Vegetable Stock and a Quick Dinner

Many of the recipes within The French Laundry, Bouchon, and Ad Hoc all feature several different types of stocks: vegetable stock, mushroom stock, chicken stock, veal stock, etc.  Most of these stocks take quite a while to make, so it's a good idea to make quite a bit and store it.  Stock keeps for a long time in the freezer.

Tonight I started off with vegetable stock, and tomorrow I will be making the mushroom stock.  The veal stock will hopefully follow, assuming I can find 10 lbs. of veal bones and buy a 16 quart stock pot (I used an 8 quart for the vegetable stock).

So before I started on the vegetable stock, I made a quick dinner.  I hate cooking on an empty stomach, and usually am eating on something whenever I am in the process of working on a big meal or time consuming dish.  I find I make less errors by rushing to get things done if I already have food in my stomach.

I made a quick pasta with mushrooms and herbs, nothing too elaborate.

I started with mushrooms, onions, thyme, and parsley.

I sauteed the onions and mushrooms for a little while in butter, then added some red wine and reduced that for a bit with the herbs, and came out pretty good.  This is a simple, easy meal that takes no more than 15-20 minutes to prepare.

Not too crazy or anything, just a simple meal.

On to the stock.  Keller uses leeks, fennel bulb, onions, carrots, thyme, parsley, and bay leaves in his vegetable stock recipe.

First you coarsely chop up the vegetables.  The cuts on these don't have to be precise because they are going into a food processor in a minute.

I do like to have bowls handy for my ingredients when I can.  It just makes things alot easier.

After chopping them up in a food processor, they go into the stock pot with a little oil to soften them up.

After they are softened, the herbs and bay leaves are added, along with several quarts of water.

This is brought to a simmer, and then simmered for about 45 minutes. When you are working with this much liquid, it can take a while to bring it up to a simmer.  Don't lose patience.  It took me about a half hour to get it to a simmer.

Afterwards, the stock is strained through a chinois strainer (not to be confused with a China cap strainer, which is conical shaped), and frozen.

This recipe yielded about 3 quarts of stock, after the loss of liquid due to evaporation and skimming.

And speaking of skimming, it's always a good idea to skim stocks.  Keller is pretty adamant about it, and says to skim often.  And this is why:

That's about 2 cups work of nastiness I skimmed off the top.  It's nearly opaque.  And keep in mind, that's all from vegetables.  I can't wait to see the fun stuff I'll get to skim off the veal stock.

So that's it for today.  Coming up next....mushroom stock, and beyond...