Stock (again): The Real Deal

The real deal for making stock from beef or veal is another story altogether than dealing with poultry. Since our refrigerator was filled with the gift of three large bags of veal bones, I could see how the next cold day was going to get a lot warmer inside with the roasting of some bones.

Preparing beef/veal bones for soup requires, first of all, a HOT oven and a couple of hours of roasting. If there is anything else you can think of to cook while you are at it, then the (household) energy expended can turn out to be more worthwhile, but it has to be something that needs to be cooked at 400 (or, to accommodate baking, 450 for part of the time and 350 for the rest).

Ingredients

8 pounds veal bones

3 carrots, scraped and chopped

3 yellow onions, peeled and chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

3 Tbsp tomato paste

2 cups dry white wine

2 plum tomatoes, chopped

2 cloves garlic

2 bay leaves

10 black peppercorns

3 sprigs parsley

4 quarts water

 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put bones in a roasting pan and roast for 1 hour.
2. Add carrots and onions and cook for another 40 minutes, or until well browned.
3. Remove bones and vegetables to a soup pot. Put the roasting pan across two burners, add tomato paste, and deglaze with the wine. Simmer until all particles are loose, then add to stock pot.
4. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer uncovered for at least two hours. Stock should be reduced by a third.
5. Strain stock and discard solids. The stock can be frozen in small containers to use for sauces or large containers as a soup base.

With the addition of further ingredients and more cooking, some of this stock can be converted into demi-glace, a richly condensed brown sauce that goes well on sliced steak or fillet mignon.

For us, the stock went into the making of a French onion soup, and the gravy for a sliced steak.

Portuguese Soup

In an attempt to make lamb stuffed cabbage for a pre-Thanksgiving gathering, we ended up with a kitchen full of cabbage. The impetus for this cooking was a gift of ground lamb from our son’s Longmeadow Farm sheep.

The problem was that the recipe for the Lamb Stuffed Cabbage didn’t explain in sufficient detail how to get the cabbage leaves to cooperate. The directions were to blanch the leaves and then run them under cold water. However, after cutting off the first two leaves for blanching, the rest ganged up on us and came off in pieces and hunks.

Fortunately, the market was still open and we had the resources of our computer. While my spouse went off to secure two more cabbages, I searched the internet and eventually turned up a useful bit of instruction: submerge an entire head in boiling water for 15 minutes, then douse with cold water. It worked. So we had two heads-worth of leaves… and a head in chunks.

The result was a pot full of stuffed cabbage… and a pot of Portuguese Soup, which requires a head of chopped up cabbage. This is one of our hearty winter traditions, so it was nice to have the soup for another Thanksgiving week meal while the family was here.

The recipe for Portuguese Soup was given to us by friends years ago on Cape Cod, an area with a large Portuguese population in previous eras.  It was summer when we visited the Cape, but we make the soup in the winter as a hot and hearty meal.

All the work is in the cutting up, because once that is done, everything goes in the pot at once and just cooks until the carrots and potatoes are done.

Ingredients

15 ounce can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

28 ounce can diced tomatoes

1 medium head white cabbage, sliced

2 green peppers, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

3 carrots, chopped

2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed

4 cups beef broth (we have also substituted our home made chicken stock)

1 bay leaf

¼ cup wine vinegar

2 pounds sliced linguica (we have had to improvise with other sausages or kielbasa when linguica wasn’t available)

Good shot of red pepper sauce

4 cups water

Directions

Put all ingredients in soup pot.

Cook for approximately 40 minutes or until all vegetables are done.