Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [22]
WATER
Acqua
Water is at the same time the most precious and most unobtrusive ingredient in Italian cooking, and its value is immense precisely because it is self-effacing. What water gives you is time, time to cook a meat sauce long enough without it drying out or becoming too concentrated, time for a roast to come around when using that superb Italian technique of roasting meat over a burner with the cover slightly askew, time for a stew or a fricassee or a glazed vegetable to develop flavor and tenderness. Water allows you to glean the tasty particles on the bottom of a pan without relying too much on such solvents as wine or stock that might tip the balance of flavor. When it has done its job and has been boiled away, water disappears without a trace, allowing your meats, your vegetables, your sauces to taste forthrightly of themselves.
Béchamel and Mayonnaise
Béchamel Sauce
Salsa Balsamella
BÉCHAMEL is a white sauce of butter, flour, and milk that helps bind the components of scores of Italian dishes: lasagne, gratins of vegetables, and many a pasticcio and timballo—succulent compounds of meat, cheese, and vegetables.
A smooth, luxuriantly creamy béchamel is one of the most useful preparations in the repertory of an Italian cook and it is easy to master, if you heed three basic rules. First, never allow the flour to become colored when you cook it with the butter, or it will acquire a burnt, pasty taste. Second, add the milk to the flour and butter mixture gradually and off heat to keep lumps from forming. Third, never stop stirring until the sauce is formed.
About 1⅔ cups medium-thick béchamel
2 cups milk
4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1. Put the milk in a saucepan, turn on the heat to medium low, and bring the milk just to the verge of boiling, to the point when it begins to form a ring of small, pearly bubbles.
2. While heating the milk, put the butter in a heavy-bottomed, 4- to 6-cup saucepan, and turn on the heat to low. When the butter has melted completely, add all the flour, stirring it in with a wooden spoon. Cook, while stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes. Do not allow the flour to become colored. Remove from heat.
3. Add the hot milk to the flour-and-butter mixture, no more than 2 tablespoons of it at a time. Stir steadily and thoroughly. As soon as the first 2 tablespoons of milk have been incorporated into the mixture, add 2 more, and continue to stir. Repeat this procedure until you have added ½ cup milk; you can now put in the rest of the milk ½ cup at a time, stirring steadfastly, until all the milk has been smoothly amalgamated with the flour and butter.
4. Place the pan over low heat, add the salt, and cook, stirring without interruption, until the sauce is as dense as thick cream. To make it even thicker, should a recipe require it, cook and stir a little longer. For a thinner sauce, cook it a little less. If you find any lumps forming, dissolve them by beating the sauce rapidly with a whisk.
Ahead-of-time note Béchamel takes so little time to prepare it is best to make just when you need it, so you can spread it easily while it is still soft. If you must make it in advance, reheat it slowly, in the upper half of a double boiler, stirring constantly as it warms up, until it is once again supple and spreadable. If you are making béchamel one day in advance, store it in the refrigerator in a tightly sealed container.
Increasing the recipe You can double or triple the quantities given above, but no more than that for any single batch. Choose a pan that is broader than it is tall so the sauce can cook more quickly and evenly.
Mayonnaise
Maionnese
HOMEMADE MAYONNAISE does marvelous things for the flavor of any dish of which it is a part and, with a little practice, you’ll find it to be one of the easiest and quickest sauces you can produce.
After years of alternately using olive