Faux Demi-Glace

[manton]

I don't know how many people this will interest, but what the hell.

I like to make, and eat, the traditional French sauces. They have fallen out of favor, and so can be hard to find at all but the fustiest restaurants. And those that you can find are not really so great any more. But done well, they are incomparable, with a depth of flavor and a complexity that no substitute can offer. Plus, I like the way they liven up cheaper cuts of meat that lack the intense flavor of the expensive stuff.

For a long time, once or at most twice a year, I have made my own at home. This is an expensive and time consuming process. Just tracking down all the materials is hard. (Bones, in particular, are just not saved and sold to the extent they once were.) Then it takes three days of, if not solid work, at least constant attention to make the real recipe. Day one: stock. Day two: espagnole. Day three: demi-glace. The result is awesome, however. I save and freeze it in one cup portions and use it until it runs out. Plus, I make more stock than I need, and the excess is great for soup or any other recipe where stock is called for. 10,000 times better than canned broth.

But what if you don't want to go to all the trouble? Is there another way? Yes!

It's not as good; it does not yield as much. But then: it costs a lot less, and takes a lot less time. So, after much trial and error, I present the recipe for "Faux Demi-Glace." This is something to make, maybe, to accompany a holiday roast, or a leg of lamb, or when you want to impress someone, or just when you feel like it. My own impression is that it is plenty good enough to be rewarding on its own terms, even if you can tell the difference between this and the real thing.

The other advantage to the faux recipe is that you can make it for different meats. I mean, you could make the full demi-glace recipe from anything, theoretically. But there are practical problems. First, as I noted, finding bones is hard. Beef bones are by far the most commonly available. Veal would be a distant second. After that, they get really scarce. You would have a hard time finding enough lamb bones, for instance, to make a lamb stock and demi. Even harder for other things. Plus, once you made it, what are you going to do with all of it? I need a duck/lamb/venison sauce a handful of times a year at most. When I need it, the faux demi-recipe works quite well. I don't want to end up with a vat of the stuff. Beef and/or veal stock and sauce, however, are endlessly useful.

Basic ingredients for faux demi-glace: carrots, yellow onion, celery, garlic, tomato paste, wine, herb bouquet, meat and/or bones and (optional) a concentrated stock. Those are, essentially, the same ingredients as demi-glace (with one important exception), but our cheat sauce will use them in a different way.

Demi glace begins with stock. To make stock, you roast bones and (cheap) meat until well browned, and then simmer these, along with carrots, yellow onion, celery, garlic, and herbs, in a lot of water. Over a period of hours, the water takes on the flavor of what is in the pot. But for faux demi-glace, water is both too thin and too flavorless. We don't have enough time or enough ingredients to make it good. So we substitute wine. I use a whole bottle. Sounds profligate; but not an expensive bottle. Certainly, nothing over $10. A $7 or $8 merlot will do nicely. I wouldn't go cheaper than that. I have found that merlot works best, because its fleshiness and (relative) lack of tannin and acidity help the wine break down more easily. In other words, the very same contemptible softness that makes cheap merlot aggravating to drink are assets here.

Next, the meat. Now, first I should say that this step is strictly optional. If you want to save some cash, leave it out. If you do so, what you end up with will essentially be a Sauce Meurette, one of the "lesser" French sauces, but quite good on its own terms. Nonetheless, to truly qualify as a faux-demi-glace, some meat and/or bones will be required. Not much: half a pound, or one pound at most (we'll get to that). And make it cheap stuff, the dregs of the meat counter, the stuff used to flavor soups, stews and broths. There is absolutely no point in wasting rib-eye for this. If there is some bone attached, don't worry: that shaves a bit off the price and bone adds a nice flavor all its own. Just make sure it is cut into chunks. Also, the meat should match the sauce's intended use. If the sauce is for beef, use beef. If for lamb, use lamb. The extent to which this matters to you will vary. If you want something as all purpose as possible, use beef. I have done this for beef, duck, lamb, venison, pork, and veal. Only veal, I think, is a waste of time and money. Veal makes a wonderful stock and a true demi-glace, but it takes a lot of long-simmering to bring the flavor out. Its flavor is just overwhelmed and lost in the faux demi-glace, in my experience. The flavor of the others comes through, however.

