Miracle Tonics

I have been in a very bad mood at work lately.

I am admittedly not very far from flying off the handle about something on a fairly regular basis, but the last couple of weeks have found me very often unjustifiably and irrationally angry at the slightest provocation. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the onslaught of corporate christmas parties filling our docket this month, and principally one which has been spirit dampening and soul crushing at every turn. This particular group has loads of money to spend. You would think this is a chef's dream, but that is a horrible myth. The fact is, the more money someone has to spend, the more they have to say about how it's spent, and money, I am quickly learning, very rarely is an indication of good taste. The big check waltzes in to a restaurant and demands their tastes be met without one care in the world about what wonderful things a talented, professional, and knowledgable crew might be able to do to make them happy if they would only open their hearts to it. Very quickly, all dreams of culinary liberation through finance fade. Very quickly, that opportunity cook with Alba white truffles or pour some stellar grower champagne gets shoved aside for someone who wants a mountain of shrimp cocktail and filet with lobster tail, enough filet, mind you, that each and every guest is allotted over a pound. With this group, it's all about more, not better.

But they have that check. That huge check. And they are not naive; they know exactly what power they have. No restaurant is in the position to turn it down. So you do it. You book the party and you order the shrimp. You make the cocktail recipe they brought you by Sarah Lee. And I am a bit of a prima donna. So it kills me. It really and truly crushes me. My profession, the craft that so many thoughtful, passionate, creative people have dedicated so much labor and love toward giving it the remarkable beauty it has in modern times, deserves better than to be some philistine's errand boy.

But, the money is there and so is your standard. You cook from scratch, order the best shrimp and the best filet, and you cook a delicious, if not inspired, meal, which is exactly what happened. I spoke in the prime rib post about how much I enjoy finding some love for the over done and abused, and shrimp cocktail & filet sure fit that category. So my staff and I took them very seriously, as seriously as we would have taken those Alba truffles.

And two extraordinary things happened.

Two extraordinary broths happened.

First:
The filet was marinated in a powder we made form dried porcini mushroom, fennel, and cayenne for a couple of days.  This is a cheesy, steak house chef wanna be preparation but it's tasty, and when it rested out, the jus it left behind was shockingly good. Blood red and powerful, infused fully with the flavor of the spices and dried mushrooms. The beef and porcini packed enough amino acids into that roasting pan it could have spawned new life. We knew it would be good, but when it came time to execute, the conscientious sourcing, the extra care put in to preparing the steaks for roasting and the pitch perfect roast and rest left behind a liquor so very and unexpectedly special, that it led us to cook something else we normally would have very little love for, something that is typically made with very poor ingredients and very little care or attention: a French dip. Made with the left over filet (as you might imagine, there was plenty), some home made bread, French raclette, grilled red onions. Brian, barely audible past the mouthful of broth soaked beef and bread, murmured "best French dip ever".

To my way of thinking, a jus is the best of the flavored cooking liquid cannon. Jus is the liquid that naturally runs from a roast as it rests before carving, sometimes augmented by a little stock made from the same beast. So it isn't water steeped with bones, it is the pure, undiluted juices of the animal, plus whatever salt and seasoning the cook used to get the roast ready for the oven. And in my world it's hard to imagine better friends to lovely, rosy, day old roast and some soulful jus than bread, cheese, and onions.

Second:
We decided to make risotto with the lobster this year. Last year, they asked for way too much. One of our cooks spent an entire shift killing lobsters and they ate less than a third of it. So we took a different path, used fewer lobsters and had shells for stock. We also needed to poach Mount Shrimpcocktail along with twenty pounds of stone and snow crab. So we used the lobster stock as the foundation for a court bouillon to which we added some late season blanched celery & leeks from our friends at Visser Farm, lemons, fresh herbs, white wine, a small handful of salty olives, some Spanish piquillo peppers and coarse, dried Aleppo pepper. I began poaching the crab and some proteins started to collect on the surface and throughout the broth. Then I moved on to the shrimp, fantastic brown shrimp from the Gulf (Americans are justifiably proud of the shellfish that is raised near it's shores -- it is the best in the world). As I was poaching the proteins began to amass in the bouillon and toward the end it started to clear. I realized almost too late, just as I was getting ready to get rid of it, that I had made consommé by sheer luck. And it was delicious.

Consommé is a very finely clarified and fortified stock or broth (the fortified part is often over looked, but is crucial). It is one of my very favorite things to make. How good your consommé is depends largely on the excellence of the broth you start with. Get a rich, flavorful broth and build a raft made from the same uncooked protein used to make the broth and aromatics. As the proteins cook and coagulate, they act like a fine net, catching all the particulates that make a stock cloudy. If done properly, the strained liquid is crystal clear and deeply flavored. Egg whites are very often added to the raft. They coagulate very well and make for a strong raft resulting in a super clear broth. The problem is they also strip out flavor and color, so the very best consommés use only meats to form the raft. The exceptions, obviously, are vegetable consommés, which have no protein as their base and must use egg whites. There are other ways to clarify broths, like ice filtration, but the old way is the best way, mostly because the ingredients in the raft also fortify the broth, boosting flavor and contributing color. It is a very favorite if old fashion method. It's lost favor over the last few decades, perhaps because it is expensive and simple to the point where modern diners no longer recognize or appreciate its value, or maybe because it's sometimes used as a restorative by the ill, elderly, or weak who want something nourishing but not particularly challenging to eat.

If consommé boils or undercooks, it fails. The idea that one so tasty came together by accident was probably much more exciting to me than it was to my cooks, who seemed a little bewildered by my enthusiasm. To me it was reminder that no matter what you're doing in a kitchen, even something as tired and overdone as shrimp cocktail, if you cook with good food and treat it with care and respect something delicious and sometimes something unexpected will result. These broths were restorative indeed, a quiet and simple reminder of how good work truly is it's own reward.

***
So, there can be some confusion in edible liquid nomenclature. The words broth or jus or stock are used somewhat interchangeably. Please allow me to give my own little glossary of terms, most of which is probably sound, historically speaking, and some of which comes from my personal and not at all defendable musings:

STOCK: Bones and/or vegetables and aromatics simmered in water. Used as a base for soups and sauces or as a cooking medium for other meats, vegetables, or grains.

BROTH:  Stock which also uses a little lean meat to boost and deepen flavors. Sometimes a broth is the by product of cooking meat for consumption, like in chicken and dumplings. Broths are rich, rustic, and flavorful, and often served as is to accompany poached meats and vegetables.

JUS: The juices that run from a roast, perhaps extended with a little wine or perhaps stock made from the same animal. They are dense and deeply flavorful, and usually a bit aggressively seasoned from contact with the roast.

ESSENCE:  A broth reduced by half.

CONSOMMÉ: Clarified and fortified meat, fish, or vegetable broth, typically served as soup.

GLACE: A very heavily reduced, gelatin rich meat stock or broth, usually used as the base of a sauce.