There are times when it’s better to seek contrast than harmony: a creamy white-wine sauce lends richness to a lean white fish, a piquant sauce sets off a fatty meat almost like a condiment. But what of sauces? Even the best jus, used everywhere, becomes just more of the same. Rather than a full-fledged sauce, much of the time I opt for such a glaze-enriched jus, especially to underscore the delicate flavors of a lamb or veal roast. (The related veal demi-glace can be bought at some stores and online but is still inferior to what you make yourself.) Made right and used in proper amounts, veal glaze adds a rich, round meatiness without interfering with the main ingredient, and home cooks who don’t have it cannot hope to achieve grande cuisine results. Modernists like Thomas Keller and Pierre Gagnaire still do that, and it has filtered down to Parisian bistronomistes, such as Gagnaire alumnus Guillaume Delage of Jadis. Whenever they are available, small pieces of bones and trimmings are browned in the oven or on the top of the stove with a vegetable garnish, then an appropriate white stock (made without browning the ingredients) is added along with veal glaze, and the whole is slowly reduced, and some of that is added to the jus from the pan. Instead, a full-flavored brown jus is based on rich stock. Most meats and fish don’t have enough substance to provide their own jus. Yet, even now, in the most meticulous great restaurants there is no such thing as simple pan juices, because deglazing with water or wine is rarely enough. Nouvelle Cuisine’s jus - ostensibly simple pan juices - were designed to make duck taste like duck. The main ingredient had too often been a backdrop for an overpowering sauce. In France, the chefs of Nouvelle Cuisine sought freedom from the tyranny of classical cuisine, and soon New American Cuisine shared its ingredient-driven approach. Bad execution, particularly overthickening with flour, was part of the problem, and too many of the dishes they accompanied (tournedos Rossini, beef Wellington, veal Orloff) were themselves fatally ill conceived. I understood why sauces had fallen out of favor. (The sauce is named for the region of Béarn, in southwest France, with which it has little or nothing to do sauce names, like dish names, often represent a lot of literary license.) Pepper steak, coated with peppercorns, was flambéed at the table and a brown sauce covered it sole fillets came with one of the variations on white-wine sauces and roast duck was covered with orange sauce (lazy versions depending heavily on marmalade). The grease that kept the wheels of French and Continental restaurants turning was sauce béarnaise, perhaps because it added elegance and a few dollars to what otherwise would have been just a big piece of beef. I memorized as many as I could - uselessly, for already the number of sauces in North American restaurants had dwindled to a dismal few. The idea was that the “mother” sauces - demi-glace, velouté, béchamel, hollandaise, and tomato - and other basic preparations could be quickly combined with a few ingredients to make most of the particular sauces that filled page after page of the Répertoire de la Cuisine, the classical cook’s vade mecum. (Born near Nîmes, he was a proud descendant of Charles Durand, author of Le Cuisinier Durand, published in 1830 and considered the first French cookbook on regional cooking - Provençal.) He had worked at the Savoy in London in the mid-60s, when it remained a classical bastion there he was in charge of fish with a dozen people under him, and he knew his sauces. Thanks to Jean Lafont, a San Francisco chef, eventually I became a good sauce cook. The saucier was the most senior line cook, often doubling as sous chef, and the common perception was that it was the saucier’s handiwork in great part that elevated cooking to an art. By the time I finally worked my way up to saucier, in the mid-1970s, sauces were on the wane.
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