Back to basics! From a roux to bechamel to mornay sauce.

It's a bit of a back-to-basics week for us. We wanted to do a video on macaroni and cheese, but we realized we had never really properly done the method for making a roux or even a basic béchamel sauce, so in this video we take you through the process from roux to béchamel to mornay sauce!

It's not a strictly classic béchamel, because the traditional method only uses milk not cream, and also has some slightly different proportions and some different seasonings. During the period where it is simmering to cook the flour, and is flavoured with an "onion piqué" which is an onion studded with cloves. My hubby's method is to pin a bay leaf to half of an onion with the pointy end of two cloves, and that's usually enough flavour for the smaller batches you'd make in a home kitchen.

We didn't do any of that, because we wanted room for the cheese in our mornay sauce. Traditionally the cheese is Gruyère, but we use a combination of Gruyère and cheddar.