It's Good Though…

Peppercorn Sauce

Yield: 4 servings

Forget about having to go to a fancy upscale restaurant to be served Steak au Poivre when you can make your own Peppercorn Sauce at home in less than 20 minutes.

• ¼cup finely chopped shallots
• 1oz butter (¼ stick)
• 1TBS cracked black (or green) peppercorn
• ½cup red wine (Use a good table wine)
• 8fl oz demi-glace
• 2TBS finely chopped parsley
• Pepper to taste

Melt butter in a sauce pan and sauté shallots for approx. 2 minutes (until transparent). Add peppercorns and red wine, and reduce to an essence (approx. 2-3 minutes).

Add the demi-glace and stir with a whisk until glace is dissolved. Add water and simmer until the sauce is thick enough to coat a spoon.

Blend in chopped parsley and serve over broiled steaks. Sauce is best over strip steaks (approx. 8-12 oz) with all fat trimmed. Steaks can be either pan fried, broiled, or grilled, whatever your preference.

The amount of peppercorn may be varied to suit your personal taste.

Yield: 4 servings

” A good base lightly flavored with Madeira will produce one of the greatest of all sauces.” Raymond Sokolov, The Saucier’s Apprentice.
The history of Madeira wine goes back to 1418 and the wine initially was not fortified. It was ordinary wine that was a favorite of George Washington who was believed to have drank a pint of it daily.
This classic Madeira sauce recipe goes well with beef, chicken, chops or veal.

• 3TBS finely chopped shallots
• 1oz butter (¼ stick)
• ½lb white or Cremini mushrooms, sliced (optional)
• ½tsp cracked peppercorn
• 1bay leaf
• 1sprig fresh thyme (¼ tsp dried)
• ¼cup red wine
• ¾cup Madeira wine
• 1cup demi-glace
• ¼cup heavy cream (optional)

In a medium sized saucepan, sauté shallots in butter for 1-2 minutes or until translucent. Add mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are tender. (approx. 3 minutes). Remove mushrooms and set aside.

Add peppercorns, thyme, and bay leaf and cook 30 seconds. Add red wine and reduce by half. Add Madeira wine and bring to boil.

Add demi-glace and whisk until incorporated into the sauce. Return mushrooms to pan and add heavy cream and reduce briefly.

Serve over beef, veal, pork, chicken or other grilled or roasted meats. The heavy cream is strictly optional and gives the sauce a richer color and flavor.

Yield: 4 servings

Source lost

This classic French sauce is named for the great wine area of Bordeaux and is made with red wine, bone marrow, shallots, pepper and demi-glace. Bone marrow is listed as optional, but it is really a key ingredient.
NFB this is not a beginners sauce. There is nothing overly difficult here, but marrow and real demi-glace are specialty ingredients.

• ¼cup finely chopped shallots
• 1oz butter (¼ stick)
• 4oz diced beef bone marrow *
• ¼tsp cracked black peppercorn
• 1sprig fresh thyme
• ½cup red wine (Use a good table wine)
• 1cup demi-glace

Melt butter in a sauce pan and sauté shallots for approx. 2 minutes (until transparent). Add red wine and reduce for approx. 2-3 minutes (to an essence). Add thyme and peppercorns and reduce further for approx. 2-3 minutes (until almost no liquid remains).

Add demi-glace and simmer for approx. 5-6 minutes (until sauce begins to thicken).

In a separate pan, simmer diced bone marrow in water for 3-4 minutes. Drain water and add diced marrow to sauce and simmer for approx. 2 minutes. Serve over tournedos, beef tenderloin steaks, or rump steaks.

Sauce is excellent over most cuts of grilled or roast beef, especially whole roasted beef tenderloin.

*If bone marrow is not available, you can substitute butter instead. It’s still a good sauce but it isn’t Bordelaise.

Yield: 4 Servings

Elizabeth E. Skipper

A child of sauce hollandaise, Béarnaise has vinegar, shallots, tarragon and pepper. It is great on steaks, burgers, asparagus or salmon.

• ⅓cup white wine
• ⅓cup apple cider vinegar
• ¼cup chopped shallots
• 2TBS dried tarragon
• 2tsp dried chervil
• 1tsp salt
• ½tsp white (or black) pepper
• 3egg yolks
• ½lb butter, melted

With the first seven ingredients, make an acid base and reduce until there remain only 3 TBS-liquid in the pot. Cool slightly, add the egg yolks, and cook whisking over medium heat until the mixture mounds and thickens. DO NOT use aluminum pan, it reacts with the vinegar.

Remove- from the heat and add -the melted butter, slowly at first, to form the emulsion. Whisk in remaining butter, strain sauce through a coarse strainer to remove solids, and serve.

Can be made 1 hour ahead, sit at room temp. Add a little water, reheat and whisk thoroughly.

If desired, add a small amount of ground fresh tarragon.