Finely chop the carrots, onion and celery. How much you need depends on personal taste, and whether you are going to "moisten" twice (I'll get to that, too; bottom line, I recommend it). You'll need at least two tablespoons each of onion and carrot, and one of celery, for EACH moistening. So, if you know you're going to simmer the liquid twice, chop all that stuff ahead of time, and set aside. Whatever amounts you use, make sure that you use twice as much of EACH carrot and onion than celery. Celery is important to the sauce, but too much makes it taste vegetal and bitter. It's hard to use too much carrot or onion, however. Peel and smash (but don't chop) two garlic cloves.

Make your herb bouquet. I always do this the "correct" way with fresh herbs and kitchen twine. I'm told it matters. It may not, but I still do it. You could also just drop the herbs directly into the pot. Purists say they give off a better flavor if they are bound together. Could be crap, who knows. Anyway, I use (fresh) thyme, flat leaf parsley and bay leaves. Parsley is like 99 cents a bunch, so there is no point in skimping on that. If you don't want to spring for fresh herbs, and use dried instead, use A LOT less. Instead of two or three sprigs of fresh thyme, use a pinch of dried. Instead of three fresh bay leaves, use one dried. Obviously, you can't tie up dried thyme leaves, so just dump them in when the time comes.

Time to brown the meat. I use a 4-qt. sauce pan, with a regular surface (NOT non-stick; you want to develop a fond, those sticky bits). Use a neutral flavored oil with a high smoke point. I prefer canola for this. Others do just as well; just stay away from high flavor oils like extra-virgin olive. You want the sauce to have the flavor of the meat, not the oil. If you have a pound of meat and bones, add half; save the other half for the second moistening. If you have half a pound, dump it all in once the oil is nice and hot. It should really crackle and sizzle when it hits the pan. Brown thoroughly. Don't worry about overcooking or tenderness. You are not going to eat this; you just want to extract as much of its flavor as you can. Take care not to let anything burn, but a nice deep color is what you are going for.

When the meat is browned, take it out and set aside. Tip out whatever reaming oil is still in the pan (but keep all those browned bits). Turn heat down to medium or medium low (or even lower, if necessary), add one tablespoon of unsalted butter. It's important that it be unsalted. You never want to add any salt to this sauce, until the very end (if then). Sodium does not evaporate, and it does not reduce. Every fleck in the sauce stays there until the bitter end. If you are not careful, all the nice flavor will be hidden behind ... salt.

When the butter is melted, add (one batch of) the onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Using a wooded spatula, scrape up the browned bits stuck to the surface of the pan. Cook the vegetables slowly. The color of this stuff will brown because of the left over browned bits from the meat, but you don't want it to brown in the butter. The idea is to slowly caramelize them, to release the sugars. After 10 or 15 minutes, you will smell that, and then they will start to really cook.

That's when you add the wine (the whole bottle) and the herbs, and the tomato past (say, one or two tablespoons). With this step, we are essentially conflating the making of stock with the making of espagnole sauce. (The latter is what takes tomato paste, not the former. Espagnole also takes a roux, which we are skipping at this point, only to add a substitute later, if necessary.)

Now, if you have some decent concentrated stock, add it at this time -- one or two cups at most. DO NOT add any canned broth. You might as well add a bag of salt. I'm talking about the stuff sold as a hard gelatin, that needs water to become what it once was. "More than Gourmet" sells these little one-use packets for about $4.50 each. Not every store has them but many do these days. There other brands which I think are better, but much harder to find. I would use one of the ones marked "Glace de Viande" before their actual demi-glace, though the latter will do in a pinch. Again, use the one made from the meat you want your sauce to go with. They make them all. (Oh, and if someone should ask, "Why bother with this hassle when I can just get concentrated demi-glace?", I reply: do a side-by-side taste test and get back to me.) So, if you have this stuff, dissolve it in water over low heat, and begin that process before you start chopping (it takes a while) and whisk occasionally. Then add it in at the same time you add the wine.

Turn the heat up. You have just added a lot of cool liquid. You don't want to boil it (avoid that at all costs) but it will take some heat to get it up to a nice simmer. Once achieved, leave it on low for 30 minutes at least. An hour is better.

Remove from heat, and take out the meat with a slotted spoon. Reserve. Then strain the liquid. It would be nice if you have a chinois, a very fine strainer used for making sauces, but don't sweat it.

