type, there have more different than common elements. In certain type of wine there are the grapes and the aging process. In beer is the starchy elements (wheat, barley rice etc), the hops, the water and the aging process. So although all wheat beers are the same in principle the differences are much more pronounced compared to wine. It is therefore not uncommon for every self respectful brewery to have its own glass. We are not going to cover each one, but I will just give a small description of the major types of glasses.

So I haven ‘t written anything a two months. So what is the deal about it? I know you wonder… Well you don ‘t but I just thing you should know prior to the wondering. I took the time that I went to Greece to take a break, but more important, to study the food of Greece.Not study in depth of course, but learn about it. See food is the one thing that unites people. Knowing your food heritage, is knowing yourself.  Many times when I meet someone new and food conversations are ideal to break the ice.

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In a previous post we covered the basic for the of the cocktail or bar glasses as part of the tools required for a basic home bar. The difference is that with the possible exception of the Martini glass they do not influence the drinking experience. And even in the case of Martini it is only to keep it cold since it has no ice. On the contrary, for the wine the shape can influence the taste and the overall experience equally to the wine type and the serving temperature.  In the wine the aromas are equally important as the taste and a badly selected glass can ruin the overall experience.

I left for last the sauce that is the one closest to my heart. The sauce of the sauces. Well at least for me it is. I love this sauce as nothing in the world. It is a sauce that has only one way of making it and can accommodate everything, from veggies to cardboard.

his sauce under different conditions could have been called just a condiment and not a real sauce. Well it is a sauce, but it is one of those sauces that does not share anything with the actual food, and as we will see further on, it is a sauce that requires a lot of preparation and usually is made in huge quantities.

If you know french, or if you can guess Espagnole means spanish. But the actual sauce has little connection with Spanish cuisine. According to Louis Diat, the creator of vichyssoise and the author of the classic Gourmet’s Basic French Cookbook: “There is a story that explains why the most important basic brown sauce in French cuisine is called sauce espagnole, or Spanish sauce. According to the story, the Spanish cooks of Louis XIII’s bride, Anne, helped to prepare their wedding feast, and insisted upon improving the rich brown sauce of France with Spanish tomatoes. This new sauce was an instant success, and was gratefully named in honor of its creators.”

Before we continue, I would like t say that I have never made espagnole, because it is a very tedious and elaborate sauce. It is however very tasty and really brights up the dishes. Espagnole has a strong taste and is rarely used directly on food. The sauce is used in small quantities to give contrast between the different bites of food, and therefore highlight its flavor. Using even a little more than the required can overpower the taste of the target food and therefore you should be very cautious.

The foundation of the sauce is the roux the butter and flour mixture that we see in béchamel and almost in velouté sauce. A great difference here is the dark roux that is used. The dark roux although weak in thickening, it provides a very deep dark flavor that makes for strong nutty taste. To the roux we add big amounts of veal stock. For 2 cups of roux (1 butter and 1 flour) we add 2 gallons of veal stock. So so far it is a mix of the béchamel (the roux) and the velouté. The fun part is now starting. To the mix we add veal bones that have been browned in the oven alongside with vegetables (not starchy veggies, just carrots onions a celery). The mix is cooked over simmer, traditionally for hours (at least 3), where other chefs report up to days. To maintain the solution with enough liquid, periodically veal stock is added.

The last step is to strain the sauce in another pot and keep on the cooking. This time tomato sauce that has been pureed  is added and the reduction continuous till the sauce reach the desired consistency. A typical espagnole recipe takes many hours or even several days to make, and produces four to five quarts of sauce. In most derivative recipes, however, one cup of espagnole is more than enough, so that the basic recipe will yield enough sauce for 16 to 20 meals. Frozen in small quantities, espagnole will keep practically indefinitely.

As a mother sauce, however, it then serves as the starting point for many derivative sauces, such as Sauce Africaine, Sauce Bigarade, Sauce Bourguignonne, Sauce aux Champignons, Sauce Charcutiere, Sauce Chasseur, and Sauce Chevreuil, just to go as far as the “Cs”. There are hundreds of other derivatives in the classic French repertoire.

Are you going to  make an espagnole sauce? I doubt it. But it is a sauce that requires patient and skill, the two qualities that the French people have. But it is a good exercise. Then you will appreciate it more next time you will have it.

Velouté is the next in line sauce of the five mother sauces of the french cousin. It is however in a slightly different category than the other two. While the other two were prepared separate and were blending with the food on the plate, velouté is one of the sauces that can be prepared with parts of the actual dish you are preparing. It has a very creamy texture and very smooth feel, like velvet, which I think véloute stand for in French.