Mother Sauces
Aguste Escoffier, the father of classic French culinary practice, defined five mother sauces: béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato. These five sauces are the basis of literally hundreds of other sauces. Master the preparation of the five mother sauces, and you are ready for the hundreds of variations.
Mother Dishes
Here I coin the term “Mother Dishes.” I think I can claim the origination of the term, because a recent internet search on “mother dishes” only returned links to articles about what to cook for your mom, particularly on Mother’s Day. To me, a mother dish is a dish that can be used flexibly with a wide variety of seasonal ingredients. My goal is to make seasonal cooking more straight forward. Mother dishes highlight using the ever changing fares of the local farmers’ market and the home garden. Master a mother dish, and you can use it in myriad ways. Master several mother dishes and you can always keep the variety plentiful.
The name is new, but the concept is not. Recipes with names like this can be found:
- The only recipe for X that you will ever need
- A no recipe recipe for X
- How to make X with whatever you’ve got
These are likely to be mother dishes.
Mother Dish Techniques Available Now
About Risotto
Let’s talk about risotto; both traditional risotto and how I’ve come to make risotto using brown rice and the oven.
Risotto Mother Dish Technique
Risotto is a mother dish. To master a mother dish means that you can take what you know and use it to make a huge variety of dishes. I make risotto a couple times a month, always leveraging ingredients that are in season, regardless of the season. This is the only risotto recipe you will ever need!
Paella Mother Dish Technique
My underlying paella recipe starts with Spanish chorizo, saffron and smoked paprika. This flavor profile provides a foundation to make any number of ingredients sing. Here is a template that you can use to highlight whatever is coming from the garden or the farmers’ market.
About Paella
Paella is a famed Spanish dish. It is often associated with seafood or hearty proteins such as rabbit. But, at it’s heart, it is a rice dish.
Gumbo Mother Dish Technique
The flavors of my gumbo start with smoked andouille sausage and aromatics and ends up wrapped with a rich roux and stock. This provides a wonderful vehicle to carry any number of seasonal options from your garden or the local farmers’ market.
Savory Galette Mother Dish Technique
A galette is a rustic, free form pie that gets its name from its French heritage. Italy has the same dish, which they call a crostata. Like pies in other forms, they are usually sweet. But savory pies can be an amazing, unique option for the dinner plate. They are also very flexible. With a little bit of creative energy, you can utilize seasonal ingredients to make a savory galette in all seasons of the year.
Pizza Mother Dish Technique
On more than one occasion, sharing a pizza with particularly good crust, someone at the table will remark “It’s all about the crust!” Hearty agreement follows. But sometimes, when the sauce is really good the remark will change to “It’s all about the sauce!” Same with the cheese. Same with the toppings. The fact is pizza is about all four.
Cream of Anything Soup
Cream of Anything Soup is a mother dish. To master a mother dish means that you can take what you know and use it to make a huge variety of dishes. This is the only creamy soup recipe you will ever need! Whatever season of the year, you can find fresh ingredients at the farmers’ market which will work wonderfully in this soup.
Frittata Index
About and the Mother Dish Technique Individual Frittata Recipes
Teaser Photo Galleries (Recipes Coming Soon)
