It’s Cookin’

This specific stock I created to accommodate an allergy to onion (alum or Lily family, which would include garlic, chives, shallots, onion – the bulbs.) If you have no such allergy, adding onion to this stock is always a possibility. To substitute for a lack of onion, (which is often the foundation of many stocks) I use Fennel. It works quite nicely and enables me to play around with different flavors.

Cookware: Large Heavy Stockpot

Method: Simmering

Ingredients:

2 carrots

2 stalks of celery

2 stalks of fennel

1 onion (if using)

1 package (or ½ lb of white mushrooms)

½ pound bag of vegetable trimmings (carrot peeling, celery, zucchini, fennel, cabbage, lettuce ends, basil stalks)

2-3 springs of fresh Thyme

2 bay leaves

¼ cup cheap white wine

Some peppercorns

Parsley stalks

In a large roasting pan add a tablespoon or so of olive oil and dump carrots, celery and fennel stocks and onion if you are going to use it. Other solid chunks of saved frozen goodies are welcomed to that pile as well. Roast on 350 degrees for about an hour, until veggies are lightly browned.

In a heavy stockpot heat few tablespoons of olive oil and toss the roasted veggies in. Meanwhile, deglaze the roasting pan with some white wine and scrape up all the browned bits stuck to the pan and add to stockpot. Add the rest of the contents of your frozen savings, bay leaves, parsley stalks and peppercorns. In fact dump everything in there other than mushrooms. Close the lid and let the vegetables sweat for a minute or 2. Add 4 -5 qts. of water and increase the heat. Make sure not to boil your stock, just bring it to a simmer and lower the heat to med-low. Sauté mushrooms until they start releasing liquid and add to your pot. Mushrooms add great taste to stock – my personal favorite trick. (I swear I can make great stock using just mushrooms, basil stalks, wine, lemon and shrimp tails.) Keep simmering for about 1 and 45 minutes, with lid cracked to reduce your stock. Cool. Strain through a colander lined with cheesecloth. Save and use in sauces, soups, risotto, stews, braises and rice dishes.

I usually use this specific stock for lentil or other vegetable soups, fennel, basil and sun dried tomato risotto, reductions for light sauces (like my soy-grapefruit reduction for Asian noodles, I will write this up soon.)

Tips & Tricks:

Save your vegetables — butts of carrots, onions, fennel, broccoli stalks, zucchini, cabbage, celery, basil stalks, parsley stalks, etc in a bag and keep in your freezer. There is no reason to throw those seemingly useless bits away – they have tons on flavor you can extract and use in making stocks.

I keep my stock frozen, and tend to make a fair amount of it. This way any time I want to whip up a sauce or a soup I always have it ready.

Experiment with vegetables, but stay away from things like eggplant, artichokes, potatoes!!! (Potatoes will cloud your stock) Do not salt your stock too much; you can always salt whatever the stock goes into.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Stocks & Sauces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.