Stocks and Sauces

Stocks and Sauces

Stock is it's own ingredient.  "Stocks," Escoffier writes, "are to cooking what the foundation is to a house."  They are the liquid concentrations of meaty bones and aromatics such as mirepoix and bouquet garni (literally garnished bouquet: a bundle of thyme sprigs, parsley stems, black peppercorn, and sometimes garlic cloves.)  Your goal when making stock (veal stock, chicken stock, beef stock, vegetable stock, fish fumet) is to ensure that it tastes of more than just its component parts.

Prepared properly, stock achieves its own flavor beyond its individual elements and serves as a unique ingredient when added to something else.  Store bought stock can do in a pinch, but serious cooks make their own to ensure quality and depth of flavor.  For good sauce and stock recipes, look to Sauces:  Classical and Contemporary Saucemaking by James Peterson.

Keep the solids wet with hot water.   Begin stock by filling the pot with enough cold water to cover the solids up to two inches.  As the water evaporates during cooking and the solids become uncovered, add more hot water to the pot. Never add cold ingredients to hot foods or vice versa.

Size the cuts to the cooking time.  Cut the bones and vegetables for white chicken stock, for instance, relative to the brief cooking time of two hours.  Use large bones and big chunks of vegetables for a beef or veal stock that takes eight or more hours to cook.

Overcooked stock tastes bitter; undercooked stock is weak and watery.  You can dilute an overcooked stock or fortify an undercooked one, but anything you do to repair a damaged stock won't be as good as getting it right in the first place.

Never season stock.  Stock is a base for sauces and other dishes that themselves will be seasoned.  Seasoning a stock directly risks concentrating the salt and cracked pepper and therefore masking the stock's foundational flavors.

Always be skimming.  Achieve clarity by skimming the impurities as they rise to the top.  This also gives the cleanest and brightest flavor.

Strain stock hard.  Take no prisoners.  Leave nothing behind but juiceless meat, bones and aromatics.  Force every drop of moisture through the cheesecloth, lined strainer or chinois:  it all belongs to the stock and has no business being anywhere else.  Push down on the solids hard.  Some of the most flavorful and valuable elements of the stock stay in the solids unless you, the committed and unrelenting cook, push them out.  Let "bone dry" be your standard.

Reduce stock as a first step to making a pan sauce.  A stock lacks the concentration of a sauce.  That means it doesn't have the right body, or intensity of flavor and viscosity, to stand on its own.  Reduce the water content to concentrate the stock's flavor and bring it closer to a sauce.

Deglaze the pan.  Those crusty bits that stick to the pan when you saute, sear or roast are the food's gift to the cook.  Called sucs (sooks) these drippings and food particles contain a sublime depth of flavor that only the processes of caramelization and fat rendering can impart.  To deglaze:  Add stock, vinegar, or wine to the pan over moderate heat.  Scrape and stir with a wooden spoon.  Watch the liquid darken as the pan becomes clean (deglazed) from this happy marriage of ingredients.  Allow the pan sauce to reduce for further concentration and thickness.  Now season for added flavor, and perhaps add a touch of butter.

Aim for proper thickness of sauce.  Following reduction, sauces often are still too thin.  Further reduction might leave you with too little sauce, or an over-concentrated sauce.  Solution:  Thicken sauce by using a liaison, that is, adding beurre manie (equal parts butter and flour) a slurry (cornstarch, potato starch, arrowroot, or rice flour dissolved in liquid,) heavy cream (reduced by half) or a roux (equal parts cooked flour and butter) or use a beaten egg yolk. Your test for the right thickness: the sauce coats the back of a spoon and holds its shape when you run your (very clean) finger through it.

A marinade is NOT a sauce.  Do not serve a marinade with cooked foods after it has touched raw foods.  Once it has done its job, throw it out.

Use sauce with restraint.  Sauce is liquid seasoning:  it should compliment its food, never outshine it.  Leave the diner wanting more.

Temperature

Temperature

• Command the heat.  "The chef's job," writes Daniel Boulud, "is to employ heat to transform ingredients."  Whether it is extracting and reabsorbing juice in roasting, or braising and reducing, or sauteeing, then carmelizing--you are working the moisture in the food you are preparing; and then concentrating it, reintegrating it back into the ingredient.  Heat, concentrate, reintegrate.  No matter how you apply heat, this is the transformational aspect of cuisine.  How good your food is depends on how well you control the force of nature.

• Move the moisture.  Food has moisture content.  Cooking involves temperature changes.  Temperature changes move moisture.  Concentration (as in sauteing, grilling, broiling, roasting, or baking) is the process of sealing moisture into the food.  Extraction (poaching) is the process of drawing moisture out of it.  The mixed method (braising) applies both processes.