Yield: 4 servings

This classic French sauce was very popular in France in the 17th century and to this day no one is positive where its name came from but think it was derived sometime in the 16th century.

Sauce Robert is considered a brown sauce but is made with white wine and mustard and goes great with beef and pork.

• 1medium onion
• ½oz butter
• ½cup white wine
• 1TBS Dijon mustard
• freshly ground pepper to taste
• ½oz butter for finishing
• 8oz demi-glace
• Sauté the onion in butter over medium high until translucent.

Add the white wine

• andreduce to an essence.

Add the demi-glace, stir and reduce until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Add the mustard, taste for seasonings and finish with the remaining butter.

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan. and mix in the flour. using a whisk. Cook for two to three minutes to remove the raw flour taste. Add the stock off the heat. whisking briskly to prevent lumps. Continue whisking over medium heat until the sauce thickens. Add the heavy cream, heat through. check the seasoning and adjust to taste.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Provençal sauce, made from herbes de Provence, chicken broth, butter, garlic, and lemon juice, is a simple sauce that goes great with chicken.  It can include tomato or not.  This recipe does.

• 3TBS finely chopped shallots
• 1TBS olive oil
• 1clove garlic, minced
• 1tsp herbes de provence (basil, fennel seed, lavender, marjoram, rosemary, sage, savory, thyme)
• ¼cup white wine, dry
• 8oz chicken demi-glace
• ½cup tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
• 2tsp fresh chervil, chopped
• 2tsp fresh parsley, chopped
• salt & pepper (white)

Sauté shallots, garlic, and herbes de provence in olive oil for 1-2 minutes or until shallots are translucent. Add wine and reduce by half. demi-glace and whisk until dissolved. Bring to a rapid boil for 30 seconds. Add tomatoes, chervil, parsley, and salt and white pepper to taste. Serve with fish, chicken, lamb, or grilled vegetables.

Sauce is primarily to be served over duck.

Escoffieronline

What can we say about hollandaise sauce that everyone else doesn’t know? It’s delicious. It’s incredibly rich. It’s something you wish you could have for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day but probably shouldn’t because it could quite possibly kill you. And it’s for good reason. With a delicate but scrumptious composition of some protein-packed egg yolks, gobs of melted butter, a touch of lemon and a smidgen of salt and pepper, it’s what we’d call totally loaded in the culinary world. Throw it on potatoes, some ham, poached eggs and English muffin a la eggs benedict or smother your choice of veggies in its glowing golden gloriousness. Whatever your choice, hollandaise sauce will be sure to compliment it. It’s also one of Escoffier’s five mother sauces, the ones that all sauces from the 1800s out were based off of. So you know it’s an important recipe to have in your arsenal. The only slight downside is the process of making it, which is very temperature and time sensitive and can be ruined in a blink of an eye. However, we’ve got a solution for that.

• ½fl oz white vinegar
• ½fl oz water
• 2egg yolks
• 12oz clarified butter (heated to 125°F)
• Lemon juice to taste
• Cayenne pepper to taste.

Combine yolks, water and vinegar.

Cook quickly over a double boiler until yolks are lighter in color and a ribbon consistency, then remove from heat.

Heat clarified butter to 125°F.

Slowly add butter to yolks, whisking constantly. Add a few drops of lemon juice is sauce seems to thick.

Season to taste with salt, cayenne and lemon juice.

Hot hold at 125°F for 1.5 hours maximum

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Escoffieronline

Sauce Tomat is simply tomato sauce – one of the five French mother sauces.
There are many modern variations of Escoffier’s classic sauce, often because the original recipe is rather time consuming to make. Notably, many recipes replace raw tomatoes with canned ones that are diced, quartered or mashed. It is easy to make double or triple batches of this recipe, especially since tomato sauce can easily be frozen and saved for later use. Here is a version of Auguste Escoffier’s original recipe:

• 2-3oz salt pork.

Salt pork is a fattier part of the pig that looks similar to bacon but

• isnever smoked.
• 3oz carrots, peeled and medium diced
• 3oz white or yellow onion, medium diced
• 1bay leaf
• 1sprig thyme
• 2oz whole butter
• 2-3oz all-purpose flour
• 5lbs raw, good quality tomatoes, mashed
• 1qt white veal stock
• 1clove freshly crushed garlic
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Pinch of sugar

Fry the pork in the butter. When the fat has melted, add the carrots, onion, bay leaf and thyme. Cook the vegetables, stirring regularly. Add in the flour. Once it has browned, add in the tomatoes and veal stock. Stir the ingredients together until well mixed, then bring the sauce to a boil. Add the rest of the seasonings and the clove of crushed garlic. Place in the oven under moderate heat for 90 minutes. Remove the sauce and pass it through a sieve. Butter the top to prevent the formation of a skin.

Any sauce not being used within the next few days should be placed in an airtight container and put in the freezer.