Bechamel

Anne Kilmer viceroy at gate.net
Wed Oct 7 15:21:10 EDT 1998


Tony Hoare wrote:
> 
> In article <3.0.32.19981007074335.006a904c at csa.com>, Rob Hilton
> <robert at csa.com> writes
> >Hi Robert
> >
> >Bechamel?  que es?  what is Bechamel?  I have chicken stock and nutmeg and
> >vegetables.....
> >
> Surely Bechamel is the vernacular name (in French) for a white sauce?
> Perhaps Linnaeus should have been a cook.
> All the best
> Tony Hoare
The recipe is essentially the same as mine. Gather a vast quantity of 
young soft green nettle shoots. Be picky. They vanish in the saucepan,
as spinach does. Use cotton gloves to handle them. 
lacking nettles, use Spanish needle (Bidens pilosa); also a fine
butterfly plant. Or sorrel, or spinach, but in each case you have a
different soup.  
For your Bechamel, make a roux (melt butter, stir and stir and stir the
flour, and if you brown it my grandmother will have much to say to you).
Add your milk slowly, stirring all the while or you will get lumps.   
Then proceed as Rob recommended:
>
Boil a large bunch of nettles and sundry aromatic vegetables in a good
chicken
stock.  Make a double-strength Bechamel.  Strain and puree the veggies,
then
combine with the stock and white sauce.  Thin with milk or cream, if
necessary,
adjust the seasoning, and  grate a little nutmeg on top. This makes a
lovely pale
green cream soup.  Try floating rounds of sauteed morel on it.  Yummy!!

I serve this in the Haviland soup plates with Red Admirals and small
tortoiseshells (Aglaia urtica) and nettles painted on them (I wish).
With homemade bread croutons, as i have no morels. 
	Followed with lamb chops (The mountain sheep are sweeter, but the
valley sheep are fatter), preferably from Irish mountain sheep, small
potatoes and carrots roasted with a bit of dripping, steamed green beans
with fresh dill, if the caterpillars can spare some, and perhaps a
pavlova. Meringue with fresh fruit and whipped cream. Raspberries?
Y'all come.
Anne Kilmer
South Florida


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