Homemade chicken stock for celebration soup
CHICKEN STOCK
Vegetables
Meat and bones
Herbs and bouquet
Salt
VEGETABLES
Always twice as much onion as carrot
And an equal amount of carrot to celery
That way nothing dominated
The vegetables are the bed
On which you rest the bones
BONES/MEAT
Stock is not ‘bone water’
It includes bones and meat
So, for 1 chicken
1 onion
½ carrot
½ celery rib
BOUQUET/HERBS
12 parsley stems
1 branch thyme
1 bay leaf
(I usually tied them together with
A branch of celery, cut in half)
A pinch of salt
Because some proteins only render in the
Presence of salt, which makes the stock richer
However, not too much salt, or if and when
You reduce the stock, it becomes salty
WATER
When you build your stock/broth
You put the vegetables in first
Put the meat/bones on top
Toss in the bouquet garni
Hold everything in place with your hand
And cover your hand with water
You do not fill the pot with water
And, the reason you put your hands over the bones
When adding water, is to prevent them from floating
And diluting the stock/broth
When the ratio of water to bones, meat vegetables is right
When you refrigerate the stock, it jells
Once the water is in the pot
Add a pinch of salt (1/2 teaspoon per 6 cups)
Bring the water to a boil
Skim off the foam and discard it
Turn the heat to a simmer
And let the broth/stock simmer for 1-1/2 hours
After an hour and a half of gentle simmering shut the heat off
Let it cool
Strain it
Toss away the solids
Let the liquid cool to room temp
Then refrigerate overnight
In the morning the fats will have risen to the top
And solidified
Lift the fat off
Throw it away (or if you’re jewish, use it to cook)
Measure the liquid into 1 quart zip lock bags
And freeze if you can
Otherwise, squeeze air out, and refrigerate
Double bag if necessary
Try not to keep this more than 1 week if refrigerated
It keeps indefinitely if frozen
Reboil if necessary
Be mindful that stock is the perfect medium for attracting bacteria
So don’t leave it at room temp
Re-boil if in doubt
And, if there is the slightest hint of ‘sourness’ toss it
It’s fragile and susceptible
Otherwise it’s delicious
And it’s the basis of your soups
PUMPKIN SOUP FOR COMPANY
Serves 8
½ cup onion in a small dice
½ cup leeks in a small dice
1/3 cup carrot in a small dice
1/3 cup celery in a small dice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small pumpkin 1 to 1-1/2 pounds
roasted in a 400 degree oven
until it goes soft – 30 minutes
2 cups good chicken stock
2 cups water, at a boil (more as needed)
Sea Salt
Fresh ground pepper
Garnish:
Goat cheese & herbs, or
Gruyere and whipped cream, or
Olive oil & persillade or,
Foie gras on toast, or
Chicken liver spread on toast, or
A compliment of your own invention
Set the pumpkin to roast first on a baking sheet in a 375oF oven for about an hour, until it collapses. While the pumpkin roasts get everything in place, select a heavy casserole large enough to contain our soup, assemble ingredients and cut vegetables.
Prepare the vegetables in a small dice. Melt the butter in the casserole. When the butter is hot enough it foams, and usually the foam recedes. Add the mix of vegetables, and give it a pinch of salt. Put the cover in place securely so that no steam can escape. Turn the heat to low-ish and let the vegetables ‘sweat,’ or cook slowly 10-15 minutes. Check the pot from time to time to make sure that the vegetables aren’t browning. At the same time don’t work the pot lid so much that all the liquid evaporates, because without water collecting on the bottom of the pan you will burn the vegetables. If the whole process makes you nervous, add a half a cup or so of stock and let the vegetables cook in that.
Vegetables, particularly the fibrous ones, onion, leeks, and celery, need to be cooked through. Because onion is fiber, if it doesn’t break down by cooking, it becomes tough to digest, i.e. you make something indigestible. The best test of doneness is to taste. If the onions are sweet, have no resistance, no crunch, then you are ready to go on to the next step. Give a tiny pinch of salt and proceed to the pumpkin and lock in the flavor of the cooked mirepoix.