• Never jump food more than one temperature state at a time.  There are four functional temperature states:  1) frozen; 2) cold; 3) room temperature; and 4) warm or hot.   When you move food from one state to another (in either direction) don't skip over a temperature state by, for instance, taking a roast directly from the refrigerator to the oven, or from the oven to the refrigerator.  Only one state change at a time.  Jump starting disrupts or destroys the vital process of moisture, concentration and reintegration within the ingredient as its temperature changes.  Place a sealed, warm lasagna in a cold fridge, and here does all that heat and moisture go?  It collects on top of your lovely lasagna, now no longer so lovely.

• Season as you go.  As your food progresses through its temperature changes during the cooking process, seasonings (and moisture) are constantly being absorbed and redistributed.  Season when you start.  Season as you go.  Season again when you finish.

• Always preheat the oven.  Wait at least fifteen minutes.  Better, use a thermometer to verify that the oven has reached the target temperature.  If you do not follow this rule, your food will take longer to cook and might suffer dryness or toughness or both.

• Keep the door shut.  Do not unpack your groceries with the refrigerator door ajar.  Cold air escapes as the warm kitchen air enters the machinery has to work harder to maintain its temperature and you compromise the safety of your refrigerated foods.  Similarly, do not baste a turkey while it is in the oven.  Hot air escapes with every second the oven door is left open.  Remove the bird first, close the oven door, set the bird on the counter to baste it, then return it to the oven.  The consequences of leaving the door open can be more drastic than you think:  longer cooking time, dried out proteins and uneven results.

• Do not crowd the pan.  If you intend to sear, keep ample space between product.  If pieces of meat or fish are too close together in the pan, they produce too much moisture to caramelize.  Work in batches of necessary to maintain proper spacing.  Also, pat dry your food before applying dry heat, even moisture will steam what you are otherwise attempting to cook by another method.

• Move the pan off the heat.  When a recipe says to remove the pan from the heat, do not just turn off the heat.  Gas or electric, the heat source below the pan is still hot.  Place the pot elsewhere so room temperature air circulates around it; otherwise you risk overcooking.  Be aware that thermal mass, a kind of temperature momentum is often at work, continuing the currently prevailing heat state unless you counter it.  Cooking will continue until the energy of the heat is negated, not just when you removed the food from the heat source.

• Flag hot things.  Place an oven mitt, potholder, or towel over the handle of any hot item you set aside.  Signal clearly to others and yourself that there is danger in touching it.

• Don't grab a hot pan with a wet cloth.  Water conducts heat; you'll scald yourself.

• Use a cold pan for butter.  Heat the pan and butter simultaneously.  Butter added to a hot pan burns on contact due to its dairy content.  The proteins and sugars turn from brown to black and taste bitter instead of sweet.  Burnt butter is toxic, throw it out and start again.

• Use a hot pan for oil.  Add oil directly to an already hot pan; in a matter of seconds, it becomes hot enough to cook your food, but not yet hot enough to smoke.  When it does smoke, it is toxic, throw it out and start again.  Match the oil with the cooking method.

• Do not add cold ingredients to hot foods, or vice versa.  If you add cold milk to a warm roux you get a lumpy bechamel sauce.  If you ladle cold stock into warm risotto, the delicate grains of rice cook unevenly.  If you mix hot liquids with a cold, raw egg mixture; as in making custard, the egg cooks in the heat of those added liquids and scrambles into tiny pieces.  A notable exception to this rule is "mounting" a sauce, that is, adding cold butter to a warm sauce to finish it.  The cold butter emulsifies the warm sauce and gives it sheen, a smooth texture, a thickened feel, and a rounded taste.

• Maintain heat at a low temperature.  Lower the oven temperature to 250 degrees to keep a just cooked casserole warm without overcooking.

• Reheat at a high temperature.  Flash prepared food at 425-475 degrees for a few minutes to get them hot quickly without cooking them further.

• Fire trumps radiation.  The microwave can be fine for reheating certain foods, otherwise it distances you from cooking and its elemental pleasures.  Don't let a machine do your job.  You are the cook; it is your fire, your blade, your hands, your finesse that provide the meal's soul.

Dairy And Eggs

Dairy and Eggs

•  Appreciate the benefits of butter. Much of the pleasure of food comes from fats like butter. Fats provide enticing mouth feel and is a vehicle of taste since many of the substances that affect our taste receptors are fat-soluble. Unlike other fats, butter provides additional proteins and dairy solids that enhance and balance flavors, smooth acids, and counter bitterness. There is no replacement for dairy fat, nothing feels quite as creamy or has the same flavor. There is a famous scene in the movie Julie and Julia where Julia Child (eating Dover sole) meltingly says the word “butter.” In truth she adored butter and she loathed dietary alternatives, but she did warn of caution in use; i.e. something you wouldn’t eat in quantity every day. (She also had an aversion to tuna packed in water and thought to use it that way was a waste of time—to always use tuna packed in oil.)

