Chris: How are you doing fel?
Phil: I'm doing pretty good. I get to see my family tomorrow and I miss them like something fierce.
Chris: great. How long had you been away from him now?
Phil: It's it's only been a week and it feels like a month. I miss my four year olds hugs. She gives the best hugs, like. we're talking to face and the neck hugs,
Chris: Yeah.
Phil: just the absolute best in the world. Yeah. But Oh, I think overall it's been a pretty productive week. I actually set out an outline for myself to work 100 hours this week.
And I don't mean like 100 hours in the office. you know, kind of a mixture of. I'm doing the day job and then doing some stuff with the podcast and then also working around the house and just getting some projects done. basically just 100 hours of being productive, which comes out to 14 hours a day during my a lot of time.
And tomorrow is my flight. So I think I'm getting pretty close. I might be maybe a little bit shy, but I'm sure I'll just end up doing some work on the plane as well. So. Yeah. So I'm going to hit my 100 hours. Woo.
Chris: Nice. Nice. now that the rest of us feel like lazy slobs, uh, what's up the house projects like it out there.
Phil: Oh, I cleaned up my garage. I organized a good bunch of stuff to get, will organize my tool chest. He was getting a little disheveled 
Chris: Gosh, I 
Phil: like me. I'm pretty disheveled right now. Thanks. You just got out of the shower, but. Shaved for the first time in a week to, you know, in preparation to see my wife.
Chris: You got to put a little effort in.
Phil: Yeah, Uh, let's see what else? we got rid of our television last year, but we actually still have it. It's just been in the garage, kind of like covered up in a blanket. But I actually just took it over in my office and I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it.
I may Mount it. Or am I just keep it in the blanket and stuff at behind the sofa or something, but.
Chris: You can just, uh, continuously display our podcast metrics on it.
Phil: Like a, like a bouncing screensaver. You seen the office episode, right? When the screensaver bounces off the walls, then they try to get it to land perfectly in the corner.
Chris: it's, it's been long enough
Phil: the corner of the
screen. 
Chris: but it sounds super fun.
Phil: Okay, well, I'm going to find the clip and I'm going to put it in the show notes, not for anyone, but you just so that you can see it.
It's so funny.
Chris: Okay. Sounds like a plan.
Phil: Yeah. Maybe the DJ logo.
Chris: now you have a plan for your TV.
Phil: Yeah. So not quite building decks like you, but I hope we get to see it when I'm out there.
Chris: Yeah, you should. we should figure out  
Phil: yeah. Do you just want to like get lunch tomorrow or something and find out there?
Chris: in?
Phil: Tomorrow,
Chris: Yeah, what, what,
Phil: actually late.
Chris: Oh, okay. I was
Phil: Yeah, pretty late. But
Chris: was gonna say that was your really early flight
Phil: I've had plenty of those. I am kind of known to book the cheapest flight, which is often the earliest flight. but with like the whole COVID landscape, uh, man flight patterns have been courageous. They're super inexpensive. And you can take a midday flight and not notice the difference.
And it's, it's funny, like I've been, you know, accumulate airline miles through like work purchases and whatnot, and I've been hoarding those because every time I, I need to take a flight for, you know, whether it's work or. Going out to see family or whatever. you know, other things I'm not supposed to do during COVID, but the flights are so cheap.
I can't pass up. I'm actually paying for them. So then I just keep my miles on. I don't spend the miles. So I told Ashley we're, we're going to Europe next year with some airline miles. the last time I was in Europe, we went to Paris and. I went to France as a consumer. Like I wanted to just experience French culture and, you know, like go to the art museums and have some French onion soup, Emma Marsha. And like we did all that amazing stuff. We did all those great things. It was super fun.
But this time having just been a teensy weensy bit better of a chef today than I was yesterday. I kind of want to go to France to learn to cook, you know, like, I dunno maybe, maybe learn how to make some sauces.
Chris: what type of French sauces might you learn how to make fell?
