How to make the classic béchamel sauce, that white sauce!
The white sauce, or call it by its real name "La sauce béchamel" Queen of the white sauces, this recipe was created
in France but ended up being used frequently in Italian recipes as well.
In England, it is known simply as the "white sauce".
The creator of this white sauce was the Marquis of Nointel, Louis de Béchamel, who first proposed it in the seventeenth century in its recipes. The name "béchamel", however, was given only later, by François Pierre de la Varenne, chef of King Louis XIV, who put it in his cookbook "Le Cuisinier Français" giving it this name to honor its inventor. Today, some chefs argue that the béchamel might actually have originated in Italy: it would then have been invented in Tuscany and exported to France by Catherine de Medicis; but this is far from what historians agree upon...
Ingredients:
half cup melted Butterhalf cup white flour
4 cups Milk (1 liter)
half-teaspoon Nutmeg
teaspoon salt
Instructions
First use the microwave to heat up your milk to slightly warmer than room temperature. Reserve.
I also recommend melting the butter using the microwave oven.
To prepare the bechamel sauce in a saucepan drop the butter,
let it melt, but do not allow it to brown or the sauce will be ruined
Using a sieve or sifter gradually add the flour and mix the butter and flour together for a few minutes,
stirring constantly so you avoid sticking and burning the flour.
At this stage you have now what the French call a roux. So now. remove the pan from the heat and add the hot milk to the roux, stirring everything with a wooden spoon.
Important: this may seem trivial, but always stir in the same direction... do not change direction once you have started!
Put the saucepan back on the stove, cook over low heat until the sauce begins to boil and add the salt and the nutmeg.
Cover the pan with a lid and cook the sauce, always under very low heat for 15 minutes, the time it takes to make the sauce thicker,
stirring occasionally.
Once the sauce is made, you can also customize it to your menu: add some vegetable broth to accompany vegetables, some herbs for meat and fish. Also depending on how you will use the sauce you can decide if you want to make your white sauce more or less consistent: to make it thicker just add to the mixture of flour, if you want to simply add more liquid milk. The white sauce, as well as being useful in complex dishes such as lasagne, cannelloni and many others, is excellent as a garnish with the famous "vol-au-vent" or to flavor dishes roasted meat, boiled vegetables, fish, soufflé, in short .. . use your imagination! It seems curious that the roux, the mixture of flour and butter needed to prepare the white sauce, was already known at least a century before the invention of the bechamel: Sabina Welserin in 1553, puts it in her cookbook, cooking as a sauce for seasoning meat and fish.
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