Curse those fancy chefs. You know who I mean. The ones who sort of offhandedly whip up some crazy roux and serve it with diminished flair by squeezing their thick, colorful pastes from what we suburbanites call ketchup and mustard squeezes. The ones who manage to generate two or three sauces for use on the same plate. My first few experiments with roux, I have to say, were shameful. Sometimes I generated something blissful; other times, I'd end up with a pot full of flour porridge. Was it the AP flour? Was it the temperature? Was there too much (or too little) whisk action? Actually, it was part flour and mostly temperature. But enough of that. I doubt I'll ever be accepted into a French cuisine chat group, let alone hall of fame, but cornstarch is the simple American answer to a difficult task. Sources indicate that cornstarch thickens at low temperatures instead of high ones. Bah, I say. I don't do sauces over high heat anyways, for risk of scorching the butter, and I've never had a cornstarch sauce come out lumpy. Oh, they say. But the roux. It will be marred by the flavor of cornstarch. Maybe it's because I'm a smoker, or maybe it's because old wives' tales start in the kitchen due to those chauvinistic simpler times- cornstarch sauces taste like whatever I put in them. The technique: melt a stick of butter, or put in some tomato sauce, or chicken broth, or whatever you want to use as your base. Add cornstarch to your liquid [edit] very slowly, and in small portions. [thanks Savory] Whisk like the devil. Add seasoning. Presto- a sauce that tastes exactly like what you put into it, without lumps, without suffering, and without all that uncertainty that comes from novices attempting roux without the Necronomicons of chef-ery. Which is a word I just made up. Because I am an expert. Let me tell you- any situation that calls for 'seasoning' is technically a sauce waiting to happen. And if you want to get all fancy and squirt designs all over your plate- well, that's your business, isn't it? Recent dinners here at Edible Unknown Research Center Zero (EURC-0) are simply blossoming with wonderful sauces. Live it. Love it. Accept it. The sauce commands you.