Sauce-pocalypse Now (a tribute to Jay "Chef" Hicks)

EXT. JUNGLE - MEDIUM VIEW - DUSK
Chef and Willard cautiously walk through the dark underbrush.
We SEE fragments of them, LOSE them occasionally, and just MOVE through the jungle.
WE HEAR this conversation throughout

WILLARD: Chef?

CHEF: Yes, sir.

WILLARD: How come they call you that?

CHEF: Call me what, sir?

WILLARD: Chef. 'Cause you like mangoes and stuff?

CHEF: No, sir. I'm a real chef. I'm a saucier.

WILLARD: Saucier?

CHEF: Yes, sir. See, I come from New Orleans. I was raised to be a saucier. A great saucier.

WILLARD: What's a saucier?

CHEF: We specialize in sauces. Gotta be a mango tree here somewhere...Then, I was supposed to go to Paris, to the Escoffier School. But then I got orders for my physical.

They move deeper into the jungle.

CHEF: Well, I joined the navy. Heard they had better food. Cook school, that did it.

WILLARD: Oh, yeah? How's that?

Chef puts down his bucket and rifle, takes a leak. Willard takes a few steps farther in the jungle and then sits by him on a log.

CHEF: You don't wanna hear about that. They lined us up in front of a hundred yards of prime rib. All of us, you know, looking at it? Magnificent. Magnifique. Next thing, they're throwing the meat into these big cauldrons.

Willard has heard something in the jungle during this explanation. He becomes alert.

CHEF: All of it. Boiling it. I looked inside, man, it was turning grey. I couldn't fucking believe that one! That's when I applied for radioman's school, but they-

Chef looks up, seeing Willard standing a distance away, poised with his rifle. Willard signals to him to come cautiously. He motions to Chef to move with him, each covering the other. They walk a few yards from where they have heard something move.

For those of you who know the movie, the next scene is surprising, but I won't spoil it for you. For many years, before he started cooking, Jim thought that Chef was saying the "Scoffier" school. Duh. But since he gave Peta the Escoffier cookbook (translated by Cracknell and Kaufman), he knows better. He decided that he'd make up a few sauces before going deer hunting, since the kitchen would be far, far away for two weeks.

Getting a handle on the "mother sauces" has been a goal of Jim's for a while, so he decided to make a chicken velouté with the stock that he had recently prepared. This flour/roux based sauce differs from a gravy in the time that it cooks. The long cooking time of the velouté allows the starch granules time to explode and gives it a super smooth texture. The Escoffier book also mentioned that velouté could be used to make a velouté soup with the addition of a puréed vegetable and cream. We used the left over garlic and cream from the Cat Cora recipe for Halibut with Arugula and Cherry Tomatoes in a Sabayon. We added tarragon to make a Sauce Estragon and poured it over sautéed chicken breasts. Tasty treats!

While we're on the subject of sauces, we also made a Sauce Paloise out of the same cookbook. It sounds fancy, but it's just Sauce Béarnaise with mint subbing for the traditional tarragon. We served it over small lamb chops along with some beets.

Jim and Peta