Stock, make it or I mock you mercilessly

Hello again everyone,
I felt I needed to check in, it’s been a long while since I posted and I’m not giving up cheeseandolive, but I’ve had much much less inspiration to write.
I thought I was alone in this but I’ve been reading the lovely and talented Esther Walker’s blog reciperifle.blogspot.com. She’s recently announced her own knocked-uppedness and how her interest in food has waned.
She clearly regained her interest. Me on the other hand I’ve gotten lazy. No interest in retouching photos so that they’re not so blue or so that you can’t tell that I’m a total slob and my stovetop is filthy. But I’m trying.

In the meantime, I think I’ll rehash an issue that I frequently bitch about and that is food fear / food laziness. Maybe that’s not the right name for it either.
Let me tell you the story.
I used to take the train to work every day (I started taking my car in the last few weeks of the gestation), and there are 2 women that I often hear talking about food. The thing is, they’re both dreadfully obese and are always talking about using this or that out of a can. Pasta sauce, soups, and worst of all, chicken stock. I think they fancy themselves gourmets, but everything that they talk about starts out partially or completely prepared. Pasta sauce, soups, and worst of all, chicken stock. Their reasoning? “It’s too complicated”. I can understand if you want to buy frozen puff pastry because it’s too complicated, or jarred curry pastes, or even frozen dumplings, but chicken stock?!?!?
Now I admit, in a pinch, if I don’t have any already made, or if there’s no chicken carcass waiting for me in my freezer, I’ve used the canned / frozen / or boxed stuff. But NEVER tell me that it’s because it’s TOO COMPLICATED.
“It’s too hot out” for sure.
“I have no chicken pieces” valid.
“I don’t have time right now” it happens.

But It’s too complicated? Pull the other one!

Maybe I’m getting too worked up about this issue, but just to be on the safe side, I’ll give you all a little primer on how to make your own chicken stock. And if you’re ever out and chatting about how complicated something as simple as tomato sauce, or broth, or soup is, and you spot someone staring at you giving you the stink eye, come over and say hello, it’s surely me.

To start out, you’ll need one very crucial thing, chicken.
Whether it’s a stock chicken (will explain more about that one in a bit — it’s a traumatic story) or pieces / bones of a chicken that was used in a previous meal, cooked or raw, it will all work (just not rotten, fools). Turkeys and ducks also work.
I must say though, if you want to make pork or beef stock, you will need to roast the bones otherwise you won’t get a very rich flavour. I will not be touching on that in this post because I don’t have pictures of it. Google it if you care.

Onions are also pretty important, but in essence, my theory is “use what you’ve got”
When you’re cooking, there are invariably things that you will chop off of a vegetable. Such as the top of a pepper, the tops and bottoms of onions, the ribs from chard, the leafy parts of celery. All of this you don’t have to throw out right away. Store it in your freezer in a plastic bag (make sure it’s clean though, no amount of boiling will remove sand and/or DDT) and when it’s time to make stock, you have a wide assortment of vegetables to choose from. My only counsel would be to avoid broccoli, brussel sprouts, and rapini because you don’t want to add any bitterness.

The standard configuration is to use carrots, celery, and onions (I like to use garlic too), chop them into manageable pieces and throw them in a large pot. Put your chicken in, if it’s whole or full meaty pieces, it’s better to be thawed, but if it’s a carcass, it can go in frozen. Add herbs such as thyme, bay leaves, rosemary, peppercorns, nothing too delicate. Cover with water and turn the heat on.

I prefer to let it come to a boil because I feel like I’m killing off any nasty germies, but if you want a clear stock you’ll only let it simmer... Hell if you want a clear stock, you’ll probably know how to do this already and won’t be bothering with this read. What I’m trying to do here is get people to make their own stock not to get the clearest most perfect broth. Once you embrace the idea that it’s not hard, tastes good, and makes your house smell awesome, then you can refine your technique.