Now, technically, you don't have to do what follows. But it does make the sauce better. Basically, you repeat the entire process, reusing the liquid that you've already simmered. (Don't add new wine, and don't add new stock.) Even if you don't want to re-do the meat step (for cost or any other reason), it's worth doing the veggie step, and that won't cost much at all. So clean the pot, add the butter (two tablespoons this time, as there won't be any residual oil), and cook the veggies. This time they will not brown from the meat residue; be careful not to brown them yourself. Deep golden is all you want. The smell from the carmelization will be different, more intense, less masked by the browned bits. Whether or not you use meat the second time affects the flavor of the finished sauce. Neither way is better or worse, just ... different.

This time, however, when you add the liquid and a new herb bouquet, also add the reserved meat from last time and its accumulated juices. Up the heat until you see a consistent simmer, then reduce to low and simmer for 30 minutes to an hour. Strain again. Throw all the crap away. Or maybe give the meat chunks to the dog.

Let it sit for ten minutes or so. All the remaining gunk will either float to the top or sink to the bottom, depending on what it is. If you have a hand skimmer, use that to skim off the surface gunk.

At this point, you should have between two and three cups of liquid. It will be fragrant, but quite runny. We need to concentrate its flavor and thicken it. So transfer the liquid to a small pot; a one-quart saucepan should do. A nice little thing to have is a reduction pot, with the measurements engraved on the inside walls, so you can keep more precise track of the progress. Plus reduction pans are slope-sided, so that the surface area of the liquid declines as the sauce reduces. Again, a nice luxury, but not necessary. Reduce the sauce over medium-low heat -- not boiling, but more than a simmer. You want to see some motion on the surface. Orange gunk will float to the surface and collect. Skim it out periodically. The more of it you get out, the cleaner and fresher your sauce will taste.

You can reduce this as much as you want. The upside is, the more you reduce it, the more intense the flavor will get. Also, it will thicken naturally. The downside is, you will have less sauce. If you want to stop the reduction at a point when the sauce is still runny and loose, you will need to add a beurre-blanc. This is a one-to-one mixture of flour and butter. One TB of each ought to do it. Mash that into a paste with a fork on a small plate, and scoop it into the sauce. Whisk vigorously over low heat. The drawback to this is that the flour will impart some of its taste, which is not so great. Anyway, this is our substitute for the roux which thickens an espagnole sauce. The difference is, that roux is cooked and it behaves differently and tastes better. I also don't like to add fat at this stage. But a beurre-blanc WILL thicken a runny sauce.

When you've gotten it where you want it, take it off heat and let it cool to room temperature. Technically, it is ready to use. However, I have found that the flavor significantly improves by waiting a day. The flavors "bind" or something. Put the sauce in the fridge overnight. The next day, any remaining fat that you have not skimmed out will be solidified and floating at the top, and thus easy to remove. Get rid of it.

Finally, when it's time to use it, put it in a small pot on a low simmer, maybe 30 minutes before you plan to eat. Whatever meat you are making, let it stand on a platter or carving board, tented with foil, for a time (at least 10 minutes, up to 30 for a huge roast). Then turn the sauce up to high, and pour in the accumulated juices from the platter or carving board. Whisk vigorously. Turn back down to a simmer and let the liquids "marry" for about five minutes. Serve.

This can be served as-is, or used as the base for any of the dozens of demi-glace variants. One batch of this will easily serve everyone at a large holiday dinner, most likely with some to spare. If you are feeding fewer people, you can get as many as four or five meals out of it. It freezes indefinitely. I would not keep it in the fridge for more than a week.

There you have it, faux demi-glace for around $20, give or take, and three hours. The three hours is not as bad as it sounds, because for a lot of that time, the sauce will be simmering, and you can do something else.

It's not as good as the real thing. But it's better than all the pretenders I have tried. A modern chef would sniff at it as a second-rate replacement for an out-of-date sauce. But I don't care, because it is goooood.

[manton]

If you are crazy like me, you will want to make the real thing, at least once for fun. I make a vat of stock once a year, and about a gallon of true demi-glace at the same time.

There are a lot of recipes out there for this. Most of them are variations on Escoffier. His recipe was itself both a standardization of competing versions, and a simplification. When you read it, you will be astounded that it could be called a simplification of anything. But older versions were really involved and complex (and expensive). Careme used whole game birds!

