All souped up

Week two of Culinary Foundations II has passed and I have been able to hold my own in the kitchen. Hurray!
And after completing two practicals this week, one for sauce making and one for soup making, we are moving on to vegetables. Hurray!
But for today let me first talk a little bit about soups.
I am not usually a person who makes or eats soups with great enthusiasm, but I have to say a few of the soups we've prepared this week piqued my interest.

French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup - Did you know that you can create quite a lot of flavor from only 3 main ingredients - onions, a little clarified butter and water? It all comes down to technique. In this case slowly caramelizing the onions in a little clarified butter and then transferring the onions to a sauce pan, adding water and slowly reducing the soup to the desired thickness and consistency. After that it gets seasoned with salt and pepper and '... oh la la ...' as my lead chef instructor would say, we have a great tasting soup. Very simple yet delicious soup with a fancy name. But to be honest, for most people ( and that includes me) French Onion Soup is incomplete without gratinéeing it (i.e. melted cheese covering the surface of the soup crock), or in my case special super-sized cheese croutons -  baguette slices with melted Gruyere cheese on top. Only now are we talking super yummy French Onion Soup. An extra slice of baguette anyone?

The other soups that I prepared with interest this week, were New England Clam Chowder and Shrimp Bisque.
The chowder is something I never really warmed to because a) I am not a big clam fan and b) as far as I am concerned, most chowders I've eaten contained way too many pieces of potato and not much else. It's a cheap way to give body and substance to the chowder. However, it is a traditional New England dish and after preparing it myself this week and talking to people in class about it, I feel obligated to experiment with a few recipes over the next few months before passing my final judgement on the subject. I will let you know in a later blog posting if I have found a recipe I like.
With regard to the Shrimp bisque, I similarly, as with the chowder,   really never felt compelled to give it a second look on the menu of a restaurant or in the hot-soup section of Whole Foods. It always struck me as slightly bland. However, as I learned this week, that does not need to be the case. We prepared an excellent tasting shrimp bisque based on a flavorful fish and shrimp stock and with the addition of a little cream and, of course, shrimp. As with any sauce and soup I prepared over the last two weeks, it again has proven to me that a strong and flavorful stock is the essence of a really good sauce or soup. Unfortunately, I do not have a picture of the shrimp bisque, because we ate it before I remembered to photograph it. However, from the picture I have uploaded you might guess that my next bisque will be a lobster one. We saved all those shells for the stock. :-)
... By the way, did I mention that, originally, the term ' bisque'  refers to a cream soup made with shellfish. The next time you see a 'tomato bisque' on a menu, you should remember that the restaurant is probably using the term because it sounds better than 'tomato soup' and it most likely will not contain any shellfish.

The raft

Consommé with julienne veg

Last, but by no means least, my favorite and the most interesting and challenging soup we made this week, was the Consommé. It is considered the height of french culinary sophistication. A Consommé is a clarified clear soup with lots of flavor. The number one ingredient is a strong flavorful stock (there it is again, that one ingredient that matters). In simplified terms, the clarification process is happening when the protein coagulates. The protein collects all the impurities, tiny particles in the stock that make it cloudy, as it heats up and binds them when the protein starts to coagulate at the point of simmering (185F - 205F). The protein builds a raft, which cannot be disturbed. The end process is extremely clear soup with lots of flavor. To finish it off, one can, for example, garnish it with a few pieces of julienne vegetables. Very tasty.

That's it for this week.
Happy eating and have a nice week everybody.