When the pumpkin has softened, cut it in half, peel the skin away, scoop out the seeds and discard them. Add the cooked pumpkin flesh to the base of the mirepoix. Add the chicken stock and the water, turn the heat up and bring it to a point where it almost boils; then turn it to a simmer and allow the flavor to steep for 5 minutes.
Liquefy the soup in a blender. Have more boiling water or stock on reserve so that you can thin the soup out as needed to achieve the texture of liquid heavy cream. Season the soup by batches. When the soup has been liquefied and flavored, return it to a clean bowl or pot and keep it warm.
Present the soup in a flat soup bowl. Add the garnish of choice directly into each bowl. Give a final grinding of pepper and serve the soup at once.
Select a red or white wine; the soup will love it. It’s meant to be festive, so it might be great for a holiday.
A good dish, well prepared
I had a great conversation over coffee yesterday with John Taboada of Navarre. He reviewed the recent trip to France when we got to spend about 5 days together with Kristen D. Murray, pastry chef at Paley’s Place. Afterwards, I went on to Gascony to spend a week with students.
The conversation with John was about food experiences each of us had. He arrived in Lyon with a list of places where he wanted to eat. I recalled one of the places on his list. I’d been there with my friend Michel who was friends with the owners. It’s the sort of classic Lyonnais place that serves food to the taste of locals, and makes no concession to what tourists think they want. You watch piles of tripe, innards, and things you no longer see much of, delivered to diners radiant with expectation.
Because the restaurant was filled Taboada didn’t get to eat there. He got a reservation at one of the other places on his list. It had been a typical Lyonnais, chef-in-the-kitchen small place. However, new owners who made it evolve into something more formal and expensive. Formality, he reminded me, is not his style. His own restaurants reflect his thinking. When he arrived and realized what was going on, he walked passed the window, then around the block. He wrestled with the idea of spending a lot of time at a table nicely dressed with linens and all that it implied.
I don’t think it was ever a question for him of not honoring the reservation. When he came to terms with his own formal demons, he also came to terms with his fatigue, his not-so-great hunger, and the fact that he was not going to eat and run, leaving the hosts with the impression that that is what Americans do. He went in, took his table, and settled in for a four-hour dining experience. He ate all of it with great relish.
One course provided the moment of illumination of what great French food is about. He was served a cauliflower flan, garnished with a sauce made from a puree of peas, and accompanied by paper-thin slices of andouillette (chitterling sausages). The simple goodness of excellent ingredients in the flan burst in his mouth. Cauliflower, cream, and eggs, properly seasoned, perfectly cooked. Simple, straight-forward. No exotic playing with some new flavor. The cauliflower was the star. The puree of peas, with the perfume of Spring, transported the cauliflower back in time, and revealed the magic of simple things, well understood.
John braced himself for the andouillette.. He’d worked for a caterer in Lyon years ago and had a lot of opportunity to taste the Lyonnais’ love of innards. He lifted it on the fork and tasted it. It was the real deal, but the way in which it was served made him smile. Yes, there were all those offal-y tastes that were of this place, musky, earthy, barn yardy, but done with a light, contemporary hand. It allowed him to appreciate their role in the dish. He realized that this was Lyonnais food, rearranged for modern tastes. The sausage made so much more sense than a lychee, ground cherries, or whatever new ingredient is making the rounds this season.
He understood that the greatness of French food is its pursuit of pure flavor. The techniques and methods may be more complex and elaborate, but the flavors produced caused him to stop, experience, savor and appreciate.
I told him about being in Marseille with Christine, who as a young French girl, worked for me at my restaurant in San Francisco. She now lives in Marseille and I was seeing her for the first time in five years. She said she wanted us to have a nice lunch at a good table and not just a quick bite of anything. She had selected a restaurant at the old port. We started with fish soup, the kind that you find everywhere in France, and that trace themselves to port towns. This one might go on to be the basis of a Bouillebaisse in a more formal menu. But here, at lunch, it was the soup itself, fresh, simple, clean and lovely.
