Taking Stock

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.

Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques

Jacques Pépin

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.