[Sca-cooks] Sauces, was: Pillsbury pie crusts

[Huette von Ahrens]

--- Phlip <phlip at 99main.com> wrote:

> Actually, I was thinking of working on
> emulsions shortly, specificly
> home-made mayonnaise and the Hollandaise family
> of sauces.
> 
> Anybody got any recipes they'd suggest? I can
> usually get them right, but I
> still break a few, and I'd like to get it down
> to perfection...

Here is a book that I consider a definitive book
on the subject of sauces:

Peterson, James.
  Sauces : classical and contemporary sauce 
making / James Peterson.  2nd ed.
New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold, c1998.
xxv, 598 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 27 cm.
ISBN: 0442026153

It has a huge amount of sauces in one book, it 
is easy to read and understand,  I have used it
many times and think it well worth the money.
The first edition of this book received the
James Beard Cookbook of the Year Award for 1991.

Huette

Here is a review of the book:

Back in 1991, when the first edition of Sauces 
was published, it's as though James Peterson
said, "Okay, this is what we know so far. Where
do you want to go from here?" The "what we know
so far" part started with the Greeks and Romans,
moved through the Middle Ages, into the
Renaissance, through the 17th and 18th centuries,
and right on into time as we know it, time that
can be tasted in the sauce.

The "where do you want to go" part continues to
evolve, as it always will, but remains just as
evident in the way we sauce our creations, both
elegant and fundamental. In the second edition of
Sauces, released seven years after the first, the
"we" has expanded beyond Frenchmen and their
disciples, and now includes the broader range of
flavors experienced by Italians as pasta sauces,
as well as New World cooks and their counterparts
in the Middle East and throughout greater Asia.
The solid base from which all this grows, 
however, remains the lessons learned in the 
French kitchen--and a better kitchen for such
lessons has never been developed.

To cook is one thing, to sauce another. The right
sauce lifts the right dish to a wholly different
plateau of dining than would be the case if the
cook didn't bother. This can be a humble pasta
sauce created as a perfect balance of ingredients
on hand, or a carefully considered sauce the
ingredients of which have been developed at the
stove over days, not mere hours.

In the sauce can be seen the reflection of the
cook. There is no room to hide. In the
well-crafted sauce can be found the ultimate
expression of simplicity, which leaves even less
room to hide. It is James Peterson's great talent
that he can draw the home cook and professional
cook into his dialogue on sauces, and teach them
both how to stay afloat in such shallow waters.

Peterson gives the reader--in close to 600 pages,
mind you--the continuum on which sauces have been
based in culinary history. He gives the reader 
the kitchen science that allows sauces to work. 
He gives the reader the techniques necessary to
follow along where many a cook has already 
whisked up a splendid creation. But most of all,
he gives the reader permission to go ahead and be
creative, to cut loose with knowledge and
technique in hand and discover for oneself the 
way an inkling of a flavor idea can find its way
to a dish and make the combined ingredients lift
off the plate. Or not. Finding out what doesn't
work can be just as important.

This is a book that can be taken to bed and
savored, page by page, sauce by sauce. It is a
book that should be on the shelf in any kitchen,
professional or homebody alike. It is not a book
to ever gather dust and need dusting. --Schuyler
Ingle


=====
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they 
shall never cease to be amused.


		
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