Anyway, you start by making a stock. That is "day one." To make stock, you roast meat and bones until they are well browned, then simmer them in water for at least five hours. You also simmer carrots, onions, celery, garlic, and an herb bouquet. Again, use half has much celery as you use carrot and onion. Say, four onions, six carrots, and two celery stalks.

What meat and bones you use is up to you. All beef is cheapest, and most readily available. It produces a deeply colored, robustly flavored stock. All veal is expensive as hell (even shank meat) and hard to find (the bones). The color is lighter, and the flavor less intense, but more complex. Most restaurant chefs prefer this to beef stock. Or you can use a mixture of both. I have had good results from doing this. Personally, while all-veal stock is a wonderful thing (especially for broths), for certain sauces, I don't find it dark or intense enough.

How much you need depends on how much liquid you want to yield, and the size of your stock pot. I recommend getting a huge pot. Really, the amount of work involved is the same either way, so you may as well yield as much as you can. A rough guide is, one pound of meat and bones per one quart of starting water.

Preheat an oven to 450. Put the meat and bones in a roasting pan, and put it in the oven. If using a lot, you will have to do this in two batches. Don't crowd the pan. Crowded pieces don't brown, they steam. Not good. You want to brown the bones and meat thoroughly. The bones will be pearly white when you put them in. They should be a deep caramel at least before you take them out. Take the pan out every 15 minutes or so, and turn the bones and meat to help even out the browning.

Now, the recipes diverge in a few points here. Some say to brown the vegetables. Some say, just dump them in when you add the liquid. Some say to simply cut them into eighths. Others say that a coarse chop is better. I agree about the coarse chop, and I also prefer to roast them. But not as long. Put them in toward the end of the process. Another trick is to rub the bones with tomato paste after they have browned about halfway (or more). This really deepens the color of the stock. It is not something the original French recipes say to do. My advice: if you want to use the stocks for fine broths, consumes, etc., don't do this. If you intend to make really hearty soups (like French onion), consider it. If the finished sauce is most important to you, then definitely do it.

When browned, dump the contents of the roasting pan(s) into the stock pot. By the way, there is no reason you can't split this between two stock pots if you want to make a lot and you don't have an enormous one. The smaller ones are easier to lift. But then you are using two burners, and you have doubled your clean-up.

Add the herb bouquet. Again, this has a million variations. The one I think is best is this. You take the green part of a leek. Spread it out like parchment paper. Add several sprigs of parsley, some thyme, some bay leaves, some garlic cloves, some black peppercorns, and two whole cloves. GO EASY on the whole cloves. They give the stock a nice spicy accent, but they are powerful. If you use more than that, they will take over. Wrap all that stuff in the leak leaf, and tie it up with twine. If you don't have a leek, you can use one of those little cotton-mesh herb bouquet bags. If you don't have one of those, just tie the stuff together on its own. Last resort, dump it all in. Oh, and for this I would definitely get fresh herbs -- at least the parsley, thyme and bay leaves. And, if you really want to got nuts, add a pig’s foot. The gelatin is good for the stock.

Turn up the heat, and stick around. It will take a long time to warm up that much liquid. You DO NOT want the pot to boil. As you see progress, turn the heat down in increments. After 45 minutes to an hour (depending on stove power and pot size) the burner should be down to low, and you should see the slightest motion at the surface. Let it simmer like that, partially covered, for five hours. You can let it simmer longer, I personally doubt that it adds much. But from experience, I can say that five hours is better than four. Skim scum off the top periodically. Take care not to remove too much of the good stuff, some of which also floats to the surface. Still, it's best to remove as much scum as you can, as it adversely affects both the flavor and clarity of the stock.

When your five hours are up, move the pot to another burner (a cool one) or a trivet. Let it cool for a while. Time to strain. First, using tongs or a slotted spoon, remove the largest pieces of meat and bone and discard. (Or save for the dog.) Now, for what comes next, I use first a China cap, then a chinois. Not everyone is going to have these. But they are useful. The China cap is a conical strainer with small holes. It separates the liquid from largish pieces. Do that first. The chinois is a fine mesh conical strainer. Do that second. If you have a good chinois, it will catch A LOT of crap. In fact, you will have to pause and clean the pasty gunk out of it from time to time. This is a pain, but it is very good for your stock. Those particles are not helpful. They don't taste good, and they can burn when you use the stock. I read an interview once with Thomas Keller in which he said that never moves liquid from one container to another without straining it. When making demi-glace, that is good advice.

