Sauce Forestiere
The one French chefs reach for when they want to make anything taste luxurious. Silky, deeply savory, faintly sweet from shallot and sherry. Pour it over seared mushrooms, roasted vegetables, pasta, or mashed potatoes and the plate becomes a restaurant plate.
SMOOTH · The mushroom is blended into a sauce or soup. No pieces at all.
Sauce forestiere, of the forest, is a classical French sauce systematized in the era of Careme and Escoffier. The technique is the lesson: sear the mushrooms hard, soften shallots, deglaze with wine to lift every browned bit off the pan, reduce, then enrich. The old version used cream. Blended cashews give the same silk with none of it.
Makes about one and a half cups.
- 8 oz Oyster or Lion's Mane mushrooms, finely chopped
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 2 shallots, minced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- Quarter cup dry sherry or white wine
- 1 cup vegetable broth
- One third cup raw cashews, soaked in hot water 15 minutes
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- Leaves from 2 sprigs thyme
- Salt and black pepper
- Squeeze of lemon
- 01
Blend the soaked cashews with half a cup of the broth until completely smooth. Set aside. This is your cream.
- 02
Heat a pan over medium high, dry. Add the mushrooms and sear hard, stirring occasionally, until they release their water, it cooks off, and they brown, about 8 minutes. This browning is the flavor. Add the oil for the last minute.
- 03
Lower to medium. Add shallots and garlic, cook until soft, 3 minutes.
- 04
Pour in the sherry and scrape the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Let it reduce by half.
- 05
Add the remaining broth and the thyme. Simmer to reduce by a third, about 5 minutes.
- 06
Stir in the cashew cream and Dijon. Warm through gently, do not boil hard. It thickens to a coat-the-spoon sauce.
- 07
Season, finish with lemon. For a glass-smooth sauce, blend it or pass through a strainer.
- Over the miso-glazed oyster steaks.
- Over pasta, gnocchi, or mashed potatoes.
- Under a pile of roasted vegetables.
To turn this into a jus-style finish for a special plate, keep reducing in step 5 until the pan is almost syrupy before adding the cream. More reduction, more depth.
