Sauces

This morning we had a dem on sauces. Mainly white sauce, and combination sauces for pasta! So first Helene started with the basics and showed us how to make a white sauce, by first making a roux on the heat and then gradually adding milk slowly off the heat, and that is a standard white sauce! She then made a macaroni cheese, again with a basic white sauce, then she added cheese off of the heat and coated her cooked macaroni with it. After this she sprinkled bread crumbs mixed with cheese over the top, this is called a gratiner! She then prepared a pancake dish with spinach, ricotta, bacon, white sauce and tomato sauce which was really nice! Helene showed us how to prepare a base tomato sauce and a pesto, which she served with pasta, they were both nice, but there is only so much you can do with the two of them! We saw Helene create a spaghetti carbonara, which is a liaison sauce, if you mess it up there is no way to fix it, you have to start again! She also made a crab chili and lime spaghetti which was nice, but not my favorite!
In the afternoon we started the filling for shepherds pie and made bruschetta . We started off by browning the meat on two batches so as not to overcrowd the pan, then we deglazed the pan, to use later. then we fried some onions carrots and celery, got a bit of colour on them, and added to the meat. Then we stirred in some flour and cooked for 1 minute, then added a tablespoon of tomato Purée, and a teaspoon of Worcester sauce! We them let this simmer gently with a cartouche for about an hour. I then went on to finely chop some red onions, concasse two tomatoes, then deseed and finely dice them, mix this with some balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil! I then finely chopped some olives, and added this to the mix. We then went on to half some ciabatta, drizzle it with oil and toast, then again with some Parmesan on top! We mixed the salsa with some rocket, and served our bruschetta, which was nice! At the end we took our shepherds pie filling off the heat and left it to one side for tomorrow!