Espagnole

Brown roux, brown stock, and two hours of patient skimming. The deepest of the five and the parent of every red-wine and mushroom sauce.

30 g — butter

30 g — plain flour

700 ml — brown stock

50 g — smoked bacon

50 g — carrot

50 g — onion

30 g — celery

20 g — tomato purée

1 pc — thyme

1 pc — bay leaf

4 g — salt

60 g roux : 700 ml brown stock

Melt the butter, stir in the flour and keep it moving over a medium flame for eight to ten minutes. It goes straw, then biscuit, then the colour of a hazelnut shell. Stop there. One shade further and it turns bitter and loses its power to thicken.

In a second pan render the bacon, then sweat the carrot, onion and celery in the fat until the edges colour. Stir in the tomato purée and let it cook for two minutes until it darkens and stops smelling raw.

Whisk the warm stock into the cooled roux, add the vegetables, thyme and bay, and bring it to the edge of a simmer. Pull the pan half off the heat so it bubbles at one side only.

Now it is two hours of doing almost nothing. Skim the still side every fifteen minutes. Twice during that time, pour the sauce into a clean pan — everything that clings to the old one is what you are trying to remove.

Strain through a fine sieve, pressing nothing through. You should have about half a litre, dark and glossy, thin enough to pour and thick enough to coat. Season at the very end, because it has been reducing the whole time.

Roast meat, braises, anything with red wine or mushrooms. Reduce it by half with more stock and it becomes demi-glace, which is where most of its children start.