And Finally... We Have A Demi-Glace!

I have successfully completed the demi-glace right-of-passage.  To be honest, I'm not entirely sure of the quality of my demi-glace since I have yet to sample a demi-glace on its own, but I have a feeling that this is pretty close to the real thing.  I now see just how much easier this would have been with just a touch of cornstarch, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  So I reduced.  All the way down.  It took me two stages.  After the first session of reducing, I ended up with probably 4 cups of liquid which, after refrigeration, was nearly solid.  I heated that back up again and reduced it down to 2 cups, an effort which seemed to take quite a bit longer.

Needless to say, after all the roasting of bones, prepping of mire poix, bundling of bouquet garni, endless skimming and simmering and skimming and skimming, reducing and reducing, I ended up with my beautifully dark, velvety rich demi-glace.

The finished product was added to ice cube trays and will be frozen for later use in soups, sauces, etc...

And on that note I'm going to bed...

Demi-Glace: The Journey Continues...

Yesterday's festivities began with roasting the veal bones.  

I'm glad I picked up two roasting pans as I ended up having exactly the right amount of floor space for the ten pounds of bones.  The bones I'd received from the butcher were a mixture of marrow bones and knuckles.  I used a bit of salt and pepper on them, but just a tad since I'm fairly nervous about how concentrated that salt will be once I reduce it down.  When I made those glazed ducks for Thanksgiving, I decided to use the carcasses to make a stock, but it ended up being so horribly salty that despite my many efforts to recover, I ended up just ditching the whole thing.  I've heard that you can't fix stupid.  Well, you can't fix salt either.  The irony is that diluting an overly salted stock is counter-productive since the whole point is to reduce it back down again.

But I digress...

With the veal bones roasting away in the 500 degree oven, I moved on to prepping my veggies and bouquet garni.  

As I mentioned in the previous post, I opted for carrots, leeks and shallots.  When I think mire poix, I picture a finely chopped mixture of three savory vegetables.  I knew that trying to navigate around "finely chopped" veggies while skimming the stock would be nothing short of a nightmare, so I went for the "big hunk of plant matter" approach.  In hindsight, I might even take it a step farther if I ever decide to do this again.  Shallots and leeks have a way of separating their many little layers and multiplying their own surface area exponentially.  This is fine for a soup, but for a stock, it made the process a bit tedious.  I also ended up with some fairly charred pieces of leek/shallot/unrecognizable-pieces-of-carbon once they'd been through the 45 minutes of roasting.

As usual, the shallots had me crying.  A lot.  Like a hormonal adolescent post-break-up girl.  Whenever I cut onions or shallots I end up with tears streaming down my face, blinding me to the process below, involving a very finely tuned sharp knife.  My eyes will usually just shut, on their own, without my permission and without any response to my attempted interventions.  I've tried everything, all the wives tales, and I'm sorry but they just flat out don't work.  The closest I've come to relief is my snowboarding goggles.  I'm sure it's a sight for my neighbors.  I have a theory that my body has a chemical sensitivity to raw onions.  I know you're scoffing.  People chastise me for tediously picking out every little last bit of finely diced raw onion from my food, but this just shows me that they clearly don't have the same reaction in their mouths that I do when I eat onion.  I literally want to remove my tongue.  I'll taste that terrible taste all day too.  There's nothing crueler to me that getting a dish that I've been really looking forward to, only to find HIDDEN raw onion in it, (especially common with salads and sandwiches and slaws).  Even picking it out doesn't really remove the flavor, but it does manage to make my fingers smell like onion for a day.  And yet again, I digress... (but that's why you're reading this anyway, isn't it?).

So, onto the bouquet garni... (who doesn't love saying that word?).


I went with a pretty simplistic little bundle.  Parsley, bay leaf and peppercorns.  I added a few springs of thyme after this photo was taken.  I'd read a few suggestions about using the outer layer of the leek to wrap up parsley stems, thyme and bay leaves, (something about being resourceful?!) but I was pretty sure I wanted to include peppercorns and just couldn't picture the origami feats I'd have to accomplish with those leeks to keeps those little peppercorns encased.  Plus, I'm going to be honest, at this point in the process, I'm just not that concerned about using up that outer leek layer or reducing my cheese cloth usage.  I bought a 20qt pot and two roasting pans.  Frugality went out the window very early in this undertaking.  

I was happy to find an excuse to use some more bay leaves.  It takes me far too long to make it through a purchase of bay leaves.  I wish I'd think to use them more often.  They always add a nice layer of flavor to soups, stocks, gravies.  Maybe that will be one of my New Year's resolutions:  use more bay leaf.  I think it's an appropriate goal.  That, and perhaps vacuum more often.

 Last night, a few friends and I were watching the movie Babies, which I'd highly recommend.  At one point, they took this adorable little Mongolian baby and wrapped it up super tight and then tied it up around the shoulders and legs.  All I could think was, "it's like a little bouquet garni of cuteness!" at which point I realized how grossly girly I was being and shushed myself.  Looking back at the photo though, there is definitely a resemblance...

