Jordan Summers

This week’s class on soups and sauces was a little more scattered. We had a TON of information thrown at us and it was difficult to keep up with the notes. There will be tips thrown in with general information. If you get confused, let me know and I’ll try to explain further. (If I can remember what she said.;)

A quick overview of soups. There are seven types of soups: Cold, Fruit, Bisque, Bouillon, Broth, Chowder, and Cream. Bisques can be made with flour to thicken them or rice. Chowders should always contain potato to thicken them. Creams tend to have a variety of vegetables in them to thicken. Egg whites can cleanse a murky broth. So if you ever make a broth soup and want the liquid to be clearer, toss in a couple of egg whites and stir. It’ll draw the ‘bits’ out of your soup, leaving a clearer broth behind. Then all you have to do is scoop out the egg whites and throw them away. Always try to use organic broth when making soups.

If you want to make your own stock, here are a few things to keep in mind: For light stock, keep chicken base and add bay leaf, thyme and parsley. If you don’t want your stock to be orange, use leaks instead of carrots. Gives the same sugary sweetness, but doesn’t color the stock. Dark stock requires roasting bones in the oven before you can add veggies. You have to reduce the bones for several hours before you can use them. Veal and mutton bones work best. If you want to make a brown sauce from dark stock, you have to add tomato paste. NEVER salt homemade sauce. For fish stock, you can use clam juice in a bottle or white fish. If you want shrimp stock, then always buy the shrimp with the skins and/or skins and heads on. When you peel them, dump the heads and skins in some water and bring to boil. Once you’ve cooked them a while and the ‘water’ has reduced, you can pour them into an ice cube tray and freeze them. Once they’re frozen, dump the cubes in a baggie for later use.

Now onto the Mother Sauces. There are five mother sauces, which just means that all sauces spring from these five: Demi-Glace/Brown (this is the one made from roasting the bones), Veloute (imagine an accent over the ‘e’) This one is wine, butter, fish sauce., Tomato (To cut the acidity in a tomato sauce add carrots. They absorb acid.), White Sauce/Cream (Tend to be made with flour, milk and butter. Always start this sauce by combining flour and butter first until you can smell a nutty aroma, then add the milk/cream.), and last, but not least, Hollandaise. Hollandaise tends to be made with butter and tarragon (sp). You cannot reheat hollandaise without destroying it in some capacity. If you’re making a sauce and you break it (ie it separates), then add more warm water. If you break mayo/hollandaise, then either add egg white or mustard. Most of the time with hollandaise (which is almost the same exact recipe for homemade mayo) if you break it, then you have to start over.

Odds and ends:Blanch all your veggies (ie carrots, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, etc.) before you put them in the refrigerator. It will not only keep their color nice, but it will make them last longer. Oh, and when you blanch, don’t blanch them all together. You need to blanch carrots with carrots, peas with peas…you get the picture. Blanch the veggies for 30 seconds to a minute. Broccoli and Cauliflower will take longer. Test them with your fingers to see if they’re done. The longer you leave them in the water, the softer they’ll become. When you’re done cooking remove them from the water and place them in an ice bath to cool. Pat dry on paper towels and refrigerate.

Where gloves when cutting hot peppers. The smaller the pepper, the hotter pepper. Remove seeds if you’d like a more mild taste. Peppers cannot be blanched and peeled like tomatoes. (Tomatoes are easy to peel if they’re blanched for 30 seconds to a minute.) To peel/remove the skin of a pepper burn them under a broiler (skin side up). You can then take a paper towel and scrap the skin off. This gives the pepper a milder a taste/flavor.

Flip a potato peeler upside down (ie use the handle side) to remove the seeds from a cucumber easily. Always peel ginger with a spoon. It’s fast and doesn’t tear the fibers. To prepare an avocado, take a knife and cut into it at the top and follow it all the way around vertically. Once you’ve circled the avocado, give it a little twist and it should easily split into two. Pop your knife blade into the seed and it’ll come out easily. You can scrape out the interior using a spoon. Sprinkle citrus juice on it to keep it from browning. Preferrably lime juice. If you want to put it back in the fridge, then sprinkle it with lime juice, put the seed back inside, fit it together and wrap it tightly with cling wrap. It’ll last for a couple of hours.

I think that’s about it. Like I said it was a bit of a blur because we ended up making Roasted Butternut Squash Soup, Chicken Tortilla Soup, Fish Chowder (you can use any kind of fish you like in this), Gazpacho, Bearnaise Sauce (over chicken breast), Mornay Sauce (over veggies), and Caramel Sauce (over ice cream). So it was a busy, busy night.

I plan to make the tortilla soup tonight for dinner, except I’m going to make it a little hotter.