The Confident Cook: Basic Recipes and How to Build on Them (Picador Cookstr Classics) - Hardcover

Chalmers, Irena

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250146275 ISBN 13: 9781250146274

Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Anyone who can understand the reasoning behind basic cooking techniques can become a creative, relaxed, and confident cook. Chalmers takes the would-be chef through how the addition or substitution of a few ingredients can transform a simple dish into a culinary masterpiece.

The Confident Cook, invaluable to experienced cooks as well as to beginners, demonstrates that in fact there are only four or five basic methods of cooking food. Once mastered, these basic methods can be used with many different ingredients to create countless dishes. Chalmers shows how beef stew, braised veal, coq au vin, and a vegetable casserole, for example, are similar in their preparation; how a simple beef stew can become a hearty Mulligan, a Belgian carbonnade, a French boeuf bourguingnon, or your own less classic invention. More important, she shows how you can whip up something delectable from whatever supplies you have available without being tied to a recipe with specified ingredients.

About two hundred recipes are given with logical and practical directions, and some seventy-five original line drawings clearly illustrate each technique and some of the finished dishes. But the heart of this book is the information that makes it possible to dispense altogether with recipes and to start experimenting—confidently and successfully—with your own creative cooking ideas.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

IRENA CHALMERS established her own cooking school in Greensboro, North Carolina after studying at the Cordon Bleu School of Cooking in Paris. She has appeared on numerous television programs and has given lectures and cooking demonstrations around the country. Chalmers has written more than eighty specialty cookbooks that are sold both here and abroad.

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The Confident Cook

Basic Recipes and How to Build on Them

By Irena Chalmers

Picador

Copyright © 1975 Irena Chalmers
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-14627-4

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Publishers' Note, 
Epigraph, 
Acknowledgments, 
Foreword by Anne Willan, 
Introduction, 
1. Soups, 
2. Casserole Cooking, 
3. Sauces, 
4. Soufflés, 
5. Poaching, 
6. Roasting, 
7. Broiling, 
8. Frying and Sautéing, 
9. Deep-Fat Frying, 
10. Scrambled Eggs and Omelettes, 
11. Crêpes and Their Relatives, 
12. Mousses and Cold Soufflés, 
13. Custards, 
Menu Planning, 
Index, 
Also by Irena Chalmers, 
About the Authors, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

soups

BROWN BEEF STOCK • VEAL, LAMB, CHICKEN, OR FISH STOCK • CHICKEN AND CLAM BROTH • CLARET CONSOMMÉ • TOMATO CONSOMMÉ • JELLIED MADRILÈNE • ONION SOUP • VEGETABLE SOUP WITH BEEF • CHICKEN SOUP WITH RICE • TOMATO SOUP • TOMATO AND CLAM SOUP • TOMATO SOUP WITH BEER AND DILL • TOMATO-ORANGE SOUP • ASPARAGUS SOUP • CAULIFLOWER SOUP • POTATO SOUP • VICHYSSOISE • WATERCRESS VICHYSSOISE • PEAR AND TURNIP SOUP • CARROT SOUP • MUSHROOM AND BARLEY SOUP

I remember a story about a soup told by a friend who was an apprentice at a formidable French restaurant. The proprietors were justly proud that all of their ingredients were at the peak of perfection. The vegetables and herbs were grown on their own land, and the fish was brought in daily from the rivers and lakes in the vicinity.

The fish chef was an irascible fellow who worked entirely on his own and silently, except for snarling at anybody who came near his section of the kitchen. He was also a creature of habit. Early each morning he would don his white chef's hat and go out into the adjoining garden to gather bouquets of herbs, which he then laid out in neat bunches along the length of his chopping block.

Next he arranged one of each type of fish in military formation, heads forward, tails to the rear. Then the work began. Stooping over his fish, he confronted them, eyeball to gleaming eyeball. Hands bent on chubby knees, he smelled each fish and each herb. Then, slowly and thoughtfully, he selected one herb from this bunch and one from that and chopped them into myriads of combinations. He put a little tarragon in this group, a touch of sorrel in another, and a few curls of parsley here and there. The gentle, soothing rhythm of chopping continued until each herb was so fine it could dance an arabesque on the head of a pin. Each combination of herbs was then matched to each fish until the parade was flanked with small mounds of fragrance.