Phil: Okay. So here's the thing. There, there's actually some sauces that I've been making all my life.
 I just, I didn't know that they were actually a thing.
Chris: that makes sense. I mean, it's just so foundational to so many different things that you just didn't know that like that's what you were making. 
Phil: I remember when. How was learning to cook. I kept hearing about French cooking and I was like, what, what exactly is French cooking? Like, I know what Italian is. I know a Mexican food as well. What is French cooking? And like one of the most underlying themes of French cooking has to do with sauces.
And I remember thinking like, I've actually been making stuff with sauces. You know, my whole adult life, I just didn't. know it per se.
Chris:  Yeah. 
Phil: Does that make sense?
Chris: Yeah. it's interesting because you have a very distinct idea of what Italian is or Mexican or Greek, but French. Yeah. Not so much. And maybe that's because it's so ingrained or so foundational to the vast majority of cooking that we do. It's kind of become the basis for a lot of,  cuisine 
and the sauce is kind of in the same way. Like are a very like foundational building block. I guess, especially if you're talking about, the classic French sauces of which I want to say there are five. I don't think I can name all of them off the top of my head. 
Phil: yeah, we should have Molly tell us.
Chris:  there's one that To me, what was a lot of things that I've made in the past one of the most prolific and honestly, like, useful  sauces. And I think that's what we're going to talk about today. Also that special sauce.
Phil: yes, that is best Chanel sauce.
Chris: We brought it up in a previous episode and thought that it could be interesting to actually talk about. So just Saturday I gave that bash and El sauce.  second go. You know, with, with the rye we have, we have since brought normal flour into our house, but I, I wanted to try the, the rye bash and Mel again. And, you know, I just got back from the airport.
We're picking up, Elijah It was, it was one of those nights. It's like, I just need to make something quick. What do we have with pasta? there was like a jarred vodka sauce. And I know that that didn't really sound that great. 
Phil: that's like the orangy, like,
Chris: yeah, like pinkish, 
Phil: yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a pinkish 
Chris: like. 
Pinkish sauce, 
Phil: Yeah, 
Chris: great. I love vodka sauce, in general, but it would be just, you know, like, like, uh, a pasta with, with that. And, I think we had some ground beef. I don't know that didn't sound too great. So, we actually had some chicken thighs leftover, because chicken thighs or like an absolute stable in our refrigerator.
Phil: You've only talked about him every other episode. 
Chris: And I was just like, you know, I'm gonna, I'm going to try that bash massage again. So, again, we just had that rye flour. For whatever reason we just haven't needed a flower. So, I kind of played with some of the proportions, worked with it a little bit and also substituting,  milk for regular milk, but it actually, oddly does work just fine.
Phil: Yeah, you can make it with a soy milk. Just 
fine, or, 
Chris: Yeah, it really does it worst of all. So I just kind of cut back a little bit on the amount of, flour and you used a little bit more butter and it turned out fantastic. And I use that as a base for, maybe it was more like a Mornay sauce. Cause there was cheese in it.
but I just made a pasta with, Chicken and spinach and a Mornay sauce. And it was absolutely fantastic. It turned out really, really good.
Phil: Oh, great. 
I'm happy to hear that.
Chris: all of that  talk like what, what actually is, it is the question of the day at Bentley,
Phil: It's. Yeah. It's the question of the day is a question of the podcast, honestly, it's the question of the year? It's the question? 2020. Like if you actually Google, what is it'll it'll auto fill in a basher El sauce. It's it's the most widely Googled trending thing, right now. And of course I just made all that up, but that should Mel, Christopher, tell me if I'm wrong.
Is butter, flour and milk
and there's methods on, you know, how you melt the butter and when to add the flour, how much, and then how you kind of incorporate the milk in with it in your sauce pan and. You kind of keep playing with it and eventually you're going to have this white cream and it's basically the foundation for a lot of, French sauces.
Chris: A lot of sauces in general,
Phil: yeah, sure. If you've ever made macaroni and cheese, you've probably made about Chanel or at least some loose version of it. Well, especially like a homemade macaroni and cheese, like I live in the South, so.
Yeah, like macaroni and cheese is a staple. And over the summer, we made a macaroni and cheese and our trigger grill and it was so flipping tasty far and away the best nugget cheese I've ever had.
And it had me make a basher Mel ahead of time. But again, this was before we started the podcast. I didn't know that I was making a best Chanel. I just thought I was making a cheese sauce. And quite frankly, I blamed the recipe because it said now to make your cheese sauce, you know, let's call it what it is.
It's the best Chanel.
Chris: Yeah. So I guess like stepping back a bit and you know, we've talked about a, a bash amount being building block, but, Or there's, there's another building block here as well. And I think I really do love the idea of, 
 a Besham hall as like, uh, I don't know, it's like a utility tool in your toolkit and you can take that out and use it and dress it up and kind of change it. And it becomes. Really like what we've said the foundation for so many different things, but if you are going to talk about like what a bash ML is, you mentioned, you know, it's, it's butter and flour and milk. Another way to think of it is it's actually just a roux with milk added.
And, a Rue is something that if you've made gravy. You're probably familiar with, but it's a mixture of butter and flour, you know, you're just taking butter and melting it and then incorporating flour into that and cooking it enough to cook.
Out the strong flower tastes. And then you, you have this mixture. That's, that's just really heavy and fat. That can be used too thick on a lot of different things, whether that's a gravy or, or a soup, even, you know, you can.
You use a roo instead of something like a slurry, 
Phil: Oh yeah. Yeah. Very clever. I hadn't 
thought of 
that. 
Chris: in terms of making a , you make that roo and then you're adding milk to that. one thing that I've found make that Basha Mel creamy, Is that the milk that you're adding, you wanted to be warm and you also want to be constantly whisking.
So you're getting rid of clumpiness. That might be arising. 
Phil: I mean, that's perfect. That's like someone get this guy a chef's hat,
Chris: that's kind of like, yeah, summing up a best 
Phil: someone, someone get this guy, a masterclass.
And Ru is spelled  how,
Chris: R O U X 
is, is 
Phil: R O U X.
Chris: to be making with butter and the flour.
Phil: well, I think it's an important topic. Not just because it's used in so many things, but. I think this whole idea of we've actually been making things that we didn't know, we were making almost kind of lends itself to this idea that we're better cooks than we think we are. Like I remember, I remember when I was in college, I had this mentor.
And he always used to say, you, if you meet someone and then by the end of the conversation, you forget their name or you, you see them again, you know, a few days or weeks later or whatever, and you can't remember their name. You're like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I can't remember your name. I'm terrible with names, but he would always stop you right there and say, don't ever say, you're terrible with names.
Say, I presently struggle with names, but I'm getting better. And it's kind of cheesy, but. There's really something to that to, eliminate out of your vocabulary. That I'm not a good cook.
Chris: Yeah,  
Phil: Yeah. You gotta up your, your top game. 
Chris: Yeah, no, I mean, I think that it's, it's something that we probably  all have used maybe all have used often. It's something that's common and, I don't know. I think  in the past, I would've just thought of it as part of another recipe. but. Since I've realized that it's, it's kind of its own thing. Like this is what it is, and this is what I'm making. And also this is what you can do with it. there's like a little bit of, freedom and power in that in knowing that like, if you want to make a creamy white sauce, here's like a really good one.
Base, and then you can add to that. just like with the pasta example, just thinking like, I didn't really want a red sauce cause I didn't, I didn't really think that the red sauce was going to go well with the chicken thighs and I wanted the chicken thighs. so, okay. Like I know how to make a white sauce now and really that's.
That's just the best smell of sauce. And then I took it a step further into, I guess, tactically kind of like a little bit more of a Mornay sauce. I think most of the time of morning is going to have a combination of like a hard and a soft cheese. So like a, cheddar and a Parmesan.
  
Phil: at its most basic level on mourn. Yea is just a bash Chanel with  cheese 
Chris: Yeah. 
Phil: Right. 
Chris: Absolutely. Which when, you know, like how to make a , because it's actually not really that hard when it comes down to it. things like that, it's just like one extra ingredient to the special sauce that can make in five minutes.
Phil: Or two extra ingredients to this room.
Chris:  yeah. Yeah. I think it's, it's something that's great to know because it's such a foundational thing even beyond, you know, French cooking. it's very much an, a foundational thing to Italian cooking and like Greek cooking has its own version of it. you're going to see it all over the place in the U S we'll probably typically call it a white sauce.
but. You can use a bash AML as like you said, a foundation for a Mac and cheese or a lasagna, or honestly, like I've even seen a lot of souffle recipes that have a bash ML in it. a croak Montour. It's going to be a bash ML that goes over that, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a very, a very, very versatile sauce.
and maybe that's kind of like why they, they talk about it as a mother sauce, because out of those five sauces   
Phil: okay. So I looked it up. The five mother sauces. You've got your best Chanel. We've talked about the Valley day. You've got your hollandaise. I mean, if you've ever had eggs Benedict, then you've had holidays. Uh, you've got your classic tomato sauce and you've got your
 which is 
like a, 
it's like a Brown gravy basically. Yeah, it's a roo with Brown stock. So Brown gravy. 
Well, I mean, I think we could, we could do like a whole series on. Each of those.
Chris: Uh, I'm sure we could. There's so many fantastic sauces. And even if you step outside of the, the traditional, French style sauces, like barbecue sauce, pasta sauces, I mean,
Phil: Oh, I 
have an absolutely fly barbecue sauce recipe. It's so tasty,
but. That's for another time. okay. So how does one properly make a batch AML? Like what walk me through, like, what's your, what's your step-by-step
as if I'm four years old. 
Chris: yeah, it was so, and I know that we like kind of briefly hit on it, but you're going to start by making that Ru and really that Rue is just melted butter. w with a typical Ru I want to say it's a one-to-one ratio between butter and flour. if you're using normal white flour and not rye flour, but you're gonna take, butter melt it.
And then you're going to start adding flour to that, kind of melted and,   
Phil: and this should be done in like a saute pan or a pot, like a sauce 
Chris: Yeah, like, like a fan, like you can, you definitely can do it in a smaller saucepan. I've been using a medium size to  if we're, if we're being specific, 
Phil: I'm
surprised you didn't say grams
Chris: well I do
love 
Phil: is your 
culinary background. 
Chris: No, I love, I love the precision of a scale, but that, that might be a whole nother episode. but, uh, you are just mixing that flour in and stirring it with a whisk that's, that's definitely the ideal way of doing it. So you're just constantly whisking it.
And,  
Phil: basically what you're doing is you're cooking the flour to kind of like, get rid of like that raw flower flavor.
Chris: Yes, absolutely. you don't want to totally Brown the butter. Although there are, I want to say some recipes that are going to call for, more of a Brown butter Ru. With various amounts of milk. that's going to change the overall flavor. You're gonna get that really kind of nutty or the Brown butter flavor.
but in, in just a S a standard Besham Alec, you, you don't necessarily want to go that far with it. you have that Rue that's made you don't want it to get too solidified. There's still like a little bit of a, butter, liquidity type texture to it.
Phil: I believe the word you're looking for is goodness.
Chris: sure, Goodness. There's melted butter, goodness to it. and then you're going to be slowly adding warm milk. And I think, I think the warm milk is. For me in my experience, that's been the way that I have kept it from being clumpy. so  you really start by heating that milk You don't really want it to be boiling. You just want it to have maybe just that like slight hint of bubbling at the sides. 
Phil: Not like a raring Bordeaux.