• Cook with Unsalted Butter. To control the seasoning of a dish, use unsalted butter when you cook. Leave salted butter for the table. Note: Land O’Lakes is now making a butter with Olive Oil and Sea Salt.

• Judge a cheese by its rind. The outside of a cheese tells you all you need to know about its quality, age and texture. Cheese Mongers advise, “Up with natural rinds, buffed, brushed, washed or cloth-covered. Down with plastic, paraffin (wax) and paint.”

• Consume soft cheese immediately. The softer the cheese, the more quickly it perishes. Hard cheeses have longer lives and stored in the refrigerator, last at least a few weeks.

• Serve cheese at room temperature. But store it in the refrigerator. Cold storage preserves freshness, whereas room temperature releases flavor and softens the texture. 

• Grate cheese yourself. Pre-shredded cheese offer convenience but lack flavor. Stabilizers and additives are needed to keep such cheese from clumping together. This commercial concern is not yours if you grate cheese as you use it.

• Add cheese at the end. If you add cheese early in the cooking process, prolonged or excessive heat might “break” the cheese (separate it’s fat from its dairy solids) and degrade the dish. Instead, melt the cheese over low heat—or brown it under a high flame using a broiler or salamander—once the dish is substantially finished. Use freshly grated or shredded cheese for even, speedy melting. 

• Test eggs for freshness. If you’re uncertain, crack an egg onto a flat plate. Its contents should hold their rounded or domed shapes, but if the white spreads and the yolk flattens, the egg is suspect.

• Use fresh eggs for poaching. When an egg is fresh, the white (albumen) clings to the yolk, which aids in achieving the coveted oval shape of a poached egg.

• Use older (but not expired) eggs for boiling. With age, the air pocket between the shell and the membrane gets bigger, making the egg easier to peel. You are less likely to take some of the “white” with you when you unshell it.

• Use large eggs when the recipe does not specify size. The minimum weight for a large egg is 1 ounce whereas the minimum weight for an extra large egg is 2.25 ounces. If you casually use extra large eggs, and the recipe calls for half a dozen large eggs, you are increasing your egg quantity by almost another whole egg. 

• Separate eggs with your hands. Pass the egg back and forth over your immaculately clean hands, and let the white drain between your fingers into one bowl. The yolk is less likely to break this way than if passed between two cracked shells. Then place the remaining dry yolk in another bowl. Wash your hands of the raw residue before moving on.

• Explore the novelty of different eggs.  Different species can produce different colored shells varied into speckled, blue, green, browns...  If you've never had a farm fresh egg, you will be surprised.  The yolk is invariably a brilliant orange, not yellow.  Try using eggs from species other than chickens: ducks, quail, geese.  If you are ever given an ostrich egg, be prepared to boil it for a long time.

Presentation

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• True refinement is invisible.  A showy turnip and a(n overly) friendly waiter have their virtues, but refinement is not among them.  Refined cooking, like refined behavior, does not call attention in itself.

• Select the plate with purpose.   Here's the rule:  the more intricate the food, the simpler the plate.  When in doubt, use a plain, white dish.

• Avoid even numbers when plating food.  Bilateral symmetry can suggest animal or human forms; shun such anthropomorphizing unless you are making gingerbread men.  Imbalance adds interest.  One exception; eggs, sunny-side up look good for some reason (likely Freudian.)  Another exception: Children who are fussy eaters.

• Hide the misery. Concealment beats disposal of an otherwise fine pice of damaged food, particularly when the clock militates against alternatives.  Did you tear a piece of skin from the chicken thigh?  Garnish it with chopped herbs.  Burn a corner of a salmon filet?  Nap it with a little sauce.

• Garnish with intention.  Use functional garnishes.  The proverbial lemon wedges that accompanies a filet of fish counters brininess by adding citrus brightness.  The archtypal sprig of parsley, once considered a refreshing palate cleanswer between courses, has now acquired some cliché baggage that easily signals an afterthought.  Better to chop the parsley and sprinkle it over the dish when it plays a role in flavoring the food.  Send an invitation that it be eaten.

• Never sabotage a dish for the sake of color.  Avoid the temptation to add "red" or "yellow" to a dish.  Color, for its own sake, is your lowest priority. It has to look good, but you are making food to be eaten.  Do not sacrifice a dish with, say, finely diced red pepper where it does not belong flavor-wise.

• No fingerprints on the plate.  Wipe it before you table it.  A little white vinegar on a clean, damp, rolled cloth is how the pros do it.

• Food never lies.  No excuse or explanation makes the slightest bit of difference.  All that matters is on the plate and in the diner's mouth.  Be grateful for cooking's objectivity; in its mercilessness one earns mastery and dignity.

*Disgusting food courtesy of a 1970's Weight Watcher's Diet Card.  Liver Paté En Masque.