week nine: ‘good brown stock, good espagnole’

March 2, 2009

the mother sauce known as espagnole encompasses the family of all brown sauces, which are made from brown stock, brown roux, mirepoix and tomato purée. making brown stock in the kendall kitchen offers the opportunity to use a vessel that looks as though it was made for giants: the steam kettle.

the steam kettle is used for making large quantities (up to about 100 gallons) of stock, sauce or soup. the vessel is heated from the bottom and sides by steam circulating among layers of stainless steel, which cooks food more quickly than on a stovetop. the Kendall steam kettle has a tilting mechanism that allows the contents to be drained, and there is a large “faucet” on the side that you turn to release the liquid into large buckets.

denise, nancy and tracy trim beef ... the bone will be cut in pieces for stock

having large amounts of homemade stock at one’s fingertips–be it beef, veal, chicken, fish, even rabbit (which is sitting in my freezer right now)–makes one realize how significant its role is in producing great sauces and soups. for me, this was especially true after i learned how to properly make brown stock, which is thus where i will begin.

it begins with beef or veal bones, which we roasted in the oven on high heat until they browned. bones are the most important ingredient in protein-based stock; the collagen found in connective tissue dissolves when cooked with moisture, adding richness and body to the stock. put your ear close to the oven as they roast; you will hear the muffled sound of fat and moisture crackling inside as the proteins on the surface of the bones caramelize and coagulate. after about an hour, we removed the bones and reserved some of the liquified fat in bottom the roasting pan. we dumped the intensely flavored, caramel-tinted bones into the stockpot and deglazed the roasting pan with water to get all the brown bits off the bottom. this mixture went into the stockpot as well. we placed the roasting pan on top of the stove and cranked the heat to medium high. we added some of the reserved fat and mirepoix (carrot, onion and celery) that had been roughly chopped and sautéed the mirepoix, browning the vegetables well without burning them.

here it is essential that i digress: the size of your mirepoix depends on how long the stock will cook. for vegetable or fish stock, small dice all your vegetables, since the stock will cook for only 30 to 45 minutes. cut a larger mirepoix for chicken stock, which cooks for 4 to 6 hours. veal stock cooks for 8 to 10 hours, and beef for roughly 10 to 18, so the size of the vegetables is less important since they will bathe in the simmering liquid for so long.

next we added tomato product to the roasting pan–in our case it was tomato paste, which is the most appealing for the way it wraps itself around the vegetables in a rust-colored blanket. the technique of cooking down or caramelizing the paste from a bright red blob to a reddish-brown coating on the mirepoix and on the bottom of the pan is known as pincé. Chef repeatedly stressed the importance of this step as a way to remove some of the intense sweetness and acidity from the tomatoes. “you want to cook the paste a lee-tle bit before you add your vegetable to zuh stock,” he said.

as the class stock came together, several bay leaves, black peppercorns, parsley stems and fresh sprigs of thyme went in. we were instructed to add “a lee-tle salt to season it.” this is Chef’s preference, though the textbook says otherwise, to prevent oversalting when the stock is added to other recipes–”i want you to learn the proper way and i will teach it to you, but you shouldn’t always have to follow the recipe, eh?” he prodded. Chef covered the massive pile of flavoring agents with cold water and turned on the steam kettle. a few whole heads of garlic were tossed into the stock along with several large handfuls of button mushrooms, which bobbed at the surface. 12 or so hours later, a beautiful, deep brown stock was born.

espagnole quite simply is a mixture of brown stock and brown roux. (hearing Chef’s pronunciation of brown roux makes me smile every time because of the way he rolls the consecutive r’s, which sounds almost like an engine trying to start.) “good brown stock makes good espagnole,” he said. “in the restaurant, we would make espagnole and brown sauce at the same time–we would then reduce.”

brown sauce takes espagnole a step further through reduction, which creates complexity and intensity of flavors by concentrating them through evaporation of liquid. demi-glace, french for half-glaze, is a glossy, dark brown, almost chocolate-colored sauce. it is a mixture of half brown sauce and half brown stock that is reduced by half and typically finished with wine. it is a rich, smooth base that produces fine small sauces like bordelaise (dry red wine, shallots, bay leaf, thyme and black pepper), bercy (white wine reduction and minced shallot) and chasseur (whole butter, diced shallot, sliced mushrooms, reduced white wine and diced tomatoes).

in class, Chef demonstrated bordelaise, which usually is partnered with steak or beef. he softened minced shallot in butter and added a bit of tomato paste, for extra richness and flavor.

he added the wine and reduced it by more than half before adding cooled brown sauce and seasoning it with herbs, salt and pepper. he left in search of poached bone marrow to garnish the sauce, and i took his spot for a few minutes, finding it a comfortable place to be.

Chef returned bearing a small plastic bag with several long pieces of bone marrow inside. he took one out and sliced it in 1/2-inch-thich rounds. he tasted the sauce and seasoned it again and added a little butter for extra sheen; then he added the bone marrow pieces to warm them through. he removed the pan from the heat, and set to plating. “a lot of chefs will strain the bordelaise, but i like to have the little bits of shallot in it,” he said. he quickly sautéed some beef and boiled a potato he had cut into a large dice, finishing it with butter and parsley. he grabbed a plate laid a few pieces of sliced veal bone marrow around the edges. “myself i like to put a little on the plate with the meat and potatoes in the center,” he said as he drizzled the thick, brown bordelaise over each pink medallion of marrow.

tasting the chalky-pink marrow was a first for me–the fatty, tender marrow with the savory reduced brown sauce completely filled my mouth. it was wonderful.

pete and i practiced brown sauce reduction at station. “i find this just fascinating. look at how much it has already changed,” pete said, peering into the saucepan. i would see that look again the following sunday, when he made demi-glace out of beef stock he had prepared himself earlier in the week. pete was a saucier through and through–his excitement was palpable.

at station, pete and i prepared bordelaise sauce in the same fashion as Chef. we opted to leave the shallots in for a little texture. we pan-seared pork tenderloin with mushrooms and pan-fried potatoes. we carefully dotted bordelaise around the plate, making sure there was enough sauce to mop up with the meat yet not too much to drown the plate. we presented our work to Chef. he disappeared for a moment, returning with some stewed tomatoes, which he added to the plate for color variation. “it looks pretty good guys,” he said.

and to think, it all started with some beef bones.