Chicken Stock Failures

You might be asking yourself, "How can anyone possibly fail in making chicken stock? It's water and bones. AmIright?"

Well, you would be wrong.

There is a distinct art to crafting an authentic chicken stock, according to my lovely chefy.

There is procedure. There are logistics. There are time limits. And other myriad constraints.

But mostly, there is preparation. More than I realized. As in, an authentic chicken stock is supposed to be dark? So the way I've been making it for five years is completely wrong? Everything I've ever made has been sub-par. There will be roasting...

Whaa...?

Yep.

Listen and learn, friends. Listen and learn.

Chefy dictates to me, mid-stock-boil, "Where are the roasted bones? They don't look roasted at all."

AT ALL. That redundant duo which always make me want to commit nefarious acts.

As I paw him away in my penguin stance over the aromatic simmering bone water stock, my memory refreshes and I remember that, in this house, YOU HAVE TO ROAST BONES before you ever dream of fashioning up a good stock. Any kind of carnivorous stock requires proper bone-roasting technique. Which, for me, usually means throwing a bunch of rib bones or chicken bones or steak bones onto a charred cookie sheet. Even though they're technically supposed to be cleaned. And placed gingerly onto a schmancy roasting pan. You're probably supposed to bow your head in reverence to the bone gods and say a charm and Karma and Kismet each involve their ethereal personae, and BOOM! A stock is born.

Stock's some fancy ish. And you thought it was basic. (It's ok, I'm with ya.)

I feel like a bit of a witch when I make chicken stock. Sometimes I think to myself, sampling my magic brew, I could totally bottle this stuff up and sell it. This would fly off the shelves at Eastern Market. All kinds of creative names (or not) (read: Shannon's Stock, Cecere's Chicken Brew) fly through my head. I could even market it for Etsy, I fantasize, and invest in the local dry-ice business (???) and ship it off to exotic places where they've never even heard of homemade chicken stock. Like the UK. Or Altoona, PA. Market me fast, baby. I'm the next Rachael Ray.

My ADHD culinary Good Samaritan reverie is interrupted by the next-door neighbors' random outburst of go-go music, which I can appreciate, but not necessarily at 2 am, and definitely not while creating nectar of the gods, aka roasted chicken stock.

Chefy ambles outside to harangue the neighbors, and this is my perfect opportunity to suddenly spring to the freezer, remembering the two quart containers of chicken wing tips I saved the last few times we made chicken wings. (Preparation.) Chicken stock for all! We'll bottle it in Mason jars and gift it to both sets of parents for Easter, arriving into town bearing homemade presents! We'll ship it to friends for birthdays and bat mitzvahs. It'll be a mainstay in the pantries of everyone we know. Right next to the gourmet mustards and artisinal preserves. We can give it as wedding favors!

I salt the water because one time I heard the Barefoot Contessa say on her show that if you don't salt the water, the stock that you worked so hard on will taste like dirty dish water.

Ain't nobody got time for that.

So I salt the water. And toss in some peppercorns, like I've seen chefy do. Except a cup of peppercorns come flying out of the spice container since I always forget little tricks like opening the tiny opening side versus the huge side. I handle that emergency, grabbing up peppercorns with both hands from the boiling stock. The chicken tips (and my hands) have thawed and are neatly placed across a cookie sheet, the oven is preheating to 500, carrots are roughly chopped, onions are halved and thrown in, a stalk of celery goes in, doesn't have to look pretty, it'll all get strained out anyway. I roast the tips, throw them in. Chefy tells me you never salt the water. Excellent. I taste test. It tastes like bouillon. All salty and vegetabley and chickeny and peppery. And very concentrated, having reduced for way too long while I got side-tracked and read recipes for all the dishes I was going to make with the stock. So I add more water. It's a better consistency. Thank you, Karma and Kismet. You showed up. A little late the party, but you showed nonetheless.

It's nearing 4 am and my back is aching. A cloth freezer pack covered in monkeys is icing my neck. My throat is sore. My right eye starts itching all of a sudden. Woe isn't me, though. Cause the stock looks beautiful. Chefy's long been asleep, snoring from the bedroom. It's time. It is finished. I turn off the stove and have to let the stock cool before straining and pouring into quart containers and then tomorrow, Mason jars, tied with burlap and twine for that homespun look. I go into the bedroom to rest my eyes while the stock cools.

And then fall asleep for 8 hours.

#fml #chickenstockfailure #itwouldvebeensodelicious #storingitanyway

Lessons in Bread Rising

Do you ever have the urge to make something delicious and fresh, but lack the patience to WAIT for the end result? Earlier this week my fiancé and I were craving bruschetta. We'd had it at Famous Luigi's in downtown DC a few weeks back, and I was itching to try making it on my own. It's one of my FAVORITE things ever, and every time I watch that scene in Julie and Julia I salivate over the whole experience. How hard could it be to pile tomatoes on top of grilled bread?

I scoured Pinterest for recipes, naturally. The saying must be true that you eat with your eyes first. I'm telling you, 5 different photos of scrumptious-looking bruschetta prompted us both to get up off the couch on fiancé's day off and hit up our local markets for bread flour, the freshest-looking cherry tomatoes we could find, and organic basil. We already had garlic, a house staple. I'm obsessed with food and he's a cook. Garlic plays a large role at our dinner table.

