Stock

The French have a lovely word for the liquor you get as a result of boiling vegetables and or meat in water: the word is fond – literally, foundation. Fond de cuisine – Foundation of the kitchen.

I was suffering a little from syntax-envy but our word – stock – is a pretty profound description as well; if you understand it to mean Provisioned. Prepared. Something set aside in the bank of kitchen ingredients.

It's a good word because, for the canny, economising cook, stock needn't be a complicated concoction of veal knuckles or carcasses. It can simply be the liquid result of boiling spuds or carrots. The Japanese have founded a cuisine purely on the strength of simmering kombu seaweed in water to extract the glutamates (the element responsible for the fifth taste, umami).

In this house I often sighed when, in the middle of any event, like going away on holiday, at the aftermath of parties, Christmas, or even weddings John would inevitably find the time to make stock. Nothing would be given up till it had given all to the pot. I now understand this to be smart cooking.

But, returning for a moment to the French, and their influential culinary syntax. I recently learned, from food writer Adam Gopnik, that the word Restaurant was actually, as he puts it  “a thing to eat before it was a place to go". The word comes from a name for bouillon - chicken or beef broth. Coming from the word Restore, the first restaurants were alternative venues to the bawdy Tables d'hote or public tables. Restaurants began as places where you ate broth for health and well-being, a place where they even let women come along,  without disgrace.

In the cookbook that comes with a Thermomix, there is a recipe for a home-made stock paste. This is an adaptation and can be made in a saucepan and blended in a food processor. The paste should be stored in a jar in the fridge, where it will last for six months. Add 1 heaped teaspoon of it to 3-400mls of water. Brilliant for soups, stews and gravy.

Home-made Vegetable "stock cube"

200g grana padano cheese or parmesan (optional)
200g celery
2 large carrots
1 onion
1 tomato
1 courgette
2 cloves garlic, peeled
100g mushrooms
1 bay leaf
handful of parsley, sage and rosemary
30ml white wine
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon ground kelp or kombu (optional)
200g sea salt

Grate the cheese very finely and reserve. Chop all the vegetables and herbs, and buzz in a food processor until chopped quite finely. Put all the vegetables into a saucepan and add the wine, oil and salt. Simmer over a relatively high heat for about 25 minutes, then blend again in the food processor, along with the cheese, until everything turns into a paste. Bottle in clean jars. Store in the fridge.


Adam Gopnik: The Table Comes First is published by Deckle Edge