Soups!
This week was soup week -- we made a crab bisque one day, and clarified beef consomme with vegetable brunoise another. The third day, we made fried shrimp with a nice tartar sauce. :) I was not and still am not a huge fan of bisque -- I think savoury cream soups that are not vegetable just taste kind of funny to me, but this was not bad, in small portions. The beef consomme went well with some noodles, though it seemed like a whole lot of work for just a simple, clear soup... :)
CRAB BISQUE
For the bisque, we used live swimming crabs. Chef said that these crabs were not good for eating, just for making bisque, but I tried some of the meat that came out when we smashed them up, and it was AMAZINGLY sweet... I think that the french are just too lazy to do the work necessary to extract the meat from such small crabs. But it was definitely some of the best crab meat I have ever tasted.
Clean the live crabs. Try not to get yourself clawed. Heat some olive oil in a large pot very hot, until smoking, then add the crabs and sautee until all the crabs have changed color. (the very hot olive oil is for humanitarian reasons -- you don't want to increase the crabs' suffering by cooking them slowly). Remove the crabs, cover a rolling pin in ceran wrap, and smash them with the end. Sweat carrots, onions, celery, leeks, and garlic in the same pot with more olive oil. Don't brown or color. When they are well sweated, deglaze with cognac and white wine, letting the alcohol boil off, add the crabs back (with the juice!), add peeled, diced, seeded tomatoes (tomato concasse) and tomato paste (to give the bisque a nice red color), cayenne pepper, fish stock to cover the crabs, bring to a boil, and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain through a solid strainer, pressing hard with a ladle to get as much juice as possible. Add cream to the strained soup, heat, and thicken with a starch-water mixture (we used potato starch), taste, and salt and pepper to taste. You can serve with a spoon of cream and a sprig of chervil, if you like.
BEEF CONSOMME WITH VEGETABLES
This seems like a lot of work. We didn't actually make the consomme, the chef made it for us, but it is essentially many different cuts of beef and bones, with vegetables, in a large stock pot, cooked and skimmed for 4+ hours (anywhere up to 12 hours), then cooled for a day or two. The cold mixture is then skimmed of all fat, the meat and vegetables removed (they can be used for a pot-au-feu), and the remaining soup used for different purposes. During the demo, chef used the beef bouillon to make a wonderful french onion soup (SO MUCH BETTER than the salty stuff you get in the US), and for the practical, we had to practice clarification of the bouillon, which is what you need to do to make consomme. The result is a clear, light soup that is quite good, I think especially for people who are sick.
The clarification technique is quite interesting. Apparently, egg white has great clarification abilities -- when you add it to a broth and heat, it tends to suck up and incorporate all the little bits floating around into the white. In fact, it has such great clarification properties that it tends to suck a lot of the flavor out of bouillons. So, we used a mix of egg white, ground lean meat, and chopped vegetables. The ground lean meat added more color and flavor back to the soup, and the chopped vegetables added flavor. The technique:
Bring the bouillon up to a light simmer. Add the melange (mix) of egg white, ground meat, and vegetables into the bouillon, and DON'T TOUCH. Because the broth is hot, the melange will float at the top, and form a surface covering. Bring back to a light simmer. Little holes will form in the raft as the bouillon starts boiling, where hot water/steam escapes, sort of like a volcano with lava coming through. Use those holes, and start scooping liquid from them, and laying the liquid over the rest of the raft. The raft acts as a strainer for the liquid, and little bits get incorporated into the hardening melange. Keep doing this every 5 minutes for 30 minutes. Then let the bouillon rest and cool -- the raft will sink to the bottom, leaving a clear liquid above it. Then, carefully ladle out, from the top, the clear bouillon through a fine strainer lined with a clean cloth. Get as much liquid as possible, but try to avoid getting the raft at the bottom, or stir up the mixture too much. After you've gotten as much liquid as possible, put it back to heat, but don't boil -- you don't want the liquid to become cloudy again. Season to taste. Add brunoised and blanched vegetables (green beans, turnips, celery, carrots) at the last moment, and serve.
FRENCH ONION SOUP
We didn't make this in the practical, but I love this dish. Chef mentioned how he used to eat it at 5 AM after a long night of partying, and I can see why -- the soup is hot, satisfying, and easy to eat. When I've had french onion soup in the US, it's always been a bit disappointing -- the soup is incredibly salty, and it's often overwhelmed with cheese. In fact, for the liquid, you can simply use chicken stock or beef stock, and it doesn't have to be very salty at all.
First, thinly slice onions, doesn't matter how. Sautee with some butter, sweat, and reduce for a LONG time. Salt and pepper when soft and compact, dust with a bit of flour (to thicken the soup), and deglaze with port and white wine. Let the alcohol simmer and boil off. Add the beef or chicken stock, simmer for 30 minutes, and skim the fat/surface.
On the side, prepare some croutons. These must be DRY, otherwise, when you place them on the soup, they will simply sink. One way is too take baguette and slice thinly, and place into a 100C oven. They won't burn or brown at that temperature, even if you leave them in for half an hour.
The finish should be in soup tureens that are oven-proof. Fill about 3/4 full, put one layer of dry bread on top, and sprinkle one layer of grated cheese on the bread (can be simply mozzarella, or a nice grated gruyere). Put this under the salamander or the broiler in the oven to melt the cheese and finish. Voila! An excellent french onion soup. :)
posted by chezdavid @ 8:07 AM
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