CHAPTER 17
A SAUCE THICKER THAN BLOOD
LESSON HIGHLIGHTS: ROOSTER COOKED IN RED WINE AND BLOOD, MY SISTER VISITS PARIS
One day, I find a young Asian woman hunched against the back wall of the locker room. Sobbing, she methodically rips up a recipe as if working a rosary, as quiet tears roll down her face. Whispers say a chef yelled at her for botching three separate attempts at a cream sauce.
A complex balance of heat, ingredients, and seasoning, even a simple sauce can go wrong. Chef Gaillard noticed nothing else on my plate when he screamed about my duck à l’orange. Yet last week, an overcooked fillet of veal slipped by, masked under a river of velvety mushroom velouté. It’s easy to appreciate why sauces developed into one of the distinguishing elements of French cuisine: a great sauce can hide a host of deficiencies. A bad sauce hides nothing, especially not itself.
In the days before refrigeration, sauces were sometimes used to disguise meats or seafood that might be pushing their sell-by date. The great chefs each developed long libraries of sauces. Take for instance Escoffier’s list of master sauces, which includes béchamel (white, based in cream), velouté (blond, a mixture of cream and stock), espagnole (brown, usually starting with veal stock), hollandaise/mayonnaise (butter and egg emulsions), and tomato (red, for obvious reasons). There’s also jus, not usually considered a sauce in classic French cuisine but used in the place of one in modern cooking.
But the more sauces we make, the more it becomes clear that in French cuisine sauces are like jazz riffs: variations off a few basic themes. By my own estimation, we’ve been through about fifty sauces so far. We’ve made them with red wine, white wine, Calvados, beer, Muscadet, Madeira, and port. We’ve thickened our arteries with a legion of cream and butter sauces: béchamel, beurre blanc, suprême, béarnaise, Albuféra, hollandaise, mornay, tartar, and a nut-brown butter version known as meunière. We’ve learned to make sauces from crawfish, tomatoes, mushrooms, mustard, herbs, and coffee. For desserts, we’ve learned honey, vanilla, passion-fruit, chocolate, pistachio, cognac, and raspberry sauces. Add to this a slew of jus and a list of vinaigrettes.
Today, our sauce will be thickened with blood.
Traditionally made with a rooster (a coq in French), coq au vin is one of the most classic of all French dishes. Several regions of France claim it originated there; some dubious reports say it was created by Caesar’s chef. But regardless of where it came from, the original dish was finished by adding rooster blood, which coagulates and thickens when exposed to oxygen, lending the flavor a certain je ne sais quoi.
“I am not sure why that would be appealing to anyone,” Lely whispers to me as Chef Gaillard dives deep into a story about peasants keeping chickens and holding the coq for special occasions. “Why eat the blood?”
“Maybe it tastes good to them?” I whisper back. “Lots of countries make blood sausage, and some people really like that.”
She sits back and looks at me. “You like that?”
I just shake my head. The record should note that I tried black pudding during an adventurous breakfast once in the wilds of Ipswich, England. It was not, as the English would say, my cup of tea.
Overseeing our practical, Chef Savard offers that we can leave out the blood if we want. But I’m game. I pour some nonbloodied sauce into a zipbag to reserve it for dinner at home with Mike. I take the rest of my sauce and add in the blood. As I stir, it thickens slightly, taking on a darker hue by the minute. As always, I taste. The blood sauce isn’t bad. Rich, almost a bit like chocolate, the texture a bit gritty. Count Chocula would be happy.
I’m one of only three students who took the extra step to make the blood sauce. Chef seems pleased. I don’t even need any more salt—the blood lends enough for his palate. “It’s good with the blood, yes?” he asks. I shrug.
Afterward, I meet up with L.P. and Lely to walk down to the lockers. “What did you think of the blood?” L.P. asks.
Like so many things, it’s not that it’s bad—it’s just unfamiliar. “Well, let’s put it this way. I don’t think that I’ll become a vampire anytime soon.”
My sister lived on the family farm for more than a decade; I lived there only until I was six. She spent most of her life there eating the same ten dishes. So while I have fond memories of my mother’s minestrone, she rolls her eyes at the memory. “You forget she would top it with Velveeta cheese,” she chides.
With little variation, it went like this: On Mondays and Thursdays, Mom made bread and an “oven dinner,” either meatloaf or chicken casserole. Tuesday meant spaghetti, Wednesday minestrone soup. Friday, we had fried fish even though we weren’t Catholic. “It can’t hurt, might help,” Mom would say. Saturdays, she made vats of chili or a macaroni-beef dish we euphemistically referred to as “goulash.” Sundays meant fried chicken or pot roast.
In the 1960s in semirural Michigan, Sandy had no exposure to ethnic cuisine. All she knew was that some lady named Julia on public TV made food that was different than our mother’s—sans Velveeta—and different was good. Sandy began to cook the likes of coq au vin when she was in junior high. Presumably, her fixation on France grew from there.
Now the editor of a travel magazine, my sister has been all over the world. But there’s one place that she’s spent little time: Paris. I don’t think it’s an accident.