When the liquid is completely strained, let it cool to room temperature. Then put it in the fridge. (If you put it in the fridge while still hot, you can seriously screw up your fridge. They are just not built to have to cool such a huge volume of hot liquid.)

The next morning, there will be a sheet of semi-solid fat at the top of the stock. It will look like an ice rink. This is good. It makes all that fat very easy to remove. Remove it, as thoroughly as you can. Fat adds nothing to finished stock. Strain it again, through the chinois.

Now, if you want a traditional demi-glace, the next thing to do is to make an espagnole sauce. This has fallen out of favor, primarily because it is roux-based, and modern chefs do not like roux-based sauces. The knock against them is, roux is a cheat, you can taste the flour, and if it does not bind properly, your sauce will separate. All true. However, done well, I think it works. To be done well takes time.

However, you don't have to do this. You can take your stock and reduce it to a glace de viand. Simply put it on the stove, heat it up, and reduce using a medium simmer to any consistency you desire. Skim often. Reduce long enough, and it will thicken naturally, becoming a syrup. This has its uses. I honestly think the real demi-glace makes a better sauce, but you may not.

Anyway, to make the real thing, we need a brown roux. This is a one-to-one mixture of butter and flour. It is best to clarify the butter. That is, melt it, and then spoon out the milky solids. Use only the clear yellow liquid. The solids will burn, and a burned roux is a disaster for your sauce. How much roux you need depends on how much sauce you want to make. Let’s presume you want a lot, and will use four quarts of stock. Then melt two sticks of butter, and clarify. That should yield around 12 tablespoons. Add 3/4 cup of flour. Mix together over medium heat. Cook until the butter and flour congeal into paste and turn a deep nut brown -- say, like EG chestnut. Burnt Pine is too light. You must stir it constantly; there is no way around this. If the roux is not constantly moving, it will burn. The cooking time will be at least a half hour. Be very careful not to let the roux burn. When it is nice and pasty, and the right color, set aside.

Once again, you need chopped carrots, onion, and celery. This time, chopped very fine. Don’t use a food processor. It just liquefies the vegetables. Take the time to chop them by hand. Once again, half as much celery as the other two. Say, two cups each onion and carrots, one of celery. You can scale down the carrots, but not the onions.

You have to cook the vegetables to caramelize them. You can do this with butter, oil, or bacon fat. The latter has the best flavor, I think. Some recipes also call for a small amount of boiled ham, chopped up, to be cooked with the veggies. You can also add pureed tomatoes at this stage. The alternative is to add tomato paste when you dump the veggies into the liquid. Unlike with stock, for espagnole, this step is NOT optional. Tomatoes are vital to the sauce’s flavor. Anyway, use a half a cup of pure, or 8 tablespoons of paste. Or half and half (my preference, because the sugar in the paste adds sweetness).

Meanwhile, the stock should be heated in a separate pot and the roux whisked in. When they are blended, and the veggies are all cooked, dump them in. Add a bouquet garni, same as before. Up heat until you get a simmer, then lower it. Skim up scum. About three hours is enough for this stage, certainly no more, and maybe less.

Strain as obsessively as before. Repeat the overnight in the fridge step, and the de-fatting step. You now have espagnole sauce. This is quite a good sauce in its own right. If you want, you can even reduce it some, though it should be plenty thick at this stage, thanks to the roux.

In any event, it is not demi-glace. As you might have guessed from the name, demi-glace is … half glace. That is, half stock, half espagnole, reduced. The flavor is deeper, more complex, and more intense than either is by itself.

Presumably, if you are going to make demi-glace, you won’t want any leftover espagnole. It serves the same purpose, and demi-glace is better. So measure how much espagnole you have, and combine all of it with an identical amount of stock. Strain them both as you pour them into a pot. Throw in another herb bouquet, and reduce by half. Again you can reduce more if you want. You just end up with less. There is a point of diminishing returns, however. Sauce is always thicker when cooler. It should be served at a very low simmer temperature. If it is thick at that temp, its consistency is good. The heat at which you reduce it will be higher and the sauce will have a more liquid consistency. If it starts to appear thick at that temp, definitely stop reducing.