But what kind of bread to use? And of course it has to be homemade. After debating the merits of ciabatta vs. focaccia, I decided on Italian bread. Fiancé lugs out his huge baking and pastry book from culinary school, a tome we're sure houses a perfect bruschetta bread recipe, and proceeds to read me EVERY. SINGLE. BREAD. TITLE. Until we both realize there is no goldmine bread for bruschetta. You just have to wing it. Back to the drawing board (Read: Google). Finally I just decide the heck with it and go with a standard French Bread. We debate the merits of using a baguette or just a loaf of what Google brings up as "French bread" and at this point I don't care that much. I just want bread, grilled, oiled, garlicked, and loaded with tomatoes, olive oil dripping from the corners of each of our satiated mouths.

I finally find a suitable recipe, any one will do, and get home readying my mise en place. That's what you do to prep yourself. When you live with a chef.

For a day my mise en place was ready. I lugged out the Kitchen Aid mixer from underneath the sink (city living for ya), dusted it off and scrubbed it down, a feat in and of itself. Do you know how much those things weigh? And because I'm basically falling apart physically, I rubbed shea butter all over my neck and iced my shoulders. The things we do for authenticity.

Just when I felt ready enough, cracked my fingers and toes, and washed up, I realized something fateful.

No yeast.

Damn.

You cannot make bruschetta bread (what I started calling our project) without YEAST. It's just...there just...

There is no way that I forgot to buy yeast. I have yeast, oh yes, but it could be 4 years old for all I know, since everywhere we move, the contents of our fridge gets packed up with us. I have one packet of yeast. You need two. Awesome.

So now it's been roughly 3 days since the drooling-for-bruschetta began, and I remind fiancé to bring home yeast if he has a chance.

He says sure. Then forgets it.

No biggie. The basil is now wilted and sad looking, the tomatoes have been over-ripened on the window sill since I forgot about them for 3 days, and you know what? You don't even NEED bread flour for bruschetta bread, because sometimes the universe slaps you across the face like that. Next time in a blue moon when you decide you have 7 spare hours on a lazy day to make homemade pizza dough, bread flour will be standing at attention like a soldier from the kitchen cupboard, but today it's just giving you the middle finger. Kinda like life.

Soooooooo. You put aside plans for bruschetta, and instead make a huge salad, which is healthier anyways. But the desire never leaves (and fiancé brings home yeast the next night!).

So TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT. Your kidneys are sore and you can barely walk, but you heave yourself over to the kitchen and do 2 toe-touches before lunging for the Kitchen Aid mixer, patiently awaiting you from her shadowed perch. You say a quick prayer to the bread gods and re-scan the recipe, and you're good to go.

Alas, fresh bruschetta in our bellies tonight. After a long, hard day, you, fiancée extraordinaire, will have freshly baked, grilled, olive-oiled-and-tomatoey bread waiting for your hard-working man, which you'll hand off to tired fiancé ambling through the door with his bike.

And then you read it. 2 hour rising time. What the WHAT.

This cannot be. Tongue now hanging out with illusions of Italian zest and saliva almost dripping from your mouth in anticipation, your eyes read over the depressing words again. Allow time for rising.

To which you just sit back, crawl onto your yoga mat, and assume the fetal position.

You question why bread has to rise and what the point of yeast is anyways (fiancé says it's a bacteria, ew, as if you need more of THAT in your dilapidated bod), and curse the bread gods for lying to you and curse the universe for shunning your every recent culinary move, and curse America for needless biowarfare, of which you could literally write the book, and you curse your Pinterest habit for getting you in the mood. And you plan to throw that Italian food memoir you've been reading in the trash for making you want to be all authentic all the time. And you give famous Luigi the bird for getting you wishing and hoping and salivating in the first place. Dumbass.

The fetal position eventually gets boring and your dog has now splayed himself across the yoga mat, which he always does when you're trying to breathe and meditate and not focus so much on your potential long-lasting kidney damage and how much cooler you thought you'd be approaching 30. You curse yourself a few more times for good measure, curse the dog and the fiancé for no good reason, and curse your tiny apartment for being so loaded down with sprouting plants, none of which have grown into vegetables for you to eat. And then your belly growls. The dramatically loud groan reminds you that you MUST hoist yourself back into your hallway-kitchen.

Mise en place ready, facing rising time head-on, you measure and mix and pour and finally track down the two dough hooks you have, one of which you've been meaning to return to your old landlord.

You knead for the 8-10 minutes Devil Bread requires. You go lay down for the first little round of rising time, resting your aching joints, deliberating if you should just go to the store now and buy a loaf of bread. Fiancé will SEE all the dirty, doughy dishes, then he'll eat the perfect fluffy bread. From Safeway.

You almost convince yourself of this brilliant new plan, and then realize where you live and that you can't just run out for a loaf of bread in this neighborhood at 10 pm without a black belt and/or a pint of pepper spray. Your ADHD mind goes into overdrive dreaming up floor plans and blueprints of suburban sprawls nowhere near DC.

Then your phone alarm goes off. You have to check the dough. Little bitch better have doubled in size or you're done.

She has!!!

You jump around your living room praising the bread gods for their good karma and apologize for calling your miraculous and holy dough the she-devil and punch her down and cover and rise and roll and seal and taper and finally, BAKE.

And 40 blessed minutes later, the smell of Italian kitchens wafting through your perfect little happy home, you meet the prettiest two things you've ever seen on a cookie sheet.

You're dog-tired and even your dog is tired of watching you wait for bread to rise all night. Who cares about bruschetta? Seize the day. Let's slice into this perfectly baguettey-looking, misshapen (but who gives?), not-completely-risen, blessed little perfect, precious bundle of goodness and crunch into it. There will be other nights for tomatoey garlicky bruschetta-ey goodness. You just mastered the art of French bread-making. And that deserves some butter, so slather up.