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less likely to clump together to produce a lumpy sauce. Cooking the roux for a short time also softens the raw flavour of the flour; that flavour is less assertive in the Italian flour known as ‘00’.
    The derivation of ‘roux’ is ‘red’, suggesting that the flour should be cooked long enough to change colour. In a white sauce, you don’t want the colour to change; but in a gravy or other brown sauce, you do – and they involve the same process as making a béchamel. You cook the flour in the fat long enough to let it caramelize, and to contribute to the colour of the sauce, before adding stock. A browned flour, however, is less effective as a thickening agent.
    2 • Warm milk or cold? You can, as various recipes advise, warm the milk first; your sauce will thicken much more quickly. But, provided you amalgamate milk and sauce with care, you are not more likely to get lumps if you start with cold milk. In either case, it’s easier to add the milk on the heat, so that the sauce thickens as you go, rather than away from the heat, when you’ll have to thicken the whole lot at once.
    3 • Simmering . You may have been told to simmer a béchamel for half an hour or an hour; the instruction sometimes comes with the gloss that simmering gets rid of the floury taste. That is not the point of the simmering; it’s the point, as I’ve said above, of cooking the roux. Chefs simmer a béchamel in order to allow all the starch granules to dissolve, creating a very smooth texture. Home chefs need not be so fussy.
VELOUTÉ
    A velouté is a roux-based sauce made with stock. See, for example, Blanquette here .
BREAD SAUCE
    Gordon Ramsay thinks it’s horrible. I’m wary of arguing with a three-star chef, and particularly with him; but I love it.
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    For 4 (though I might eat it all)
    Bring 280ml milk slowly to the boil with half a peeled onion studded with a couple of cloves, along with a little salt, a bay leaf, a few peppercorns and a pinch of nutmeg; turn off the heat, cover, and leave to infuse for half an hour. Strain into another pan through a sieve, add breadcrumbs, and warm through.
    I’m afraid I don’t know how many breadcrumbs you’ll need. Add some, stir and simmer; the sauce will continue to thicken, so err on the side of too few at first (unless you want an excuse to add more milk and create more sauce – but of course this milk will be unflavoured). When the sauce has the consistency you want, take it off the heat and stir in a walnut-sized knob of butter. You could add a couple of tablespoons of cream too. You can leave the sauce and warm it up later, by which time it will have become very thick and will need loosening with a little more milk.



 
    YOU SHOULD NOT think of making stock as one of those operations that only dedicated cooks, blessed with an abundance of time, perform. It requires little effort, and can often make use of ingredients you might otherwise have thrown away. Your home-made stock will add depth of flavour to soups, stews, risottos and many other dishes
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CHICKEN STOCK
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    1kg chicken wings
    Water to cover
    Vegetables – some or all of the following, roughly chopped:
    2 onions
    1 carrot
    1 leek (cleaned and minus the rough green leaves)
    2 celery sticks
    Put the chicken wings into a stockpot, casserole dish or other pan with a capacity to hold all the ingredients with room to spare. Cover with cold water by no more than 5cm. 1 Bring the pot to simmering point. Cover, 2 and simmer on the lowest flame for 3 hours or longer, 3 checking on the water level from time to time and topping it up if necessary. Throw in the vegetables, and simmer for a further 30 minutes. 4 Strain into a bowl through a colander, gently pressing down the meat and vegetables to extract as much juice as possible. Chill the stock by placing the bowl carefully in a tub of cold water (making sure the water does not rise up and pour in through the lid, obviously). Once the