Another trick is to put the pot to one side of the burner. The heat concentrates in one area, and creates a convection effect that carries the scum to the other side. This makes skimming a lot easier.

When done reducing, strain again. You can do the fridge thing once more, but in all likelihood, there won’t be any fat left to skim if you have done a good job before. Parcel it out into containers you find convenient, and freeze. Six months is supposed to be the upper limit of how long this will keep. I have gone at least nine, and not noticed a problem.

[vonwotan]

Have always and will continue to be a disciple of Escoffier and when allowed the time and the blank check, of Careme. I have well used modern reprint of Le Guide Culinaire, but the bibliophile in me is hoping to acquire firsts of several of his books.

[Demeter]

Manton, do I sense a new book in the works? The Chef: A Machiavellian Approach to French Gastronomy.

I love to cook and sauces are something I'm fond of, myself, so I'll have to give this a try.

[masterfred]

I enjoy cooking from time to time, but have always been more than daunted by the time- and ingredient-demanding traditional French sauces. I've only eaten meals made the old way a few times, prepared by a chef who trained in Montreal kitchens. They are absolutely delicious, but one can see why the French have drifted away from them toward less labor-intensive cooking.

[uppercase]

Manton, do you have a short list of favorite cook books?

Say, simple but authentic recipes of French, Italian, Mediterranean dishes.... something along the lines of "Simple French Food" by Olney.

[DD MacDonald]

Manton -

Your approach to demi-glace is a very good one, in fact there is nothing "faux" about it. Your approach of adding additional wine, meat, and aromatics is the prescribed process of enriching a stock in the classical clarification process which is thought to otherwise "strip" or denude the essence of a stock. As you know, the act of reduction creates the "demi", glace meaning stock in the kitchen, red wine moves towards sauce meurette, and deep roux towards espagnole. On another level, the additions of intentional meats and associated arromatics; say duck or lamb with clove, garlic, anice, orange or the like; is both the way of making a particular stock like a duck stock or going straight into an a la minute sauce which through the deglazing process is an analog of your process.

For me this all starts with the stock and its quality is paramount. I remember talking to Raymond Blanc who has a great restaurant in Oxfordshie in the UK when I was in grad school about whether he used veal stock or made duck stock for one of his dishes. His answer was that his kitchen always starts wih veal stock (unless for a vegetarian)because it is neutral. Veal stock, brown and white, will never make a sauce great in the sence of delivering flavor because at their very best, veal stocks are quite neutral. As opposed to adding flavor, veal stock adds texture, becoming the scaffold on which aromatics, acids, starches, and fats are placed in constructing a stock and then a sauce. In the case of duck stock, he would roast duck carcasses until golden and infuse them into a light veal stock, always adding fresh aromatics (onion, carrot, celery) and bouquet garnee as you define. The preparation of stock for a lamb dish would follow the same course. Making a sauce, either prepared ahead or made a la minute in the sense of a pan sauce, involves re-inforcing the flavors by adding aromatics and acids in the forms of wines and vineagars, adjusting seasoning and correcting thickness through reduction, fat in the form of butter or cream, or starches.

I point this out because I really believe that good stock is the heart of the matter and what I strive for is texture and richness. Most of the stock that I make at home is chicken stock that is heavily reduced and concentrated. Not as neutral flavoured as veal or with as much texture from gelatin, the stock is an honest by product of our household activities. I have two "boxes" in the freezer that occupy an entire shelf. Into one goes every chicken scrap and carcass and into the other goes most every uselful vegetable scrap. You can often but a whole chicken for a fraction more than a pair of breasts meaning that its fairly easy to hoard a supply. Every so often I see chiecken feet in the market and always buy a couple of packets because they really add gelatin to the stock.

Making stock can be little more than dumping both boxes into a 20 qt. pot and letting it goe for a couple of hours, straining it, and reducing it to 3-4 cups. The process can be refined by a quick boil of the chicken first (straight from the freezer) to release all of the blood and scum or by roasting the bones for color and flavor.

About once a year I do get very serious and make proper veal stock. Here it is not really about "meat" so much as it is about bones or more accurately all of the soft and collagenous ends. A read in McGee will tell you all you want to know about the conversion of collagen to gelatin in the braising process and the making of veal stock is exactly the same where low temp, acidity (from tomato products) and time cause collagen (all fo the connective tissue, cartilage) to convert to gelatin.

