Brown Sauce ‒ Ruskiakastike

You know how French kitchen has four mother sauces that all the rest are based on? Well, my mother has just two: the brown sauce and the white sauce. This time I'll concentrate only on the brown one and save the white one for early summer and new potatoes.

English speaking world uses that wonderful term comfort food. Basic roux-based sauce with potatoes is certainly one of those for me. It's really simple in principle but it took me quite many years to learn how to properly prepare it. It got burnt, it got clumpy, it got watery. The key thing is knowing when to add the water. The flour should be roasted but not burnt. My mum, a child of the post-war shortage years, has learned to replace butter with good quality margarine but I've taken the progress even a step further. Oil seems to work just as well and you don't need it quite as much.

- 2 tablespoons sunflower oil
- wheat flour (about 4 tablespoons)
- 4 dl water
- salt

Heat the oil in a sauce pan. Sift in the flour, in small batches. Keep stirring the bubbling mixture until it has acquired a beautiful colour. Add the water, again in small batches, stirring all the time. Season with salt. Let the sauce thicken up before removing it from the stove.

You can cultivate the sauce for example with mustard, onion and sausage slices. Tomato puree, oat cream and paprika make another yummy combination. Add red wine and herbs instead of water and you've just made yourself the best red wine sauce there is. And it's nearly always a good idea to pour a dollop of stock into any of them.

Nutritional values / 467 g:
energy 379 kcal
fat 28 g
protein 5 g
carbohydrates 27 g
fiber 2 g