So let it simmer for an hour or 2 and strain out the liquid into re-sealable containers and freeze. If you see a foam form while it is simmering, you can skim that off, or you can leave it. It is impurities coming from the chicken, but it won’t kill you. And like I said before, make stock now, refine later.
If you have the patience and are so inclined, you can refrigerate them and when the fat solidifies you can skim it off (much faster than skimming it when it’s in its liquid state) or you can get super lazy like me and freeze it as is then when you’re defrosting it just pick or scrape off the frozen fat, which will melt faster than the stock itself.

It takes virtually no attention, minimal skill, and almost free (If using scraps or carcasses)
HOWEVER, if you have a chicken that is a stock chicken, it is traditionally smaller and more slender than your regular roasters and may still have the head on. It will be cheaper. USE THIS FOR STOCK ONLY! We bought one once and tried to roast it. Firstly, it wasn’t 100% clean (organpalooza), and then there were the flat, rubbery breasts that cooked to the thickness of and iphone. Oh and don’t let me forget the crop. The crop is a fatty mass at the neck/shoulder area of the chicken. It is part of the digestive system. It holds excess food to be digested. When I cut into it, it crackled. There were white chips in amongst the fat, which I can only assume were pieces of chicken feed (roasted from being in my oven). But at first I thought that they were bone chips.
It was awful, I cried, we threw it out in its entirety and only had side dishes for dinner. I was a domestic failure and an energy / food squanderer. So to save you all the trauma of roasting a chicken that was meant for the stock pot. I share with you my story. So read your labels and by all means, buy the boiling chicken but be careful, if it looks puny, and still has a crop, chuck it in the stock pot, don’t waste your tasty cilantro red curry based rub (or however you choose to season your chicken) on this beastie.

Thank you for reading again after a long hiatus. I am hoping to blog again very soon. I have an event that I am attending next week, and am very much looking forward to chronicling that. So don’t give up on me, I’m still alive. And if you're bored with me, at least take a look at Recipe Rifle, she's managed to work through the temporary inspiration void. I'm confident I'll be able to do the same, and soon I’ll have all the time in the world to write on my maternity leave *wink*
Oh and NEVER let me catch you saying that chicken broth is hard to make or I’ll out your laziness all over the internets.
That’s all for now.
Xoxoxox
-Candace.

What to do with the soup!?

Hello! I’m back from blog blackout, and officially married! That sort of leads me to the dilemma of this post. I made 312 oz. of butternut sage parmesan soup as an appetizer for the wedding. Although I thought that it was going to be just enough for 85 people in 2 ounce shooters, it turns out that there was WAAAAAAYY too much. I am now left with about 200 oz. of butternut soup that I want to use before it goes bad. I put a lot of effort into it and I don’t want to just throw it out. So I’m trying to find innovative ways to use it up. There’s only so much soup two people can eat!
So I’ll start at the beginning. The original recipe starts with 2 butternut squashes (medium), 2 medium yellow onions (diced), 3 cloves of garlic (smashed and minced), about 2 -3 tbsp of fresh sage (chopped), 6 -8 cups chicken or vegetable stock, ¼ cup Parmesan or Romano cheese, and salt & pepper to taste. If you want to make this vegetarian, you don’t have to use the Parmesan, just add more salt. If you’re planning on having this as a cold soup you have to over-salt it. You can even over-salt it when it’s cold and not when you’re making it so that you have a more versatile batch.

First, peel and cube the squash into about ¾ inch cubes (removing the seeds). Then, fry the onion and garlic in a little olive oil until translucent, and add about 2/3 of the sage, sauté for a little bit longer. Add the squash and stir for about 5 minutes until you get the sense that the squash is starting to cook and the vegetables are generating steam. Add the stock (veg or bird) and stir vigorously so that if you have any caramelization, then you’re lifting it into the soup. Let the liquid come to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for about 30 minutes or until the squash looks like it will collapse under your sternest gaze. Then you can either blend it in batches in a conventional blender, or in the pot with an immersion blender. Add the remaining sage and parmesan at the end of the blending. Blend a wee bit more until the sage is broken up and the cheese is incorporated, then season with salt and pepper according to your liking. You probably won’t need much salt, but if you’re not using the cheese then you will.