I ordered the Marmitte, a dish I think of as a sort of fish stew. I didn’t know what to expect. Since we were on the Mediterranean, the closest wine on the list was from Cassis, one of my favorites and the next port town along the coast. The Marmite was composed of pieces of cod, salmon, tuna and sardine. Each was cut about and inch and a half square and had been cooked to perfection separately. They were placed in a big bowl along with three, thumb-sized potatoes perfectly cooked in water with saffron.
The Fish and potatoes were accompanied by a light veloute, prepared to a texture between soup and sauce. The perfection of each element, sauce, fish and potato, revealed itself at once, and married nicely with the wine. The experience of eating this food reminded me of the fact that Josephine Araldo often advocated to her students, “a gourmet dish is a well prepared dish. Period.” The value of simple things, well done, is enduring. Simple perfection is much more memorable than some flashy new thing that appears once, burns brightly (or not), may or may not be imitated, and then evaporates.
Trends are often based on trying to make some new thing go with something ordinary. Madeleine Kamman made me understand that most of it is imitative, and little of it is original, The fact that you might put chocolate in potatoes is not a reason to do it. And, in any case, when the sparkler has burnt and run it’s course, you still need to come back to earth. You need a place to land, or all is for naught.
I remember the excitement of nouvelle cuisine in France and California in the 70’s and 80’s. I also remember the realization that I no longer had any interest in what new thing could be made to go with something I already knew. I just wanted the thing itself. A puree of good potatoes, mixed with good milk, salt and butter, and properly cooked, is perfection. Thanks John, I loved traveling with you.
A new series of classes at the Chef Studio begins January 4th. An 8-week, full time session meets Mondays through Fridays, 9 AM to 3 PM. A second session meets two evenings each week, 6 to 9 PM, plus one Saturday a month. These courses are dedicated to training good cooks. Once a year, we take students to France so they become grounded in the cooking, values and philosophy of French cooking at the source.
Tarte Perfection
This Tuesday, we found ourselves in Burgundy. Famous for its cattle, wine, snails and mustard, Burgundian food is hearty and often humble. We spent class time preparing several classic dishes: boeuf bourguignon, the slow cooked “king of stews”; eggs poached in a red wine meurette sauce; gougeres, the cheesy cocktail hour treat made with choux pastry; apple sorbet with calvados; and an apple tarte tatin. I know, those last two come from outside Burgundy’s boundaries, but it’s fall in Portland and we’re swimming in apples! For the sorbet, we held back a little on the sugar to make the perfect palate cleanser between courses. As the apples cooked on the stove top, the tarte became very juicy. I’ll admit, I was a little worried when it came out of the oven, but we had faith. After a little rest, it was inverted and the apples had magically soaked up excess juice, yet they seemed almost candied! -Louisa
Potager Times 100.
As an ex-student and now a teacher at Robert Reynold’s studio, I get to give back everything I learned from Robert. I met my Wednesday and Friday students for the first time yesterday. Three moved to Portland, and enrolling in Robert’s course was the impetus for their moves. Robert joined us at the table on their first evening as students, and he brought France into the room. I brought Oregon (my native home). I remember when I was taking Robert’s course myself two year’s ago and I asked him why he moved to Portland. He said it was because Oregon was more like France then anywhere in the country. I couldn’t agree more.
During class, we talked of the farmers, of the ingredients that constituted the curriculum for our students. The recipe is a vehicle to showcase and imbue technique, however folded within that is the priceless root of the ingredient. Over the next 8 weeks, I am so excited for our students. Not only do they get Robert and France and the phenomenal history of mentorship that has graced his teachings, but they also get the stories and passions of the Studio Family – visiting farms, butchering a pig, gifts of patisserie . . .
In yesterday’s class, three students harked from North Carolina, Massachusetts and Colorado. They truly have a clean slate from which to build upon the “taste of place” which is Oregon translated through a French method. We hold the connectivity, the ties and the cultivation of our food and land together in this beautiful parchment package, a potager times 100. We have commenced! And I will hold this dear over the course of our next 8 weeks together. –Blake Van Roekel
Photos from the Symposium
Here’s a gallery of photos from the recent symposium.
The Chef Studio
