Cheese sauce disaster

I was watching the Heston cheese episode the other night and was very taken with his cheese sauce recipe.

I normally make my cheese sauce using the traditional roux, milk and cheese method.  I find that this works well in things like lasagne where it gets a good cooking but not too well in some other things like macaroni cheese where I find it can taste a bit floury.

Heston makes his sauce by reducing white wine then adding hot chicken stock.  He then grates the cheese, coats it in a spoonful of cornflour and adds it to the stock mixture.  This should give you a smooth and thick cheese sauce.  On the tv it looked lovely and I very much liked the idea of not using any flour.

I thought I would use this method to make cheese sauce for cauliflower cheese.

Mistake number 1

I had a quick look at the recipe (a very quick look and decided to guestimate the quantities)

Mistake number 2

I got caught up doing something else and forgot about the white wine reducing on the hob until I smelt something burning and found that my wine had reduced to a load of grainy black mush.

I started again and reduced the wine that was left in the bottle.  I then added some chicken stock.  While that was heating through I grated some comte and coated it in a heaped teaspoon of cornflour.  Then I added it to the stock and stirred it through.

It was immediately apparent that this wasn’t right.  It didn’t thicken and looked a bit grainy.  So I mixed another teaspoon of cornflour in some water and added that, it made no difference so I added another.  This made no difference either so I went with what I had and poured it over my cauliflower and cooked it in the oven for about 20mins.

The end result was very watery and not in the least bit thick.  It tasted nice but I’m not sure where I went wrong.  I suspect that seeing as Heston is all about precise cooking that I should have measured my ingredients.  I shall have to try again.