Chloe King has been writing Gannet and Parrot since weaning her baby, through it she has rekindled her passion for cooking and here she shares with us why white sauce is power.
‘When it’s black, it’s done,’ advised a friend, in reply to my asking if anyone’s parents had taught them anything about cooking.
My Facebook thread had captured imaginations, and the recipes my friends shared evoked a mixture of nostalgia and surprise… ‘Veggie Bolognese with split peas, tamari roasted nuts and gomasio,’ said one. ‘Eggs with a jar of curry sauce,’ said another.
One friend woefully recalled the time her mum offered up a Christmas lunch of Quorn mince and mash with the words, ‘if there are vegetables in the pie, there do not need to be vegetables served with the pie’.
But the most revealing aspect of my survey was the number of people who said a parent had taught them how to make white sauce. The link between parenting and white sauce tuition seemed so conclusive that my veg pie friend, who has never made one, said she was ‘starting to get a complex’.
As I fondly recall my own mum directing me how to make white sauce, I begin to wonder why it seems to be such a popular milestone in teaching kids how to cook?
It could be because white sauce, or béchamel, is a dish that crosses classes. In other words: it’s super cheap to make, but you can’t go cordon bleu without a roux. You can posh it up like Delia by infusing the milk with herbs and spices, or you can just paste plain flour and melted butter in a heavy-bottomed pan, and drizzle milk in slowly, stirring all the time.
You can use white sauce to make macaroni cheese or croques monsieur; as a topping for lasagne or moussaka; or you can mix it with herbs as a sauce for fish, chicken or vegetables. One friend said it was the only recipe her mum had taught her, ‘hence my current range is limited to six meals: all involving mince.’
But six mince-filled homemade meals are better than none, and one more than is currently being advocated by the Leon Cook 5 campaign. I mean, from Jamie’s School Dinners to Green Kitchen Stories, foodie media is buzzing with talk about how we ought to educate our kids about cooking.
I wonder, though, maybe it’s enough to teach our kids how to make white sauce? It has a milky yet savoury taste that is well liked and a great means to introduce flavours: a vehicle that makes strange veg or spiced meats less weird tasting.
The value of white sauce isn’t just the number of meals you make with it, but the principles of good home cooking that it represents. Making white sauce teaches kids to be watchful, patient and creative in the kitchen. It involves transforming basic ingredients into comforting, healthy meals for those you love, and this can only be a good thing.
And if your white sauce is always lumpy, no matter, for in the words of another friend: ‘My mum was a terrible cook, but I love her anyhoo.’
In 1993 Chloë King won Highly Commended in the Sainsbury’s FutureCooks Awards. She has since worked as an illustrator and print designer and before she had her daughter in November 2011, she found herself an almost proper job as a magazine editor. Chloë started her blog Gannet & Parrot when her daughter was weaning as a means to help her family eat a more varied diet, and it reignited her childhood passion for cooking. Now with six months worth of greasy fingerprints on her iPad, Chloë thinks blogging is great way to indulge her love for words, pictures, and mostly, food. Tweet with Chloe @GannetandParrot and find her on Facebook too.
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The kids cook: white sauce | Gannet & Parrot
Monday 13th of May 2013
[...] This article was originally published as a guest post for BritMums. [...]
mamacook
Monday 13th of May 2013
My Mum did teach me how to make a white sauce, then she told me how to cheat! Let's face it, making a white sauce using a roux method is a right pain in the bottom and has a tendency to go wrong. I remember it famously doing so on the old series of "Food and Drink" when I was a teenager and that guy was a professional!
Do I feel worried about cheating? Nope. Now I work in the food industry I also know that a lot of white sauces (not all) are thickened with cornflour not wheatflour (which is what I do). This has the benefit of being easier and also a gluten free option.