Port Wine Sauce with Redcurrant Jelly

This is a pretty good standard sauce and goes very well with both beef and lamb.

You will need:

200ml port
200ml red wine
400ml good beef stock
1 carrot, chopped in half
4 cloves of garlic, no need to peel
1 onion, peeled and quartered
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
3 bay leaves
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp Worcester sauce
2 tbsp redcurrant jelly

And then you need to:

In a small saucepan combine everything apart from the redcurrant jelly.

Over a low heat reduce to about half.

Strain through a fine sieve and return to the saucepan. Add the redcurrant jelly and heat until all incorporated.

Serve.

Red Wine Sauce

There are quicker ways of whipping up a red wine sauce, but I like this. It yields a rich, deep sauce that will freeze like a naked inuit.

Ingredients

• 3 large shallots, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 10g butter
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 50g pancetta
• 450ml red wine
• 2 tsp plain flour
• 1 bay leaf

Heat the olive oil and butter in a pan until the butter melts. Fry the shallots, carrot and garlic over a medium heat, stirring, until they brown. Add the tomato and keep frying for two minutes or so, then add the pancetta. Keep everything in the pan moving as it fries and then, as pancetta colours, add 350ml of the red wine and the bay leaf. Turn the heat to low, cover the pan and cook for 30 minutes.

Transfer the whole lot to a saucepan, removing the bay leaf, and whizz with a hand blender, then reheat, covered, for a further 20 minutes. Strain this and cook for another 20 minutes and then strain again. Mix the flour into the remaining wine and add this to the sauce. Heat up and stir until it thickens and then remove from the heat and cover. Add any juices from the cooking to the sauce.

Reheat to serve.

Transformations - 1

Real mayonnaise is amongst the best tasting stuff imaginable. It is a little molecular miracle, and there is something very satisfying about the process.
You will have taken a tasteless fluid oil and transformed it into an ethereal sauce through craftsmanship and care. Add a tablespoon of minced shallot, and maybe a little extra lemon juice for an extraordinary dipping sauce for an artichoke, or blanched and shocked vegetables, or to put on some boiled new potatoes. While citrus fruit is really good (try using limes, and adding chopped fresh dill after making, then letting it sit overnight and use as a sauce for cold salmon.) Don't forget that vinegars can be used as well as long as the acid content is there. Magical stuff.

Ingredients:
1 large egg yolk
5 grams salt
5 ml water
5 ml lemon juice (or 10 for a lemony mayo)
5 grams Dijon mustard (optional, but mustard assists emulsion)
250 ml vegetable oil (or EVOO if you like it heavy, or 50/50)

Then you have to:
Combine yolks salt, water and lemon juice in a medium bowl. The bowl must be very clean inside. Fold a hand towel into a ring on the counter and set the bowl in this ring to hold it steady while you whisk. Using a sauce or balloon whisk, mix the first 5 ingredients together.
Add the oil slowly while whisking vigorously. Measure out your oil into a cup that pours well in a very thin stream. You must add all the oil slowly at first, and increase the speed to a thin stream as the emulsion becomes creamy. From the start, the mixture should be thick enough to hold its shape and look luxuriously creamy. If you add the oil too quickly, it will break - that is, it will turn soupy. When all the oil is incorporated add the remaining lemon juice to taste. If it is too thick, it can be thinned by whisking in a little water.
If it breaks, put a teaspoon of water in a clean bowl and start the process over by dribbling in the broken mayonnaise while whisking.

Or, you can follow the same procedure using an immersion or regular blender, but the oil must be added slowly, always. If you are concerned about salmonella, just let it sit for 2 hours before using.The acid will eliminate any chance of salmonella being present..

There is a culinary myth with origins in France that women who are on their monthly cycle (being delicate here) cannot make mayonnnaise. Is it really a myth? Anybody?

Basic Tomato Sauce

I use this sauce for all sorts of things and have bags of the stuff in the freezer at all times. Its great as a pizza topping, fantastic stirred into pasta (with some fresh herbs thrown in), I add it to casseroles, anything I can think of really. So what you need to do is quadruple this recipe, make up a huge batch, divide it into four portions in freezer bags and use it as and when required.

The amount below makes about enough to use as a pasta sauce for four people.


You will need:

1 large onion, chopped fine
4 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
1 carrot, peeled and grated
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp sugar
100ml red wine
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Seasoning

And then you need to:

In a large pan over a low flame heat a good glug of EV olive oil and then gently fry the onions, garlic and grated carrot.

After about ten minutes but before the onions start to colour add the rest of the ingredients and simmer very gently for a further 20 minutes until it has thickened quite nicely. You should have a pan full of very deep dark red yumminess.

Pour into a food processor and whizz to a very fine sauce.

Couldn't be easier!

Parsley Sauce

The traditional accompaniment to bacon, cabbage and potatoes - and also a nice sauce if you're planning on making a sneaky fish pie, by the way! Just mix in your choice of cooked fish and wallop a load of mash and then a grating of cheese on top!

Ingredients

• 25g curly leafed parsley
• 25 butter
• 1 heaped tbsp plain flour
• 300ml milk

Melt the butter in a pan and add the flour. Beat this up briefly with a wooden spoon or, better, a whisk, before adding in a splash of milk. Keep beating whilst adding the milk in 3 or 4 batches. When it’s heated up, but not boiled, and thickened so that it coats the back of a spoon, add the parsley and salt to taste. You can make this a little in advance, cover it tightly and put it to one side before reheating it when you’re good to go if you don’t fancy juggling with everything else and a sauce that won’t thicken for some damn reason. If you’re feeling naughty, and let’s face it who doesn’t every now and then, whizz a knob of butter and a spoon of cream in at the end to melt and make everything just a little more luxurious.