S sauces accompany fish, meat, and vegetable dishes, but they are also used to dip bread. They are easy to make, versatile, tasty, and, according to Albert Adrià, they are surrounded by a special aura.
The repertoire is wide, from emulsified sauces, to broths and juices, to the classic Bordeaux or the legendary Café de Paris. Five Spanish chefs choose their favorites: Béarnaise, tarragon, shallot, egg yolk, clarified butter, and black pepper. The magician of sauces is Romain Fornell, the culinary manager of the Caelis restaurant and all the gastronomic spaces of the Hotel Ohla in Barcelona. He has been making this dressing for more than 30 years. "It is the most elegant sauce, with a perfect balance, which goes perfectly with both meat and fish. It is wonderful," explains Fornell. The chef who has dared to order one of the most present dressings in kitchens around the world. The traditional Spanish green sauce is not understood, warns the cook who runs the kitchens of the Arzak restaurant, without the main dish it accompanies. Ferran Adrià chooses vegetable juices with fats. The juice is a liquid rich in the flavors that arise when cooking vegetables and meats. Fornell describes roasted vegetables as trompe l'oeil, "a gastronomic deception," because it imitates the flavor of meat juice. The chef and owner of the restaurant La Finca, in Elche (Alicante), makes this dressing very simply, she says, with a reduction of cream and Cabrales cheese, to which she adds a splash of Brandy and black pepper. He remembers one that he made in 1988 at elBulli with Iberian ham and that he describes as "a work of art." The sauce is prepared with the fish and includes oil, chopped garlic and parsley, and a pinch of flour so that it binds well.