Our restaurant industry being what it is and meat being parsed out into primal cuts rather than "sides" means that supermarket butchers will not have a lot of veal bones at any time (if ever) and specialty butchers on occassion. The economic model is for "stock" kitchens to be set up adjacent to meat processors from which they get the best bones and many really proper kitchens buy in uber quality demi-glace because they do not have the time or the space to make it.

For stock, the best veal bone to use is the knuckle or jpint ends of the major leg bones. Any butcher can order these for you but the best bet is to make friends with a restaurant and "ask the favor" to buy a case through them or, if they are making stocks, to buy a couple of knuckles. When last I checked, a case of veal knuckles costs about $50 from distribtors and you would work from at least a 20qt pot (if not a 35).

To pipe in about cook books - two classic French and Italian pieces are the Julia Child/Louisette Bertholde/Simone Beck "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" series and Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking". There are newer and more colorful writers, Patricia Wells "Simply French" with Joel Robuchon for French and that hot girl on the Food Network for Italian come to mind, but you really can't beat the classics. At this point, my favorite cookbooks are chef and/or restaurant books that are about equal parts memoir and recipies.

Keep cooking,
David

[Robert Watkins]

Dear Manton and David:

Thank you for your wonderful posts. I also make a large pot of veal stock every six months, saving up veal breast when it's on sale and adding shank and chop bones as available. Every 12 months or so, I go the whole demi-glace route. I freeze the demi- glace in two cup containers and it lasts for a year without problems.

In your descriptions of faux demi-glace and sauces, you're getting close to what the French refer to as tombage a glace. Madeleine Kamman describes this technique (calling the resultant sauces "essences") in her magisterial The New Making of a Cook. She browns the trimmings from the meat to be sauced in a small amount of oil, covers them with veal stock, and reduces the stock to a glaze on the bottom of the pan. The glaze is dissolved and the meat covered with another addition of stock, which is then reduced again to a glaze. The entire process is repeated three or four times, with the stock being reduced finally to one quarter of its original volume (the same reduction as in making a classic demi-glace). As David discusses, this produces an important flavor connection between the meat and the neutral veal stock.

Another atavistic culinary task I enjoy is making pates, gallantines, ballotines, etc. at home. I spent this past weekend boning and grinding up ducks and cooking them up in terrines. They're now wrapped in caul fat and sealed in lard to age for three or four weeks. Someday, I hope to make Alexandre Dumaine's version of Lucien Tendret's L'Oreiller de la Belle Aurore (a "First, shoot and skin your hare" type of recipe). These wonderful preparations seemed to have almost completely disappeared from the menus of fine restaurants in France, replace by gels, foams, and emulsions.

Robert

[manton]

Uppercase: I started out with Mastering the Art of French Cooking. At the time (college) I thought it the most advanced book possible. Only when I got further into things did I realize how simplified her books are. But still wonderful.

I have Escoffier and enjoy it, but use it for ideas; I rarely cook directly from it. I have lots of other French cookbooks, some tied to chefs/restaurants, some more general. Perhaps the best general cookbook that relies largely on French techniques is the New Professional Chef, published by the Culinary Institute of America. It's a little "clinical" but excellent on technique. My favorite cookbooks to read and savor are Thomas Keller's French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon. Hardly simple, however. Bouchon in particular is frustrating in that it is supposed to be a bistro cookbook, and markedly simpler than FLC, but most of the recipes are quite involved.

For sauces, I love the Saucier's Apprentice and Sauces, a hugely thick book that leaves nothing unsaid.

For Italian food, I love the Silver Spoon. There is really nothing comparable to it, though the English edition is not so easy to use. The measurements, for instance, seem way off a lot of the time.

[manton]

DD: to be clear, my first post is the "faux" recipe, the second post is the real recipe. The first recipe takes maybe three hours; the second more like three days. The first uses no stock at all, or perhaps "cheat stock" made from concentrated stuff dissolved in water. The second begins with the day-long production of homemade stock. Thus, will all due appreciation for your kind words, I have to say, my "faux demi-glace" really is faux.

