The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Simon Hopkinson’s Vegetable Bouillon

 

 

 

In the last two posts we looked at two different ways to make a competent chicken stock. But have you ever tried to make a vegetarian stock? You might be surprised by the results. Here’s how to make a very simple tomato consommé: 

Take a batch of ripe tomatoes, chop them up very roughly and marinade them in the ‘fridge with a handful of sea-salt. Several hours should do the trick. Take them out of the ‘fridge and 'half-crush' them up in your Magimix, using a few jabs of the pulse button. The salty tomato pulp is placed in a muslin-lined sieve and placed over a large bowl, and the whole shooting match put back into the ‘fridge to drip over-night.

In the morning you’ll have a bowlful of clear tomato ‘water’, with the most delicate flavour. You might serve this, say, in small cups (chilled over ice, with a sprig of basil) as a trendy amuse-bouche for a summer dinner party. You could, of course, also add extra flavourings at the dripping stage- aromatics such as rosemary, thyme, basil, shallots or garlic might work well. Your friends will be amazed, delighted and amused. 

My researches into vegetable stock-making reminded me that I had a copy of Simon Hopkinson’s The Vegetarian Option languishing at the back of the book shelf. Massive fan of Mr H, and along with Richard Olney, currently one of my all-time favourite food writers. I should use The Vegetarian Option more often as it’s packed full of ideas- encouraging stylish ways with the vegetable. There should be so much more to vegetable cooking than the dreaded pasta and lentil bake. 

There’s a brilliant recipe for a vegetarian bouillon which Simon Hopkinson discovered at L’Espérance restaurant in Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay: 

You take 100g carrots, 100g leeks, 100g celery, 100g white button mushrooms and 250g white onion (peeled and chopped and the mushrooms thinly sliced) and mix them up in a large bowl. Get hold of three clean Parfait preserving jars and fill each up half-way with the vegetable mixture. Place a garlic clove, bayleaf, chopped parsley sprigs and a few black peppercorns into each jar and top up with the remaining vegetables. In goes a dash of good sea-salt and water, so that it stops about 2cm from the top of the glass jar. The jars are then sealed and placed in a deep pan of cold water until the water almost reaches the lids.

You are going to cook the jars a bit like the way you might cook a traditional Christmas Pudding. The water is brought to a very gentle simmer and the pan left (with the lid on) for two hours, topping up the level with boiling water from the kettle when you think it needs it. To prevent the jars from shattering, you will need to use either a diffuser or a folded piece of thick cardboard placed directly underneath each jar in the pan.

The bouillon is cooled and then strained through a muslin-lined sieve in the normal way. Thinking about it, this is a traditional cooking technique as used in Olde England- jugged peas and jugged hare immediately springs to mind.

The Bouillon can be served ‘ice-cold’ with a garnish of diced ‘jewel-like’ vegetables floating on the top. Simple, satisfying- and genuinely elegant. If you’re clever I expect you can think up alternative ways of using it- perhaps as an interesting re-interpretation of a Bloody Mary, with vodka and Tabasco?  Either way, the bouillon can be frozen and used to pep up soups, stews and sauces.

 

To Brown or Not to Brown?

 

 

You will remember, Dear Reader, that in the last post, we made- or attempted to make- a white chicken stock. The response was good, and you so obviously enjoyed it that I thought I would carry on with the stock theme: to create a little series of posts on stock making, consommés, glazes, aspics, demi-glaces and all that jazz. Before I carry on with ‘how to make a brown stock’, I thought I should let you into ‘what wrong with my last stock attempt’.

I let it boil. Yep, I didn’t follow my own instructions. That pesky telephone rang (one of those dodgy insurance claim firms) and it was enough to distract me for a few tiresome minutes. When I got back to the pan, it was at a boil, and the stock had gone cloudy. Don’t do this. All it needs is thirty seconds or so, and your clear stock becomes a thing of the past. Secondly, leave the carcass alone. Don’t do what I did, and try and break it up, or stir it about. There’s always someone (i.e.me) who wants to meddle. Don’t touch it, and you’ll get a clear stock. And finally, it might be a good plan to ladle it from the pan when it’s ready, rather than pour it straight into the colander. There’s a few cheffy tips for you.

So on to brown stock. Or more precisely, a brown chicken stock. Julia Child gives a simple recipe in her exemplary Mastering the Art of French Cooking: 

You take bits of chicken "the neck, gizzard, heart and scraps” (I would have thought those bits and pieces you get in little bags inside supermarket chickens would be just fine), chop them up and brown them in a heavy frying pan, in oil, with a sliced onion and carrot. Mrs Child recommends that you brown them on the top of the stove, rather than in the oven, as she worries that the chicken might burn- and she’s probably right.

You pour out the ‘browning fat’ and add ¾ pint of white chicken stock (which we made in the last post), two parsley sprigs, some thyme and a bayleaf, and enough water to cover the chicken by ½ inch. 

Simmer (remember, ‘just a bubble or two of motion at the surface'), partially covered for 1½ hours, skimming as before. Strain and de-grease.

That’s one way of doing it. The other way (courtesy of Robuchon) is to brown the carcass of a chicken in a pre-heated oven (400F/200C) for fifteen to thirty minutes, stirring from time to time with a big wooden spoon. You then add a coarsley chopped carrot, a peeled and coarsely chopped onion, a chunk of celery stalk and 100g mushrooms to the roasting pan, mix it well and return to the oven for ten minutes to brown the vegetables. The chicken bones and vegetables are removed from the pan and put into a large stockpot, which is then covered with cold water, and a bouquet garni, herbs (four sprigs of chervil, a sprig of tarragon) and a clove of garlic added as you would with a standard white stock. 

Unlike Richard Olney (two hours), both Rubuchon and Julia Child recommend that you cook your stock for at least four hours (‘never allowing the liquid to roil and boil. It should just shiver’.) And one final word for now. Can you make a chicken stock from the left-overs?  Yes, you can. Obviously it won’t be as flavoursome as a stock made from a whole, uncooked chicken, but if you simmer it at a low heat for long enough, you’ll get enough gelatine out of the bones to form a reasonable jelly.