The inspection then began again. The chef picked up the first fish in line, rubbed a pinch of herbs onto its shiny skin, sniffed it delicately, smiled smugly to himself, wiped his hands on his clean white apron, and proceeded to the next. By the time he had reached the end of the line, he was supremely content. His apron was green with sweet-smelling herbs and very slightly fishy.

One memorable night, the apprentice chef stole the master's apron, which by now had become a historical record of the day's activities. He dropped the flavored apron into a broth and simmered it gently for twenty minutes. The result was a glorious fish soup.

That is the way soup is made. You take a little of this and a little of that, and, if it pleases you, you put it all together and cook it until it is done. There are no hard-and-fast rules for making soup, but if you look at the following recipes it is extraordinary how similar they all are. Keeping the proportions of the ingredients the same, you can substitute one vegetable or meat for another and one herb for another. The basic liquid may be chicken broth, beef broth, beer, wine, milk, fruit juice, or even water. By rearranging your palette, you can make an infinite variety of soups.

CLEAR SOUPS

A clear soup is simply a flavored liquid, made by simmering one or many ingredients in a broth. Chicken broth, beef consommé, and jellied madrilène are all clear soups, which are sometimes used as the basis for other soups. Sometimes two flavored liquids are combined; if you add red wine to beef broth, for example, you will have made a claret consommé. Having produced a marvelous-tasting base, you can add one, two, or many more ingredients to give the soup a greater variety of taste and texture. If you add some vermicelli to the claret consommé, for example, the soup will gain another dimension. A touch of lemon juice will heighten the flavor, and a garnish of finely chopped chives completes a simple masterpiece.

Chicken broth can be built into a more substantial soup in a similar way, perhaps, by adding pieces of chicken and a little rice. If you think you might still be hungry, you could add a handful of carrots, peas, tomatoes, green peppers, chopped spinach, and/or herbs. When the soup is ready, each ingredient should retain its own form and be clearly identifiable.

The ultimate flavor of clear soups, as of all other soups, rests on the quality of the basic broth. Very few people have the time or the inclination to prepare homemade stock to be used as a soup base. Some of the commercially canned chicken and beef broths are both excellent and inexpensive, and though, undeniably, they are not so good as the homemade variety, they are satisfactory alternatives. In case you decide to prepare your own stock, this is how to go about it.

BASIC BROTH (STOCK)

Stock is derived from the long, slow simmering of meat bones, aromatic vegetables, and a group of herbs known as a bouquet garni. Stock is the foundation on which almost all soups, sauces, and stews are built. It is easy to make, and it takes only a few minutes to assemble the ingredients, but the actual cooking time is lengthy.

There are very few things to remember about stock, but each one is important. First you must decide what kind of stock you will make. Naturally, you would use beef bones for a pure beef stock and chicken bones (backs and wings) for chicken stock. However, if you just want to have fine-tasting, all-purpose broth in the kitchen, you can combine beef and chicken bones.

The foundation of stock is a good bone. A good beef bone is one that has meat clinging to it and some marrow inside it. The beef will give the broth flavor, and the collagen content of the bone will cause the stock to gel and give it body. (The marrow also tastes delicious!) It is best to use raw bones for stock; cooked meat bones and leftover chicken bones do not have enough flavor and make the stock cloudy. The vegetables must be fresh and of good quality. If you are in any doubt about whether to throw a vegetable into the garbage or the soup pot, let your conscience be your guide, and ignore all those tales about stock pots that simmer for generations.

Soup and fish explain half the emotions of life.

SYDNEY SMITH

The aromatic vegetables most often used in both beef and chicken stock are carrots, onions, and celery. Tomatoes and other fresh vegetables may be added, but don't use strong-tasting vegetables such as spinach and turnips unless you have a specific purpose for using the stock. After the vegetables, add the herbs — a few peppercorns, a bay leaf, parsley, and thyme. (It is neither necessary nor wise to add salt at...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martin's Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250146275
• ISBN 13: 9781250146274
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland