Bourgeois Bee

In honor of Bastille Day I'm posting a spread of photos I took while making the menu Meghan and I ate at Bouchon. Although I said it in my previous post on the French Laundry Cookbooks vegetable stock, I've learned countless French cooking fundamentals from both The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon Cookbook. Bouchon serves French Bistro fare and Meghan and I are lucky enough to eat there again soon on our honeymoon.

Heres the first in my promised Taking Stock series. I'm starting off with The Best, followed by The Rest, and The Mirepoix.

Stocks ans Sauces (pg 220 - The French Laundry Cookbook)
You can't have a good sauce if you start with bad stock. Too many people take stocks for granted. In many restaurants the stock pot is like a garbage can; they throw in all kinds of trimmings...

Thomas Keller is on the short list of best chefs in the world, and although the culinary world has exploded in popularity and innovation in the past few years his awards speak for themselves. I don't want to focus on his potential jumping the shark, but rather focus on Keller's Magnum Opus; The French Laundry.

Keller (and Ruhlman) expounds for pages on the importance of veal stock in French cooking in The French Laundry Cookbook and the necessity of proper technique with all stocks. Ten years after its initial publication The French Laundry Cookbook continues to be celebrated for its focus on technique and perfection. Although far less complicated than meat stocks, Keller's vegetable stock reflects this focus on fundamentals and quality. The first thing that struck me about this stock is the inclusion of fennel and the exclusion of celery. Keller's omission of celery, citing its potential bitterness, is only complimented by the complex flavors of leeks and fennel.

I'm not going to give a detailed ingredient list, as its not available online and The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon are worth their price tags.

Thoroughly wash all ingredients (leeks and fennel have multiple layers that hide dirt), peel the carrots and process all of the ingredients to a small dice. I cut everything down to a manageable size then threw them in batches into the food processor until they were all a uniform small dice.

Add Canola oil and cook the vegetables for about 8 minutes. Cover everything with water and put in the aromatics. Fresh herbs, except for bay leaves, are preferable, and allow to barely simmer for 45 minutes. Skim the top frequently to remove any impurities and to produce the clearest stock possible.

After it has simmered for 45 minutes strain through a chinois. If you don't have a chinois, strain through a colander covered with paper towel or cheesecloth. I often make a pass through a colander placed in a large Pyrex bowl first, followed by the colander covered with paper towel so I'm not lifting a hot and heavy stockpot twice. Keller recommends using the stock within 2 days (refrigerated) or freezing, but I'd say up to a week in the fridge is fine. I was surprised Keller suggested cooking the main ingredients 5-8 minutes in oil prior to simmering. Many chefs add oil to the vegetables and cook them in a baking dish in the oven until they caramelize. Although the 5-8 minutes of sweating produces a lighter stock; I prefer the richness of caramelized vegetables.

Although there are comparable vegetable stock recipes out there, I can easily say this is one of the best. The fennel, an amazing ingredient I'm just now appreciating, gave the stock a complexity and subtle spiciness I was not expecting. I made a pea soup with this stock that included less than a handful of ingredients and was blown away. I planned on taking photos to gage the clarity of each stock version, but if you close your eyes you can see the rich color and lack of cloudiness and impurities in this stock. I can't say that I'm not still going to make "the rest" version of stock, but for less money than pre-made stock, this stock will elevate your soup or sauce to a new echelon. This stock is testament to the acronym GIGO, Garbage In, Garbage Out, that many chefs follow. You'll never get the best product with subpar ingredients. That being said, I always do a second round with the vegetables after I strained it the first time to get the most bang for my buck. Just put all the ingredients back in the stock pot, add more fresh herbs, cover again with water and simmer for 45 minutes. I call this second stock and you can combine it with the first round if you want, but I reserve it for dishes that don't need as much flavor or even cooking rice if I'm swimming in stock at the time.

One caveat to this stock is that Keller does not state to add salt. This allows you to have greater control later when building a sauce or soup, especially if you're reducing the stock significantly, but in the future I plan to add salt prior to simmering. Although Keller is strict on what parts of the vegetables to include and which to exclude, the scraps nearly filled up my stock scraps container that I leave in the freezer.

Next time I utilize these scraps, plus a left over veggie tray from work, to produce "the rest" stock.

Chances are if you're attending or hosting a 4th of July get together this weekend, potato salad will be involved. Usually it's potato salad purchased from a deli or one that comes in a tub, both utilizing mayonnaise as the binder. But instead of firing up the grill for just dogs and burgers, and maybe some corn, throw on some potato salad as well. I not only find grilled potato salad tastier, but it's also healthier and you can leave it out in the sun all day if you want without worrying about mayo-spoilage. This comes from Heidi, and with a full size grill can be made with relative ease. First, prep your ingredients

10 medium potatoes, quartered - I used new and red
4 medium squash, halved - green or yellow
1 bunch of green onions
2 lemons, quarter
1 onion, quartered

I prepped all the ingredients first and let the potatoes soak in cold water for a while to help weep out some of the starch.
Toss all of the above ingredients in olive oil, season, and toss on the grill. I have a grill pan so I had to cook everything in waves, but all of the ingredients should fit at one time. If you have a small grill you can also help speed up the potato cooking processes by parboiling them or throwing them in the oven for a while first.

Inspired by The Minimalist's Banana Paletas and the price of fruit at Morse Market I took my first stab at making sorbet. A berry sorbet sounded best, but citrus fruit was much cheaper so I opted for the latter. I adapted two recipes; Orange Sorbet from Thomas Keller and Lime Basil Sorbet from Jamie Oliver. I started off both recipes with the same base; a simple syrup with 1 1/2 C of water and 1/2 C of sugar. In a sauce pan, bring to a boil over medium high heat while stirring occasionally. Allow to come to room temperature and then throw it in the fridge to chill.

First up is the orange sorbet. Keller prefers blood oranges, but I went for juice oranges as blood oranges weren't available. I actually juiced a few more oranges than below and I was still about a half cup short of the 3 C needed. I figured since I'm not baking this is close enough, much to my demise. The final sorbet ended up being too sweet and I think the extra juice would have made it just right. I'm sure you could just grab a jug of OJ, but fresh is best.

I juiced the oranges over a colander to catch the seeds and pulp and then strained it again through a smaller strainer to remove any pulp that made it through the first strain.

Like I said; I was a little short on juice and out of oranges, but I put the juice in the fridge to cool along with the simple syrup.

Now would be the ideal time to dust off the ice cream machine and churn away, but since I don't own one I opted for freezing it in a glass baking dish. If you go this route throw the dish in the freezer first to chill. It should start to freeze in 30-60 minutes depending upon the volume.

After about an hour run a fork through it and break up any chunks or ice. Repeat this process about once every half hour to hour for about three hours until the sorbet hardens. An ice cream machine will produce smaller crystals and ultimately a more enjoyable product, but isn't necessary. Keller is spot on with his original recommendation of blood oranges. The sweetness and flavor, not to mention color, would help elevate this to the level of perfection, rather than sweet ice.

Next up is the lime basil sorbet. As I noted earlier; I used the same simple syrup recipe, but this recipe originally called for equal parts water and sugar. I wanted a tarter sorbet, so I opted for a 3 to 1 water/sugar ratio, but with how tart this came out I think 1.5 C water and 1 C sugar would be ideal. First, zest 5 or 6 limes, then juice enough limes to yield 1 1/2 C of juice. This doesn't sound like a lot of juice, but doing it all by hand with only the aid of a spoon made me work up a sweat.

A few months ago Meghan and I were hemorrhaging with frozen organic peas as I was desiring pea soup regularly and they kept going on sale. After a while pea soup alone could not utilize the bounty of peas, so I thought instead of a cream (yogurt) pea soup I'll swap the cream for eggs and make it a breakfast. So into the pan went onions, garlic, peas, stock and eggs. The result is poached eggs, caramelized onions and a sauce of reduced stock. As we were out with friends Andras mentioned that his favorite breakfast is very similar to this, but with spinach instead of peas and white wine instead of stock. This sounded delicious to me, but I never tried it until recently. It also wasn't until later that I realized if you threw this between some toast or an English Muffin and some Mornay or Hollandaise sauce and you have a brunch staple, Eggs Florentine.

I have been sufficient in the kitchen for a number of years now, but only in the past year have I really dove in to what excellent food tastes like and why it tastes that way. I never had any intentions or mission for this blog and it mainly serves as a vehicle for me to expand my photographic and culinary composition, aesthetic, knowledge and to understand the techniques behind why something looks or tastes good. Luckily good food is a bi-product as I go and I get to eat far more often than I post.

To better understand good food I began reading online and the cookbooks of celebrated (by other chefs) chefs. If you look on Amazon at the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section for Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques, there is a laundry list of potential reads.

As I began to understand The Making & Soul of a Chef a pattern of issues arose for what makes good food good.  Obviously fresh, ideally local and organic, ingredients are key. Rumor has it that Per Se (one of the most awarded restaurants in the world) rejects 60-75% of the food deliveries they receive due to strenuous quality standards. But beyond the quality of ingredients a commitment to technique became apparent across the board the more I read. One technique that resonated with all the chefs was stock. Below are a couple excepts that reflect the commitment and importance of stock.

Anthony Bourdain, Les Halles Cookbook, pg 37
stock: the source

What's missing in your home cooking? Why doesn't that dish you painfully re-created from the chef's recipe taste like it does in the restaurant? What's wrong with your soup, your sauces, your stews? That answer is almost certainly 'stock.' Restaurants make their own stock...Stock is the foundation, the basis for much of French cuisine. It would be unthinkable to live without it in a professional situation.

Michael Ruhlman dedicates pages and pages to stock (primarily veal stock) in The Elements of Cooking, but starts the book off (page 3) with this passage.

NOTES ON COOKING
FROM STOCK TO FINESSE

1. STOCK

In the creation of good food, no preparation comes close to matching the power of fresh stock. It's called le fond, "the foundation," in the French kitchen for a reason: stock lays the groundwork and will be the support structure for much of what's to come. Stock is the first lesson taught in the best cooking schools for a reason. The finest restaurants in the country are making stock all but continuously; were it not for this fact, they would not be the best restaurants in the country.

This obsession is not segmented to the Bourdain and Ruhlman French party, but is also echoed in California cuisine and everywhere in between. Making animal stock can be a complex arrangement of roasting bones, long slow simmering and caramelizing vegetables. Vegetable stock (well it's actually a broth due to no bones being present) is much easier and faster however. Rather than an all day or overnight process, everything is ready in about an hour.

To determine if and what techniques/recipes help build the best foundation I tried three versions of vegetable stock. The first, I'll call The Best, is from The French Laundry Cookbook. The second, The Rest, is made from scraps and produce that got relegated to the stock pot rather than the dinner plate or garbage. The final version is The Mirepoix, is based on the onion, carrot, celery trio. I will post one version each week in the coming weeks and give photos and commentary on the results.

Mark Bittman, and especially The Minimalist, is one of my favorite weekly food updates online. I compare him to Ruhlman in not being a chef, but having plenty of experience and connections in kitchens, and a stellar writer with a great sense of humor. Bittman's recent book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (think veggie version of Joy of Cooking) was nominated for a 2008 James Beard award, but lost the category to the well deserved winner Cooking by James Peterson. Although it didn't take home an award How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is a pantheon of techniques and simple recipes. With that being said, I found the latest Minimalist episode to be an interesting self-commentary on Bittman's role in food journalism combined with the showbiz no-no of working, in this case cooking, with kids. The episode is worth a view and includes a sorbet/popsicle recipe I plan on making as the summer heat cranks back up.

Click for video

My blogging motivation has finally returned to a boil so check back soon for some actual cooking.

I'm on the fence on molecular gastronomy. Some of the techniques recently innovated and revived are amazing,

however just because you turned a sauce into a foam with some CO2 doesn't make up for the fact that it doesn't taste that great or necessitate that I'll enjoy the texture.

 

It's been warm enough (40's in the morning) to ride my bike in short sleeve jerseys this past week, but other than freshly planted flowers, signs of summer are nonexistent lately. Although this dish would be great any day of the year, to me it begs to be served in the breeze of open windows or out of a picnic basket. Greens and grains is a simple way to make a salad more interesting and hearty by combining cold, crisp lettuce with warm rice or grain. Toss with vinaigrette and top with cheese and nuts and you're ready to go. Meghan was inspired to bring this dish into existence after looking in the fridge and noticing we had ample mixed greens from Morse Market along with a fruit bowl full of oranges. The inspiration came again from Heidi, but I made a few substitutions as we had brown rice on hand, but not farro. Coincidentally, Heidi also posted a different version of this recipe after I made it, but she incorporated  yellow split peas, further illustrating the versatility of this simple combination.

First, cook the grain or rice. Almost anything will work here: barley, brown or wild rice, farro, lentils, etc. Left overs would work too, but the hot/cold combo of the grain and greens is pleasant and the residual heat of the grains/rice helps melt the cheese just enough.

Next, make the vinaigrette. My adapted version of Heidi's citrus vinaigrette is below. As usual, the better the ingredients, the better the final product, but this is especially true here.

1 orange, zest and juice
2-3 scallions
1/3 C parmesan cheese, freshly shredded
2 T white wine vinegar
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Toss the greens in about half of the vinaigrette.