We're up to more soups and sauces! This set focuses on the basic elements for making soups from a white chicken stock (stock made from washed bones cooked in a pot with cold water, veggies, and spices). We used the chicken stock we had made the week prior as the base for these soups and sauces. The stock was chilled and stored in quart containers in the fridge and freezer at school so we just grabbed a few and defrosted them in a soup pot. This way, whenever anyone needed stock for their soup, they could just measure out what they needed.
What's the difference between stock, and broth, and consommé? you may ask. Well, we learned the distinction:
Stock = A nutritious liquid made with animal bones (like marrow bones) or vegetables, and strained.
This is always a base for recipes like sauces and is never served as is.
Broth = A nutritious liquid made with more meat than bones (like using flanken instead of marrow bones).
Consommé: A nutritious liquid made from stock that has been degreased, strained, and clear of all impurities.
It is a fat-free, extremely flavorful, clear soup.
Sauce: A flavorful, nutritious liquid made from stock and is thickened with roux or another thickening agent.
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The first thing Chef had us do is to burn some onions and garlic. Differently than when we bruleéd red peppers (directly on the fire), we took a dry sauté pan, heated it to medium-high and placed the veggies right on that. These would be included in the consommé to add golden color to the liquid.
While the onions and garlic were burning, my other classmates were preparing the othe ingredients for the consommé recipe: the mirepoix (onions/carrots/celery), spice bag, egg white (to make the raft [I'll explain]), and ground beef. All the ingredients were combined in the pot and the pot sat on two fires to develop. We'll come back to this.
I worked with my partner, Dvasha, on two soups: Mulligatawny Soup and Hungarian Cabbage Apple Soup. We started with the mulligatawny by sweating onions in vegetable oil.
You can see all our ingredients measured out nicely on a sheet pan. This makes the recipe go a lot more smoothly and you don't have to take time to measure ingredients while cooking. Essentially, just dump, dump, and cook!
Here's a photo of me doing a dump. And yes, I know how that sounded. :-)
Here are the onions, spices, and bay leaf for the mulligatawny soup.
In the meantime, I washed and checked the cabbage for the next soup. We have to rinse the leafy vegetables in a sanitary bug wash to kill any remaining bugs, and then we rinse again in water. We check the rinse water and if there are no impurities, we are ok to use it. If there are any remaning bugs or bug parts, we do another rinse.
Two burners going at once:
Top: Mulligatawny
Bottom: Cabbage Apple
#multitaskers
Below, my plated Mulligatawny soup with white rice and parsley (garnish).
Below, my Hungarian Cabbage Apple soup with fresh apple and lemon slices and a scoop of pareve sour cream.
Classmate Josh peeling an apple for his soup, eh.
Below are everyone's plated soups:
Classmate Eugenia breaking up frozen quarts of chicken stock for the class to use.
What looks like vomit below is actually the chicken consommé. Since egg whites and canned tomates are included in the mixture, the acid from the tomatoes causes the egg whites to coagulate as the soup cooks. This "raft" floats at the top of the soup, collecting impurities from the animal bones, vegetables, etc. This soup is NOT degreased or skimmed yet. That happens later.
This raft is allowed to form
until it is hard enough to poke a hole in the middle. This allows it to
bubble naturally and continue gathering soup impurities. Once the
consomme is complete, this raft is broken and removed, the soup is strained, and all you are left with is a golden, clear liquid, usually served like this with julienned or brunoise (itty-bitty cubed) vegetables.
Sauces
Chef demonstrated how to make a dill "cream" sauce using the white chicken stock. The first step was to make a chicken velouté - make a roux (flour + margarine) and add chicken stock, salt, and pepper. This sauce is then strained through cheesecloth to remove flour lumps.
Then, he used the chicken velouté to make the dill sauce. Chef reduced some white wine in a saucepan with some shallots, added the velouté, and then mixed in some sour cream and fresh dill.
We served the sauce on top of a poached chicken breast. Delicious!
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Hungry? Try one of these soups:
Hungarian Cabbage Apple Soup
2 oz (clarified) margarine or butter
1/2 head of cabbage, finely shredded
4 oz white onions, peeled and thinly sliced
1 green apple
peeled and cored, then grated, then thrown up in the air like confetti.
don't actually do that last step.
6 cups chicken stock
3-6 cloves garlic
depending on how much you want to repel vampires
2 TB brown sugar
1/2 cup fine noodles, cooked
1/4 tsp caraway seeds
1/2 TB smoked paprika
1/2 TB white vinegar
Pinch sour salt (for color and acidity)
salt and pepper to taste
Melt margarine or butter in a pot. Add cabbage, onions, and grated apple and cook for 10 minutes. Add the garlic, sugar, caraway seeds, and paprika. Once the mixture has been cooking for 5-6 minutes, add the chicken stock and bring to a boil.
Simmer for 30 minutes on low heat.
Taste the soup and season with salt and pepper if needed. Then add the vinegar, sour salt, and cooked noodles. Bring to a boil and serve very hot with a dollop of sour cream.
* * *
Mulligatawny Soup
(my favorite of the day!)
2 oz vegetable oil
2 cups white onions, small dice
3-6 cloves garlic
depending on how much you want to repel vampires
2 cups eggplant, small cubes
3/4 TB garam masala spice blend
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
1 cup dried lentils
red preferred, but you can use any color for surprising results
1 cup cooked or leftover chicken, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup coconut milk (or cream)
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 cup basmati rice
Heat the vegetable oil, add onions when the oil is hot and sweat until transparent (about 10 minutes) while stirring. Add the garlic and cook for 2 minutes.
Add the garam masala, coriander, turmeric, cayenne pepper, eggplant, and cook on medium heat. Mix in the lentils and chicken broth and bring soup to a boil.
Cook until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Add additional chicken stock or water if the mixture is too thick.
Remove the bay leaves, and puree with hand blender if desired.
Stir in the coconut milk, chicken, and lemon juice. Reheat and serve hot.
Enjoy!
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