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A good Basic Chicken Stock is essential in the Chinese kitchen but for very special soups and other banquet-quality dishes (Shark’s –fin soup, for instance), a very rich broth known as ‘Superior Stock’, or 上湯 (shàng tāng), is required. Basically, a Superior Stock is prepared using chicken, pork and ham, very often the prized Chinese ham known as ‘Jinhua ham’. A select few other ingredients are used, ginger and scallion usually, but not much else in the way of other vegetables are added. It is a very rich and complex preparation and a good stock can make all the difference between a mediocre dish and one that is truly special…  Read more

In Japanese culinary parlance, Dashi, in the strictest sense, simply refers to a stock typically made from seaweed, mushrooms, dried fish, or a combination of these. Unless the type is actually specified, however, the bare term ‘Dashi’ means a stock made from Kombu and Katsuobushi. This very basic preparation is used in countless Japanese dishes including soups, hotpot or stewed dishes (nabemono) and a variety of sauces. Accordingly, it is one of the very cornerstones of the national cuisine…  Read more

Katsuobushi is a preparation of fish, specifically Skipjack Tuna, but also Bonito, that is dried, smoked and then fermented using a mold similar to that used for making soy products like soy sauce and miso. As it is a primary ingredient in the ubiquitous Japanese stock known as Dashi, it is thus one of the cornerstones of Japanese cuisine…  Read more

My Firepot Stock, although somewhat depleted, is now almost three months old and is still very nicely fresh and flavorful. As I have done most of the experiments I planned for the basic project, and, since the stockpot takes up a heck of a lot of space in my fridge, I have decided that I am going to not replenish it any further but, rather, use up what I have left for soups and sauces.

The inspiration for today’s soup comes, funnily enough, from one of my Chinese cookery books. I say ‘funnily enough’ because there is nothing in the original recipe that one would normally identify as Chinese, being simply pork rib, sweet corn and potato boiled in water with no other seasoning than salt. That recipe uses quite a bit of pork, with the result that quite a nice stock can be formed just using water, but, here, I am just making a small amount and will use my Firepot Stock as a rich and ready-made flavor base… Read more

Today’s experiment takes place on Day 9 of the Firepot Stock Project which began with Part 1, the making of the basic stock. Part 1 required two days to complete, and on Day 5, after resting the stock, I brought it to the boil to keep it fresh. I also replenished some of the water and simmered it with some added meat, bone and vegetable trimmings I had leftover from a couple of other recipes cooked in the meantime.  As you can see, our stock, even before the next major evolution, is acquiring new depths and layers of flavor.

The idea, here in Part 2, is to very slowly simmer a small ‘roast’ of beef in the stock and, at the same time, cook some vegetables in the pot along with it so that we will, in effect, be producing a whole meal at once along the lines of a ‘New-England Boiled Dinner’ or a French ‘Pot-au-Feu’. The New-England dish is, of course, based on corned beef, rather than a fresh roast, and the modern Pot-au-Feu tends to be a ‘one-off’ dish rather than a perpetual stew sort of affair, but the general spirit of both is preserved here and thus I am dubbing this experiment a ‘Firepot Beef Dinner’… Read more

My Chinese Master Stock and Sunday Gravy projects both exemplify a culinary process whereby a cooking medium is slowly developed over a long period by successively cooking various ingredients so that they derive flavor from the medium and, in turn, add their flavor to it in successive layers of taste. The Chinese and Italian recipes I played around with are both useful and fairly versatile, but they are also somewhat limited in application given their color and basic flavorings, and I have long wanted to create a more generic medium that can easily be adapted to a much wider range of uses.

The idea of a perpetual stockpot continually simmering away on the back of the stove or fire is as old as kitchens themselves and, in times past, a cauldron could be kept simmering as an ever-changing, pot-luck sort of stew whose ingredients would be replenished with whatever was on hand at any given time. Indeed, the French Pot-au-Feu, although now made as a specific meal, has its roots in the medieval tradition of a perpetual stew.

For this project, I am going to use a more scientific and less haphazard approach than the typical ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ affair. The plan is to build a very basic, but rich stock using various cuts of pork and chicken, along with select vegetables, and then later build upon it by using the medium to cook further dishes. I would have liked to have called this a ‘master stock’, but since the Chinese have already taken the name, I am going to give a tip of hat to the pot-au-feu and call this a ‘Fire-pot Stock’… Read more

Today’srecipet is actually being made as a pre-cursor to another experimental culinary project I have in mind…

I have added leftover roasted vegetables to the stock-pot on many occasions  but I have been curious about the results of building a stock entirely from such ingredients. Today, my plan is to roast a select number of different vegetables and then simmer them with very little seasoning and just plain water as the medium. My object will be to test not just the flavor, but also the color and clarity in a continuing reduction of the resultant broth… Read more

In Chinese cookery, a ‘master sauce’ is less a ‘sauce’ than it is a complex and re-usable, aromatic broth that is used to serially cook various meats and other foods, thus both giving and developing its own new depths flavor. With each use, the stock becomes richer and can be prolonged (as long as certain care is taken to prevent spoilage) for a very long time. Whether strictly true or not, it is claimed that there are master sauces that have been in continual use for generations.

The Chinese word for master sauce is:

The first character, ‘鹵’,  is pronounced ‘lǔ’ and means brine, while the second, pronounced ‘shuǐ’, means ‘water’. Together, the two characters are most frequently translated as ‘marinade’.  For today’s post, I am simply going to begin a batch but, over the next few months, I shall be using the result to cook a series of meals and will keep you posted as to the development of the sauce over time…

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Several times, in earlier posts, I have alluded to the Chinese cooking medium, known in English, as a ‘master sauce’ or ‘master stock’, which builds layers of taste and incredible complexity through continual re-use. I have been thinking that this would be a very good project for a series of posts in the new year, but, for now, I want to take a look at a much simpler sort of stock for more immediate use.

There are several different types of stock used in the Chinese kitchen… One, the so called ‘superior stock’, is quite complex (and will be featured in a later post), but it’s simpler cousin, a basic chicken stock, is no less indispensible in Chinese cuisine as it is to any good kitchen in the west. Although the additional ingredients we will be using here are specifically chosen for their ‘Chinese’ flavor, the basic technique is little different than that for any sort of stock and is one which any serious cook will want to have in his or her repertoire… Read more

DAY 21: Our last use of the gravy was for a Simmered Pork Roast back on Day 10. I left home on court circuit just after that but my wife re-heated the sauce on Days 14 and 18 during my absence to keep it fresh….

Our first real experiment in the Sunday Gravy Project was too cook up a batch of Sausages and Meatballs to serve with pasta back on Day 4. After making the traditional Italian pasta feast, we had quite a few sausages and meatballs left, which were subsequently put to various interesting uses, but the last two meatballs ended up being sliced and used on sandwiches. I have to say that I was very impressed with the dense texture of the balls and the way they sliced so nicely (much like cured, store-bought sausage) and it gave me an idea… I decided to try and use a similar, but much spicier, meatball blend to try and make skinless ‘sausages’ that could I could slice as a sort of cold cut, or even use hot for breakfast or in other dishes. The beauty of this, of course, is that, not only will we end up with nice sausage to use, but, by cooking it as part of the ongoing project, we will also add a whole other layer of flavor to the gravy… Read more