Mahsa Munches at the Culinary: thickened mammal juice

It was a pretty good day. We spent it making knife skills trays, espagnole sauce, jus du veau lie, and another shot at hollandaise. Espagnole is another one of the mother (or grand) sauces of classical cuisine. So far we have done bechamel (white), veloute, hollandaise, espagnole today, and tomato sauce tomorrow. Espagnole is a brown sauce thats made with caramelized mirepoix (onions, carrots, celery) that are browned with tomato paste. Brown veal stock is added and the mixture is thickened with a brown roux (flour and butter cooked to a light brown color). Espagnole is used to make derivative sauces from it, such as demi glace, which is half espagnole and half brown veal stock that is reduced by half.

Here's our mise en place for the day:

Heres our knife skills tray (the first few days we had 70 mins to do this and have gradually been reducing the time, its now down to 35):

Here is our mise en place for our two stock reductions:

Here is my roux for the espagnole (at its blonde stage):

And as it browns:

Here is the espagnole simmering with the roux added to thicken it:

Unlike the espagnole sauce, which is thickened with roux, jus de veau lie, is thickened with a pure starch slurry, in our case, arrowroot. Cornstarch is probably a pure starch youre more aware of, but arrowroot creates a more glossy and clear finish. A pure starch based liquid also doesn't have to be cooked out, flour does.

Here is the arrowroot slurry, thats arrowroot powder mixed with a liquid. A tip is to use some brown stock, so the flavor wont be diluted with water:

Then you brown some veal meat:

Then we deglaze the pan with the carrots, onions, celery, and tomato paste. Then add the brown veal stock and sachet of spices. We simmer this for about an hour:

Before the slurry is added: