Day fourteen

Dude, are you magician? Can you clear this? Or how to make you stock perfectly clear...

It's may favorite day - Culinary Fundamentals. I love to be in the kitchen, to cook something new and exciting. This is the main reason I am here. Today was consomme day, we prepared chicken consomme using broth. It was really amazing to see how the cloudy broth full of other ingredients became absolutely clear.

So, if you want to prepare consomme (another French fancy word) first thing you need is a quality stock. You won't be able to make consomme using store bought stock in cartoon package from the shelf. We probably all should remember about the first rule of organic chemistry, which said
that is you mix together 3 pounds jam and 1 pound shit you will get 4 pounds shit. So, stock has to be good quality, the best one is home made.

You will need:
4 oz minced or ground mirepoix (mixture onion:carrot:celery proportion 2:1:1)
12 oz ground chicken
3 egg whites beaten
7 gr salt
70 gr fresh or canned tomato chopped
6 pt/1.44 l chicken stock
aromatics (3-4 stems of parsley; bay leaf; thyme; 2-3 peppercorn)
Method:
1) blend mirepoix, ground chicken, egg whites, salt, aromatics and allow to macerate
2) add tomato to the mixture and blend the whole mixture with stock
3) heat the stock on medium/high heat stirring often. If you do not stir, clarification mixture will scorch to the bottom of the pan
4) at 120 F egg whites will start to coagulate and at 140 F ground meat will start to coagulate. Close to this point, stir carefully, trying to help clarification mixture to form solid mass (raft). The best way is to push this mixture slightly to the sides of pan creating a whole in the middle
5) Simmer at 180 F until flavor and clarity accrued.  Baste occasionally raft with simmering liquid.
6) Strain using a ladle, through a few layers of damped cheesecloth. Do not decant!

That was the main task in the kitchen. Forget to mention that the recipe is a basic one. It will work not only for chicken, but for meat (beef / veal) as well.
Also, I wish to say that this is a foolproof recipe, but it's not. In some cases the result may be far from desired. In this case you will need  to reclarify stock. When flavor develops, strain the stock and cool it down to below 120 F (temperature for coagulation egg whites). Whisk two egg whites with salt and acid (tomato, lemon juice). Add this mixture to the strained stock and bring to simmer (stir  at the beginning so egg whites are not going to scorch to the bottom). Simmer for 5 minutes. Carefully strain using ladle (be extra careful as this time raft will be less solid, as there is no protein from meat).

Tomorrow we are cooking whipped potato and another famous French soup. Also we will get our first marks for the knife cuts.

P.S. Yesterday we had no classes, therefore I did not write in my blog.

Final product, veggies at the bottom are added as a garnish

In the middle of process, look at this whole in the middle and how clear liquid is (as to compare with the beginning stage)