The roasting veal bones filled my house with a really amazing smell.  

Unfortunately, though, that smell made it all the way up to my bedroom and saturated the house.  As a side note: I woke up this morning smelling roasted veal fat and thinking, "I want to eat a small cow."  This is generally not a great way to start your Sunday morning, a) because veal really is pretty inhumane and I shouldn't develop a craving for it, and b) because who the hell is going to be there, roasted veal in hand, ready to serve you on a Sunday morning?  I settled for a self-prepared soy latte.  It wasn't quite the same.

I added the veggies to the pan and roasted for an additional 45 minutes.   

The roasted veggies and veal bones then went into the pot while I deglazed the pans and added the liquid to the pot.

I added the 8 quarts of cold water to the pot, brought it to a simmer and reduced the heat.  As the liquid reduces, I'm adding more water to keep the bones covered, and I'm skimming.  Lots and lots of skimming.  I started off with an oil-continuous layer on the top of the stock, which made it hard to tell what was actually oil and what was water.  I was fooling myself.  It was all oil.  I'm now to a point where I can keep up with the fat as it rises to the surface.  I'll be doing this for another 8 hours, while also preparing dinner for a friend that is coming over tonight.  

I did say that I was excited about this, right?

I'm sure the final product will be worth it.  I have a feeling that I'll end up doing the five hours of reduction tomorrow after work, so the final product photos will finish out the trilogy...

It's That Time of Year Again...

I live my life in sinusoidal waves, distinct peaks and valleys of energy, inspiration, motivation...

Lately I've been taking a bit of a back-seat approach and just riding it out, going with the flow, feeling a bit guilty about my lack of contribution to the world at large, but knowing fully well that when the time was ready, I'd be back at it again.

Things at work have been pretty busy. Most people would consider this a good reason to basically let the rest of their life settle down. I, however, end up being pushed up the accelerating side of my energy curve. The result? I, of course, decide to make a demi-glacé. The weather is getting colder and it smells like autumn outside.  It's the perfect time of year to use roasting pans and stock pots.

I've been thinking about taking on the challenge of the infamous demi-glacé ever since reading Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential (wonderful, hilarious read for any foodie out there).  I approach these types of culinary adventures in the same ritualistic way people approach an event like the prom, planning, list-making, preparation.  I woke up today at 7am, excited to go out and buy a 20 quart stock pot (in this analogy, the equivalent of a prom dress).  I treated myself to two new roasting pans and a new fine-mesh strainer as well, (the shoes and the jewelry?).  I bought some bubble-wrap to use as a diffuser for my new fancy-dancy flash on my camera and I bought some big sheets of white paper to reflect flash off of.  By the time I left the store with my new toys in hand, I was nearly giddy with excitement.  I haven't cooked, really cooked, in a very long time.  I haven't photographed the efforts in ages.  Pretty poor form for a self-proclaimed food-blogger.  

I moved on to New Sagaya and bought the ingredients for the mire poix and the bouquet garni.  Arriving  home, I took the ten pounds of veal bones out of the fridge to let them finish thawing and started to pre-heat the oven.  I should note that, after researching the various methods of making a demi-glacé, I've decided to opt with the more modern approach.  Rather than making a brown stock, splitting it in half, making an espagnole sauce and then recombining to reduce by half, I'm instead creating the stock and reducing it in one step.  Rather than use a brown roux, I'm going with the purist approach of using only reduction as the thickening method.  I'm skipping the celery in the mire poix and using leeks.  I've substituted shallots for the onions.  The carrots remain unaltered.  The bouquet garni will be parsley, bay leaf and peppercorns, and I'm not using madiera or any other wine.  My thought is that I'll keep the flavors as straightforward as possible since the result should be a base ingredient for a wide range of uses.  Adding layers of flavor now would only limit my options later.  We'll see how it goes.

I'm going to take a moment here to plug Mr. Prime Beef.  What an awesome little gem of a butcher.  Not only did they have frozen veal bones for sale, but they're already cut into two inch pieces.  I had had images of trying to saw the bones myself in my garage with what was sure to be disastrous results.  Not only to they carry relatively impossible-to-find items like veal bones and elk meat, but they also have amazingly high quality, fresh meats and their homemade Italian sausage (which can be bought in bulk), is pretty damn fantastic; this coming from an irritatingly picky Italian.

So now the oven is preheating, the veal bones are in the final stages of thawing, and I'm sitting here blogging in an attempt to relieve some of the giddiness.

Next steps: clean this mess of a kitchen, unwrap my new camera flash and take a few practice photos, prepare my mire poix and bouquet garni, and then get those little bones in the oven to get this process rolling.  

One small advantage of making a sauce which requires 24 hours of attention:  you end up with a really clean kitchen.  Needless to say, I have the mop out and the stainless-steel wipes are poised and ready for action.

I can't wait!

Photos and fiascos to follow...