Making Stock

The assignment from my Food and Wine Seminar last week was to make a stock of some sort, following the general stock-making guidelines demonstrated by the Chef. Seeing as how I had foolishly discarded the shells from the last few times we had shrimp (used in shrimp stock) I decided to make a chicken stock using one of the small organic chickens in my freezer. The first step in the stock was to roast the chicken, which I did after rubbing it with herbs, for about an hour. It was a small chicken, but it provided enough tender, delicious meat for that night's dinner of Pesto Chicken Pasta with Summer Vegetables (a recipe I invented on the fly) and for a very nice chicken salad wrap lunch the next day. I stored the carcass in the fridge overnight, for the next day's attentions.

Following the instructions on making a Mirepoix, (fancy word for basic stock vegetable combo) I chopped onions, carrots and celery (2 parts onion to 1 each of the other) into medium, uniform dice, put those along with the carcass in a large stock pot, and filled the pot with cold, not hot, water. Then I dangled a tea strainer filled with dried parsley, a bay leaf and whole peppercorns into the pot. This was a substitute for a real Sachet, which should have been a little bag made of cheesecloth, but since I was unable to find cheesecloth, the tea strainer sufficed. I let this simmer at a low temperature, uncovered, for several hours, until the vegetables were tender but not mushy. Then I strained it through a regular strainer lined with coffee filters (another stand-in for cheesecloth, per an internet article) and was rewarded with about a gallon of amber, fairly clear chicken stock. It tasted very nice, subtly chickeny. We had been cautioned against salting the stock, as salt would be added into whatever recipe the stock is used.

For the second class, Chef Dowie used the previous week's shrimp stock and demonstrated the making of a Shrimp Bisque,. This involved teaching us the whys and wherefores of Roux, in its three varieties: white, blond, brown. All three consist of equal parts butter and flour, cooked together till thick and bubbly. The color difference reflects cooking times, since the longer it cooks, the browner and more flavorful it gets. The bisque started with "sweating" onions and garlic in butter, adding spices and tomato paste, the stock, dry sherry, and cream. When that had cooked down a bit, he added the blond roux he had made and whisked it into the thin creamy liquid till it thickened. The bisque was smooth, spicy and very subtly shrimpy. The acidity in the Pinot Gris white wine we tasted (and expectorated) offset the creaminess of the fat in the bisque quite nicely.

Now lest this all seem very gourmet, let me add a few down-to-earth elements. 1) I have been making Roux for years, just not knowing what it was called. I didn't know the exacting proportions, and had no idea that color differentiation was acceptable. I just figured I was being negligent and burning the butter, changing a "white sauce" into too-brown glop. 2) "Bisque" is a fancy name for a cream soup made from stock, though turning my chicken stock into bisque doesn't sound as delicious as Shrimp Bisque. 3) My handy equipment substitutions worked just fine, though I do regret handing off the antique Chinois to my brother several years ago. I had been told it was for ricing potatoes, and figured we hardly ever ate potatoes so he could have it. Now I discover it is in fact a fancy kitchen tool, necessary and useful for all sorts of straining. Of course, it has to be lined with cheesecloth, which I finally found in the paint section of the chain hardware store. My coffee-filter lined strainer worked acceptably as a quick substitute.

And this brings me to a rambling conclusion. Cooking is definitely a skill and can become an art, but where I find satisfaction is in the elevation of the "know-how" I learned from my mother and grandmother, while watching them and helping them cook for the family. I was blessed with being allowed to mess around in the kitchen, and learned how to do amazing things through trial and error and reading cookbooks and watching others cook. This class is the "Aha!" for all those skills and nuggets of knowledge---as in "Aha! That's why that happens when you let it cook too long!" or "Aha! That's what that funny holey funnel is called and used for!" or "Aha! That's why people order white wine with cream pastas!"

Incidentally, Chef Dowie was demonstrating how to clarify stock into a consomme, which is an utterly clear liquid used as an elegant type of soup. At the end of class, he declared the consomme clarification process a failure and said it would have to be a "do-over." So even all the fancy knowledge still ends up with a bust once in awhile.