Mais oui, you must make the stock! Else what's the point? All of us have cooked stocks before, so the difficulty is doing it their way, not the "usual". I thought I read the recipe before I started, but then kept tripping up -- I cut the leeks in half, crosswise, before reading about cutting them into quarters. So I essentially cut them in strips (quartering lengthwise). Then I found out I was putting them into a bundle -- too late to wrap the bundle in a single leek. Still, I managed.I assumed you truss the chicken to keep it from flopping around in the pot -- it's easier to pull it out after an hour, without getting bits of onion and carrot stuck inside it or under a drumstick. You tie up the bundle for the same reason -- those are the floppiest stuff to pull out, and it's easier to pull out as much as possible before straining.
Here are my questions: Why cut the tips off the wings and then throw them into the soup pot with the chicken? What, exactly, is a "branch" of thyme, as compared to a sprig? I assumed it was a thicker stemmed bit, with several sprigs on it.
Diverting from the Fatness
We have already concluded that we don't need 8 Tbs of butter for the veal recipe. We're planning to use half what is called for (in all recipes) and cooking spray. That should keep the flavor without making it hard to cook. I'll report back if it works. Maybe we can use even less -- but I've never cooked with veal before (I've only ever eaten it once that I know of) so I do want to get a sense of what things are supposed to taste like before altering too much.
A warning about the caramel, which I coincidentally made for Thanksgiving: it goes from clear sugar water to blackened burned in fewer than 10 seconds, after 8-10 minutes of boiling. Watch it carefully. I had to make two batches to get it right (you can use a candy thermometer, if you are lucky enough to have one -- I think the sweet spot is 375°).
If you look at the picture for "chiffonade" (how-to) on page 520 of my edition (1991), they show what appears to be Savoy Cabbage, not ordinary green cabbage as I know it. I've never cooked with it before, so I don't know if it's any different from other cabbages. I haven't located any in town yet; if I can't find any by noon I'll use ordinary.
Given Blithe's comments about help from Larousse Gastronomique (what is French "lettuce"?) I'm considering getting a copy. It's an $85 book (in the new 2001 edition), and even the older editions at Powell's, dog-eared and yellowed hard-to-read pages, at in the $40 range.
3 comments:
Babysis - we have the Larousse Gastronomique but I have found another Cordon Bleu book to be more useful for this enterprise. It's Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cooking Techniques, which has bigger better pictures. You will find this cheaper than the Larousse. Also, there are a couple of good food reference books used by professionals which are quite inexpensive paperbacks. I forget what they are called, but they are on the shelves of your local Borders in the food reference section, or whatever it's called.
Oh, also, I only wrapped the herbs between 2 of my discarded green leek leaves so it was a much more compact bundle. The leeks, carrots, celery was separate. I don't know if this was what we were supposed to do. I just assumed it was a traditional bouquet garni as illustrated in the CB Complete Cooking Techniques and did it that way.
I wrapped the herbs and the celery between two of the discarded green leek leaves, as illustrated in the CB compete cooking techniques book. It wasn't very compact this way, but was better than trying to bundle the leeks themselves and celery and Herbs. I think the leek leaf packet is nifty.
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