Today, she arrives with her daughter, twelve-year-old Sarah. It’s always hard to describe my relationship with Sarah. “Niece” feels like an inadequate descriptor. She’s my younger sister and my surrogate daughter all wrapped into one. Sarah has met a few of my boyfriends, but she’s never been keen on any of them. Then she met Mike at the “castle” in Florida. She called him “Uncle Mike” right away and insisted I marry him.
We want to show them everything. We feel like we’re showing them our city, the nooks and crannies, the special places we’ve discovered along with all the usual tourist spots. Sandy and I haunt the markets and the restaurant-supply stores near Les Halles. We take them through the passages. One day, I take them to the first place I ever had a meal in Paris: Les Fontaines on rue Soufflot in the Latin Quarter. Over a lunch of roasted quail, veal stew, and salad with hot chèvre, my sister seems distracted and unusually quiet. I notice she keeps stirring her espresso, staring out the window.
“What is it?” I ask her.
She stirs her coffee. “I want to go see it.”
“See what?”
“The Sorbonne.”
Of course, I should have known. In suggesting Les Fontaines for lunch, I’d forgotten that the main campus for the core Université de Paris-Sorbonne would be literally around the corner.
We walk down rue Soufflot and take a right on boulevard St.-Michel until we come to place de la Sorbonne, a square anchored by the ornate domed church built in the thirteenth century and loud with the sound of fountains. To one side, there’s a line of cafés; on the other, bookstores selling philosophy textbooks and a Gap.
Sandy takes in the details. We sit at the edge of one fountain next to a female student with long brown hair. She’s wearing jeans and talking on her mobile phone. She’s got an obvious American accent: “No, no, I’ll meet you at the bridge first, and then we’ll go get some coffee . . . . Oui, c’est bien. Au revoir.” She flips her phone shut.
This was the life that could have been Sandy’s. But if it had been, would she be a different person? Would she have her daughter, or her happy twenty-five-year marriage? Where would she be now?
“Mama, what are you thinking?” asks Sarah.
Sandy thinks for a moment.
“Maybe you can go here one day” is all she says.
With that, we turn and leave the university behind.
It’s intriguing to look at Paris through the eyes of a child. Sarah is not interested in haute cuisine or impressive architecture. She’s bored after an hour at the Louvre.
To her, the highlights of Paris come in simple delights: watching a sleek woman feed her puppy terrier at an outdoor café, a sweet crêpe, and a ride on the carousel at Les Halles. She’s intrigued by the mechanics of the standard street hot dog: a long rod gets pushed into the center of a foot-long half baguette to make a hole in the soft bread before the hot dog is surgically inserted.
Their last day in Paris arrives, and they plan a final visit to the Louvre. But it is Tuesday, so they find it closed and wander into the Tuileries gardens instead. Sarah spots a boy and girl her age at the playground and runs to meet them. She finds one speaks only French, the other Spanish. Somehow, the three manage to communicate, and they play together for hours, sharing swings and monkey bars, teaching one another words.
There’s much to learn from their visit. Still a child, Sarah lacks the fear of things foreign that we all seem to foster as we grow up. She is less likely to see others who speak another language as “them” because once you play with other children, they are no longer foreign; they are just people. Her sheer curiosity and desire to play transcend any inhibition.
If Sandy had never dreamed of the Sorbonne, would I have been as drawn to the Le Cordon Bleu? If she had gone to Paris, who would we be now?
Coq au Vin et Thym
CHICKEN IN WINE AND THYME
Serves eight to ten
This is my sister’s recipe. She grows fresh thyme in her garden—hence the bounty of it used here. She usually serves the chicken with wide noodles or mashed potatoes. This is great for entertaining, as you can prepare it a day ahead and reheat. Serve with the same type of red wine you use in the sauce.
3½ pounds (1.5 kg) boneless chicken thighs, skin removed
Coarse salt, freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
8 ounces (250 g) pancetta or unsmoked bacon, diced
2 medium yellow onions, chopped (about 2½ cups)
ribs of celery, chopped (about 1½ cups)
2 medium carrots, chopped
2 tablespoons brandy or cognac
2 tablespoons flour
1 bottle (750 ml) dry red wine, such as Syrah or Pinot Noir
4 cloves garlic, chopped
10 sprigs thyme, tied together
2 bay leaves
3 cups (750 ml) chicken stock
½ sweet onion, sliced
8 ounces (250 g) brown mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
Mashed potatoes or cooked wide noodles
Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper. In a heavy Dutch oven, brown in batches in hot oil over high heat. Set aside. Turn the heat to medium-low and add the pancetta or bacon and cook slowly until slightly browned. Add the onions, celery, and carrots and stir until tender. Add the brandy, then reduce slightly. Sprinkle with flour and stir until coated. Return the chicken to the pan. Add the wine, garlic, herbs, and chicken stock. The liquid should mostly cover the chicken pieces. Bring the liquid to a boil, skimming off any foam or fat. Reduce heat to a bare simmer. Cover tightly and cook in oven for about two hours or until meat is very tender.
Meanwhile, cook the sweet onions and mushrooms in the butter in a medium skillet.
Before serving, add the mushrooms, onions, and chopped parsley to the chicken. Remove bay leaves and thyme branches. Check seasonings, adding salt and pepper to taste.
Serve atop mashed potatoes or noodles.