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It’s All About The Sauce

The key to French cuisine is in the sauce. You can have the simplest of ingredients, you don’t even need the best quality ingredients, but if you have a great sauce, you will have a great meal. Sauces can be complicated, but they don’t need to be. The Secret Sauce to a good dinner party is the combination of good friends, good food, good conversation and a few glasses of wine doesn’t hurt.

My friend Lucien Vendome once took me to a very old restaurant on the Ile de la Cite in Paris. Lucien is a world renown French Chef. That night we had a wonderful meal highlighted by fantastic sauces. Lucien explained that there is a chef working in the basement kitchen of the restaurant that makes the same sauces night after night for years. Those same sauces have been made in that restaurant for over 100 years. There is something to be said about tradition and great sauces. The lesson is that with repetition, even the most complex task becomes simple.

We had a great sauce and the secret sauce working this week. Lucien and Ela Vendome visited Memphis from Poland and we took  advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with a few old friends from Kraft Food Ingredients. Lucien Vendome, Mike Taylor, Jody Driver, Pam Gray and I got together along with our significant others. It was a perfect forum to tell a few of our favorite stories:

Mike Taylor, Lucien and I were driving from Frankfort Germany to Reims France several years ago. I am driving and struggling to stay awake. To keep a conversation going, I asked my car-mates to describe what their mothers cooked for meals on a daily basis.

Lucien growing up in the south of France, started with: The day would begin with a baguette and confiture…

Mike growing up in east Texas, started with: We had beans and then we had beans and if times were really good we had beans and tamales…

As the French would say “Viva La Difference!”

Jody Driver and I were at the IFT trade show quite awhile back. Jody did a masterful job of managing and enormous enterprise-wide effort. One year I can remember her being 9 months pregnant with her son Gregory (Now 25) and sneaking off to a quiet corner of  the booth to sing Happy Birthday to her then 3-year-old daughter Lindsey.

Pam Gray was always our style guru. Back in the day when Manolo Blahnik shoes were all the rage, Mike Strauch and I would have an annual over/under bet on how many pairs of shoes Pam would bring to the week-long IFT event.

The over/under was 12 and the safe bet was the over

The KFI Team back in the day

The meal we had Thursday night was a lot of fun. The old joke is: How do you cook for a world renown French Chef…You let them cook. Lucien and I have been cooking together for years. When it comes to sauces, he is the master and our meal this week was All About The Sauce!

Le Menu

Entrée

  • Citrus Melon Napoléon

Le Plat Principal

  • Rack of Lamb Provençal
  • Pommes Frites
  • Haricot Verts

La Sauce

  • Roasted Garlic a la Vendome

Dessert

Peach Cobbler A La Mode with Raspberries

(Note: Citrus, Melon Napoleon)

Le Plat Principal – Rack of Lamb, Pommes Frites and Haricot Verts

Lucien and I doing the “Culinary Shuffle”

The KFI Alumnus…Pam, Jody Lucien, Mike & Paul

Click here to watch the Culinary Master At Work

Lucien called it a simple sauce. I counted over 15 ingredients and close to 7 processes. Of course, for Lucien it was simple, but the flavor was amazingly complex. By layering in flavor with:

  • Sautéing the mirepoix with herbs
  • Reducing the stock, wine and base with tomato paste
  • Roasting the garlic
  • Sautéing the shallots
  • Adding the roux
  • Condensing with immersion blender
  • Top noting with mustard and butter

The lesson is that with repetition, even the most complex task becomes simple. The sauce was magical and the evening, with its  Special Sauce was memorable

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

 

Baba Ruhm

Oops My Club Is Closing

Sometimes in life, and golf, the things that you think at first, are the worst things, turn out to be the best things.

This blog is not food or supper club related. It addresses my other passion, GOLF. This piece was originally written for a Golf Digest series called Golf Interrupted, but as that series has been terminated, I wanted to share the piece as a blog. Apologies to my Foodie audience. Hopefully you will get a chuckle out of it.

What a shocker it was to get a letter on January 4, 2019 that our club would close on February 28th. It quickly brought on something similar to the five stages of grief with dying:

Anger – Denial – Depression – Bargaining – Acceptance.

In Anger one yahoo threw a golf bag across the pro shop when he heard the news.  The Denial piece was led by a group of guys trying to buy the place. (Talk about what a big mistake that would have been.) Depression was driven by the reality of losing connection to friends that we have built over the 28 years at the club. Bargaining came pretty quick as various clubs in the area put together packages to woo the 350 refugees set adrift. Acceptance hit home with the realization that there are better options out there.

The situation was driven by the reality of the golf market today. Young professionals (they don’t want to be called millenials) are not joining country clubs the way previous generations had. The reality is that something like 200 country clubs across the country have been closing per year. Our club, affectionately known as the “Germ” was pretty typical. The owner died and his kids realized that the land was worth way more than a country club. And, by the way, the club had been losing money. In summary, the reality can be summed up in one word. Adios!

In hindsight, there were all kinds of signs that the end was near. The truth was that we were in denial. I use my squeaky windshield wiper analogy. I had a Mercedes for years that had a windshield wiper that squeaked. I brought it in at least a dozen times trying to get it fixed. It got the point that I would manually turn it on and off to minimize the squeak without thinking. I bought a new car and low and behold, the windshield wiper didn’t squeak. It never occurred to me how much the squeak bothered me, until I bought the new car.

It was the same way with the Germ. I loved the place, but there were lots of things that bothered me, and signs that it would be ending, that we chose to ignore. For one, you have to love a course whose key design feature was affectionately referred to as the freaking ditch. If it was in California it would sound a lot better because it would be called a Barranca. In Memphis it was just a freaking ditch. The fact that the ditch was getting bigger every year with erosion was a bit of a tell. Ten years ago the owners spent some money to fix the ditch on 4 holes and promised to fix a few others. It never happened.

The Freaking Ditch

It turns out that other clubs in the area were hurting as well. One club in particular stepped up with incentives to woo a block of 75 refugees. The infusion of newfound revenues allowed the new club to make what was a nice club into a really nice club. The key design feature at the new club is a beautiful 30-acre lake. Somehow we don’t miss the freaking ditch.

Ridgeway Country Club…Kind Of Nice!

Of course we miss a lot of old friends. Then again there is the old saying about the two rules you have to remember if you are thinking about changing jobs. Rule 1. There are a–holes everywhere. Rule 2. You are probably making good money for what you do, where you do it. Rule 2. A. When in doubt… remember Rule 1. There are lots of parallels with country clubs.  The really good news is that with 75 refugees at the new club we are constantly being surprised with old friends and former Germ employees showing up as part of the new club.

Don’t Miss the Freaking Ditch Flooding. Do Miss Ben & Hogan

In hindsight, what seemed to be a bad thing when the Germ closed turned into the best thing that ever happened. Who would of thunk! It was a shock. It still hurts to ride by the Germ. We worried about the Germ’s employees, but almost everyone has benefited from new opportunity. In a final point of irony, it turns out that the kids of the old owner, who had thought they were in for a big pay day, will have to wait a lot longer than they had thought to get their money. Lots of the old clubs members were mad at the kids for closing the club. In reality, they did us a favor. In all, it was 3 weeks from getting the closure letter to having a welcome reception at the new club. Sometimes in life, and golf, the things that you think at first, are the worst things, turn out to be the best things

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.