POLOKWANE – There’s Espagnole or Brown sauce which takes a long time to make. The flavor of this sauce is concentrated and intense therefore it is rarely served directly on food.
White or Veloute sauce is a white sauce that has a base of either veal, fish or chicken stock that has been thickened with a white roux. This sauce is very rich.
Hollandaise sauce is also rich and consists of egg yolks and butter. It is tricky to make because the butter must not curdle.
Béchamel sauce is a roux of boiled milk and butter and the sauce is used in white meats and tomato sauce which is made from tomatoes, and although it can be eaten as it is, it is also used as a base to make other sauces.
The 27-year-old chef at Meropa Hotel explains that a mother sauce is a base that you can add to get the taste you desire. “Whatever sauce you create, don’t forget to use these five mother sauces as your foundation. For example if you want a 1 000 island sauce, you add tomato to mayonnaise. When you make mushroom or cheese sauce, you must use a white sauce as a base. These are techniques that will never change,” he says.
Just like sauces, the techniques used for cooking up classic dishes will never be changed. “Classic dishes cannot be changed… When the menu says Beef Wellington, the client expects to have exactly that. Once you add other things to it which changes the recipe, you must also change it’s name,” he explains.
He advises chefs that are starting out to not immediately jump to creating their own dishes, they should rather master what is already there. “In the field I have seen many mistakes made by young chefs. Before you start cooking you must know exactly what you are cooking. If you say you are making chicken a la king, you have to produce it. Don’t go and add other ingredients because once you deviate from the original recipe then it is no longer a chicken a la king.”
Ngobeni gave the following advise to start-out chefs about how to present food.
“When I was at culinary school, we were taught to set a plate using a clock, 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock, and even balance the plate on height and level. Things have changed and the clock method is out, the Michelin Star Standard is now being used. This means a presenting a small portion with the aim of making a guest eat with their eyes before they actually dine,” he adds.
“Back in the day, the most important part of a gastro meal was the taste and texture. Now adding colour is just as important. The plate needs to be vibrant and alive and chefs are now encouraged to keep vegetables in their natural state when setting a plate. Whereas in the past we had to cut heads off, now we have to serve it in its natural form.”
Ngobeni recently ended as the runner-up in the Limpopo leg of the prestigious InfoChef culinary competition, concurrently making it to the national finals of the Unilever Chef of the Year Competition which takes place in 2020. Read more about him in this week’s Bonus Review.
