The introduction of basic knife techniques, as well as sanitation and safety. To understand the preparation of stocks, the base of all things soupy and saucy.
Sanitation and Safety
Basic sanitation - wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. Any time your hands touch a surface which has not been sanitized or a food product other than the one you're working on, wash your hands. Chef says we can never wash our hands too much.
Knife safety - be aware of your knives at all times. When moving about with your knives, keep them at your side, no swinging or pointing with them. When cutting, keep the fingers of your off hand curled over such that your knuckles are a guide. This allows safe and efficient use of your knife without any danger of cutting your fingers.
Information
Knife skills (sharpening) - To sharpen your knife using a steel, hold the steel upright in front of your body in your off hand. Place the heel of the knife at the tip of the close side of the steel with the blade at an approximate 20 degree angle to the steel. Rotate your wrist so that the length of the blade passes over the steel, all the way to the tip. Repeat the steps with the opposite side of the blade on the far side of the steel.
Knife skills (cutting) - Place your off hand fingers on what you intend to cut with the fingertips folded towards the palm of your hand. Use your knuckles as a guide for the knife while moving the knife back and forth in a rocking motion to achieve the cuts.
Knife skills (dimensions) - Review the different dimensions of vegetable cuts, which are:
- Julienne
- Matchstick
- Batonet
- Pommes Frites
- Pommes Pont Neuf
- Brunoise
- Small, medium, large dice
- Paysanne
- Turned (tourner)
- White Stock (Veal)
- Brown Stock (Beef)
- Chicken Stock
- Game Stock
- Fish Stock
A Mirepoix is a mixture of onions, carrots, and celery, large diced, used to flavour stocks, stews, and other dishes.
Practical
We started knife skills by practicing sharpening our knives before getting some carrots and onions to practice cuts on. It is important to square vegetables as appropriate for cuts to come out right. After practicing julienne, matchstick, batonet, and brunoise, we started working on turned vegetables (tourner). The most difficult vegetable cut to master, you shape the vegetable into a 7-sided football shape which will be approximately 5-6cm long and 2cm across in the middle.
We begin stock preparation with our brown stock as it will take the longest. We rinse the bones under cold running water and then place them in a roasting pan with vegetable oil in an oven to brown. Once browned, the bones go into the stock pot with cold water. The roasting pan is then de-glazed. This process involves heating the pan and pouring some water in, mixing with the juices as well as working to scrape the pan free of any pieces of flavour adding bits left behind during the browning. This mixture is then poured in to the stock pot as the pot is brought up to a simmer. Regularly the pot would simmer with the bones for quite some time before adding the mirepoix and sachet, but due to time constraints in the class, we proceed with this immediately. We also forgo skimming and de-greasing due to time constraints on this stock. The mirepoix is caramelized in the roasting pan, again picking up flavours from the browning of the bones. Tomato paste is added and once well mixed, this combination goes into the stock pot as well. The stock simmers as long as it can before we remove it from the stock pot. This is done through a "china" (chinois) strainer lined with cheese cloth. The stock is ladled out of the pot and poured through the chinois, rather than direct pouring, to prevent sediment or other small particles resting at the bottom of the pot from passing through the cheese cloth. At this point the stock is evaluated.
A similar process is followed for a chicken stock. As the chicken bones are much smaller the stock does not take as much time to make, therefor we can follow the regular process more closely. The bones are rinsed under cold running water before being placed in a stock pot and brought up to a simmer. While simmering, the stock is skimmed to remove floating matter, which will help keep the stock clear. The stock is also de-greased as much as possible, although further de-greasing will occur once the stock has cooled. The stock should simmer for 4-5 hours before adding the mirepoix and sachet, but again time constraints move us to this a little earlier than normal. The mirepoix and sachet go right in to the stock. We leave this in as time permits (normally this should be an hour of simmering) before using a chinois lined with cheese cloth to filter the stock as it is ladled into another container. The stock is now ready for evaluation.
Personal Observations
Knife work is obviously going to be a very important part of the work we do here. However, I felt fairly comfortable making the cuts we were instructed to do, and believe that I need to concentrate on consistency of cuts to have them all coming out the same size. The "motion of the ocean" exercise was an interesting way to measure skills, I will practice this further. This involves using flower as your cutting subject and practicing cuts through it - as you "cut" the flour away from the main mass, it rolls over creating "waves" - hence the name of the drill. It's also very easy to see consistency of cut sizes, or rather, my total lack thereof. It's obvious that the tourner is the hardest cut, and while I thought I was getting the hang of it with carrots, potatoes present a whole different problem. The cut has to be modified for the texture of each vegetable you're handling. Chef demonstrated a method for cutting onions which has solved one of my long-standing issues with them - having them fall apart while cutting. While skinning the onion, leaving the bottom intact enough such that the "root" is in place will hold the onion together. Then cut the onion in half through the root to make it more manageable. From here, you can slice off widths of the onion as necessary, or you can make horizontal and vertical slits in the onion to produce diced or brunoise cuts.
While we didn't get to skim or de-grease the brown stock, we did plenty on the chicken stock and I think it's going to be similar procedure across the board, especially after watching Chef working on his white veal stock. The flavour of the stocks was what I expected - very subtle tastes with nothing overpowering. Flavour enhancement will come with the use of the stocks in recipes further down the line.
Chef's Observations
My brunoise turned out ok, my julienne cuts were a little inconsistent in size. The batonet cuts were good. My multiple attempts at the tourner got better, but were not just right. Either too long, too large, or incorrectly shaped.
Our groups' chicken stock was good, it had nice clarity and was fairly well de-greased. Chef said the flavour and aroma were good, overall a good effort. The brown stock would not be clear due to the addition of the tomato paste, so we couldn't judge on that factor. Also, due to our time constraints we were unable to degrease during cooking so there was extra grease. However, the aroma and flavour were good, so a good end result.
Blog notes:
No pictures or recipes this week, everything was pretty basic. If you've gotten this far, you must really be interested in stock!
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