Chris: No, no. And not even like a simmer, like a step below a simmer even. so you're just so incorporating that warm milk. Into your roux while continually whisking. And once you get all of that in there, it's, it's probably still going to be a little thin and, and I think that's one thing that's great about, uh, bash and Alsace is it, it is fairly forgiving.
And so if it's, too thin, you just continue to cook it. You let it boil, you keep whisking it and it's going to reduce down.  and then if, if it feels too thick, you can add a little bit of cold water and kind of thin that out a little bit.
So it does feel like it's a fairly forgiving sauce. And, and because of that, I think there are a lot of ways that it can be used In, in different recipes. So on something like a crooked, or you might want something that's a little bit thicker where if your, you know, getting it on a pasta and you want it to be able to incorporate throughout all of the pasta, you might not want it as thick as that croak.
Phil: And that might seem a little bit complicated, but I think the beauty of a bash and Mel is that well, like you said, it's forgiving, but it gives you an opportunity to kind of learn as you go.
Like it, it doesn't have to be super, super complicated. I mean, it is really just those three ingredients, the butter, the flour in the milk, and start there, you know, Start there and then start making it and you get to kind of learn like what, okay. If I add just a little bit more flour, what's that gonna do to this room?
Or if I add just a little bit more milk, like what's that going to do to this texture? or if you, if you then thin it out too much, like you can kind of play around with it and figure out how can I, how can I actually think in this up again? You know, so I think that's why I love the best Chanel.
Because it's, it's foundational. it's not just foundational and the purposes that it serves, but it's foundational. And just honestly like learning how to cook,   
Chris: and it's definitely something that you can also play around with different seasonings. So you can, not only, you know, add cheese and kind of create a Mornay sauce with it, but you can, Even just simply salted or I have heard of people really liking nutmeg to add a little bit of complexity to it. 
Phil: You can add an egg yolk to make it creamy.
Chris: yeah. And, I mean, I think it's one of those things that,  you know, I always try again on,
Phil: And you can taste it as you go.
Chris: yes, you can taste it as you go, but, I know that for me, there were several times that like, I just massively screwed it up and it got thick and clumpy, and I kind of felt like giving up and never trying it again, but then like even trying to make it out of rye, which ended up turning out really well. the first time was an absolute train wreck and like, it was kind of discouraging,  but. You know, I was able to, I guess, regroup a little bit and tweak some. of the ratios and it actually works. Like it turned out really, really well. So if anything, I think the encouragement to not give up, if something doesn't come out the way that you envisioned it or dreamed it would the first time.   
Phil: Yeah, well played Chris. Don't you give up over there. Okay. Well, wonderful. Well, we want to know how you've been making your best Chanel. Send us a DM on Instagram at dad's kitchen co. And let us know how it's working for you.
Chris: yes, absolutely.  whether it's just. Fantastic. And, smash it, or if it's one of those dishes where you just kinda feel like giving up on. I dunno. I think there's, there's something to be celebrated with both.   
Phil: that's it. That's what it's all about. That's what life's all about. Okay. Well, perfect. This has been defined. I'm actually really excited to maybe dive into some of these other sauces. What do you think? Should we do a 
series? I mean, maybe not like back 
to back, but we can revisit. 
Chris: I would say this is, this is something that I would love to revisit Especially if some of these other sauces can be the tool that I feel like  has been in my mind, you know, it's, it's always one of these things that I can kind of pull out of my back pocket and then dress up and, maybe make something fancy out of it.  
Phil: you fancy pants. You're a fancy bands 
Chris: Okay. So I don't know. it's been fun-filled and I don't know if this one was a, to, information heavy or not  
Phil: no, I don't think so. I mean, I'm not the listener, but I enjoyed it. I'm going to go make a better now and I'm just going to eat it by the spoonful
Chris:  Yeah. I don't know if that's going to be super tasty or not. 
Phil: we'll find out. 
Well, thanks, Chris. 
Chris: Yes,
no, no. Thank you, Phil.