That was the original recipe. It’s actually my first here on C & O that can be vegetarian. And if you want to translate it into the risotto that I made without meat, just skip the lamb and pancetta, you can easily braise shallots until they caramelize and turn into lovely sweet wisps.

Before I get to solution #1 for all that soup, just one or two or three gratuitous wedding related photos…Please excuse the beefyness of my arm in the 2nd picture, it’s clearly something someone did to the image in photoshop, I don’t really look that way… yeah, photoshop…


This is our awesome food that we had catered by Zee Company, (product placement). Their food is tremendous and Michael and his crew / family are super!



This is us. Hot stuff, no?


This is our awesome cake with the Han and Leia Topper. It was made for us by Marlyn at Montreal Confections. (Who is also awesome!) Thankfully for us, some people left before the cake was cut so that means we have leftovers. HEH HEH HEH... suckers, they don't know what a sweet treat they missed!



Ok, down to the real issue at hand... This is how much soup we have. Those 2 giant containers and the substantially less full one to the right. No human can eat that much before it spoils.



In order to incorporate it into other foods so that we can eat it without getting bored, I made a butternut risotto with braised lamb shoulder (lamb was also braised in squash soup). To start the braise, I cubed a 1 cm thick slab of pancetta. (But as I mentioned before, if you want to go meatless, skip this part and just brown the shallots in olive oil and deglaze with the vermouth. Then throw it in the oven and it will add a sweet and savory umami flavour without the addition of meat.



The afore-mentioned shallots. I sliced them in half after this when ready to add to pan.



LAMB LAMB LAMB LAMB. If you buy it with a bone, keep the bone in the pan to extract extra flavour and texture.


Oooh pancetta in a pan. Sizzle.



Lamb is added to brown.



This 1.5L bottle of Vermouth is also a casualty of the wedding. I bought it thinking that people (meaning me) would want martinis. No one had even one. So I'm using it in cooking now... and maybe a little for drinking too...


This is a post-deglaze photo. Also the shallots were added.



And then I added a hearty scoop o'soup. Please disregard the gob I dropped on the stovetop.



Meex meex meex (Translation: mix mix mix). Throw it in a 375° - 350°F oven, covered, for about half and hour. Until the meat is ridiculously tender and the vermouth / squash brew has reduced.



Then we start the risotto. Coat the rice in some hot olive oil and stir it around for about 30 seconds on med/high.



Then I added the soup, I also diluted it with some water because once it starts getting absorbd by the rice, it WILL stick. Add the liquid, whether it is the one illustrated here, or your own brew, ladle by ladle. If you were to add the entire content of liquid at once, it would simply boil and not have a chance to release all of its starches to form a proper risotto.



Here is a closeup of the finished risotto, it takes about 30 minutes and LOTS of stirring.


The lamb emerges from the oven the onions are all melty and there's a super savoury reduced brown ring around the pan.



Here is the final product. In retrospect, I probably should have used a different coloured bowl.
Everything got mixed together and then topped with a little parmesan.
It was SO SUPER GOOD. I can't even remember if poor Kyle got to try any. (I ate the rest of it the next day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner... )

My next project for the soup is a roast vegetable lasagna using the soup (mixed with tomatoes) as the sauce. I don't know if I will blog it though, it's a multi-day project and I don't know if I want to put you through that. : )
Well anyways, enjoy the pictures, and be sure to check out the links for Zee Company and Montreal Confections. Also, if anyone wants any squash soup... we have lots.
More posts to come soon! I promise!!!!