I'm certain from reading your post that my stocks are not as good as yours. Leaving aside technique (where I'm sure I fall short), I have to take what I can get when it comes to bones. Finding beef shins is hard enough. Veal bones are rare. About the best I can do a lot of the time is use trimmed veal shank with that little center bone. Surprisingly expensive.

[DD MacDonald]

Manton,

I'm just trying to give some credit where credit is due. Don't be modest, your "faux" approach is one of enrichment and re-aromitization which is critical to cooking because it is responsive - it is tasting and then correcting and amplifying flavors.

You are right on the cost of veal and stock, the restaurant rule of thumb is to "q" or cost out an ounce of a veal demi sauce at $1 on the plate. Still the stuff is magic. As to availability of bones, you just have to ask or order. I've never just "found" them in a supermarket, but remember that great stock isn't made from meat or bones per se, but all of the squidgy bits surrounding them. The veal shank would be good, but I don't think that I could ever not just braise and eat it myself .

If you are a fan of Keller, I'd also recommend the book that Ruhlman wrote with Eric Rippert called "A Return to Cooking" or close to it. The book has a similar format to FLC in having essays on "lemon confit" instead of "big pot blanching". The two books that Patrick O'Brien wrote of the Inn at Little Washington are also good.

When I go over to the bookshelf, I'm sure that I could keep going.
DDM

[iammatt]

Manton -


For me this all starts with the stock and its quality is paramount. I remember talking to Raymond Blanc who has a great restaurant in Oxfordshie in the UK when I was in grad school about whether he used veal stock or made duck stock for one of his dishes. His answer was that his kitchen always starts wih veal stock (unless for a vegetarian)because it is neutral. Veal stock, brown and white, will never make a sauce great in the sence of delivering flavor because at their very best, veal stocks are quite neutral. As opposed to adding flavor, veal stock adds texture, becoming the scaffold on which aromatics, acids, starches, and fats are placed in constructing a stock and then a sauce. In the case of duck stock, he would roast duck carcasses until golden and infuse them into a light veal stock, always adding fresh aromatics (onion, carrot, celery) and bouquet garnee as you define. The preparation of stock for a lamb dish would follow the same course. Making a sauce, either prepared ahead or made a la minute in the sense of a pan sauce, involves re-inforcing the flavors by adding aromatics and acids in the forms of wines and vineagars, adjusting seasoning and correcting thickness through reduction, fat in the form of butter or cream, or starches.

This is very interesting, as is the original post and all of the others on this thread. Regarding the section quoted above, when I worked in a restaurant kitchen, each day we made pigeon stock (for use with pigeon and quail), lamb stock, veal stock, chicken stock and Americaine sauce. Only the veal and chicken had multiple uses while the others were reserved for their respective meats. What we call double stocks were then made from the base stocks each day in the manner in which David suggests. As this was in 92 or so, it was very much in the time of reduced jus as sauce rather than very winey or thick concauctions. I am not sure that I have a preference one way or the other, but this is wehre my cooking background was established and therefore it is what I am comfortable doing. My own personal tastes would tell me that an actual roasting jus is 100x more satisfying than anything made from a stock, but the restaurants that can afford such expens are truly few and far between. Certainly this is what I prefer at home.

Harold McGee is really terrific. I have known him for twenty years and he is a fascinating guy although I find his books a bit dry. As far as cookbooks go I would recommend any of the Robert Lafont books done with the great French chefs of the 70s and 80s. I think that I have the entire set (at least almost) if anybody is interested in borrown one or two. Also l'Atelier de Joel Robuchon is an excellent book along with the La Technique and Le Methode series from Jacques Pepin which actually show people how to use their hands. Knive skills are wholly underappreciated in the home kitchen. The ability to cut quickly and surely makes any recipe quick and simple.

The other thing that I learned from a six or so month apprenticeship was that cooking is an immensely difficult job and is not as much fun as a vocation as it is as an advocation.

[manton]

The other thing that I learned from a six or so month apprenticeship was that cooking is an immensely difficult job and is not as much fun as a vocation as it is as an advocation.

I spent a very brief period in a professional kitchen years ago. I never worked so hard in my life, before or since.

[marden]

If one is interesting in making sauces, I found Sonia Stevenson's book - the Magic of Saucery - jolly helpful - she was the first woman in the UK to receive a Michelin star. You can find it on amazon but I suspect that it might now be out of print.

isbn 1857325028
http://www.soniastevenson.com/