The end to a cliffhanger

Part Two. Pheasant consomme

And so I left you at the end of last week with a cliffhanger.

Now I feel responsible for all of your bitten nails, so shall continue.

Like an episode of a tense cookery show with fretful music, panicky hosts and a recipe left hanging.

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Pheasant consommé

I finished last week with a carefully made pot of deeply aromatic pheasant stock, flavoured with orange, cinnamon and aniseed, slowly caramelised before being left to braise for hours. Certainly good enough to eat as it is, though what comes next is an exercise in skill, patience and craft.

Roasted pheasant stock

A pot of deliciousness that if you’d followed my method closely, would have been far better than one made by my old colleague Alex, as I said before, he has never been good at following details. A phenomenal cook, one I’d choose in an instant to stand next to me, though sauce-making was never his strongest point.

Then again, I always burn biscuits.

The stock should be gleaming, a deep amber colour, slightly wobbly from the fridge, and the next stage of this story is how to turn it into something even better.

Consommé

The clarification from stock to consommé is an odd process if you’re unfamiliar with classical French cookery. Quite simple, but definitely odd.

You will need a few handfuls of a mixture, composed of very finely minced onion, carrot, celery, leek and if you have any celeriac trim left from the first part of the recipe, then that would be excellent, along with some thyme and a couple of blitzed chicken breasts. Note the word ‘minced’ at the beginning of this paragraph. This implies being pulverised. Anyone with any sense would run a mile before attempting to hand-chop everything as fine as is needed for clarification.

I’m reasonably averse to gadgets, though on this occasion it makes good sense to find a food processor to chop the vegetables. It also gives a better texture to the ingredients for this task. It was once said to me, that I should think back one hundred years to the grand old kitchens from the turn of the century, and consider that everything they made would be chopped by hand.

In vast amounts.

Now, to those of you who have cooked professionally, can you honestly imagine having to chop let’s say five or ten kilos of chicken breast for mousse? Fine enough to be pushed through a drum sieve with a one-millimetre mesh? What likely takes twenty seconds in the robot-coupe, would take most likely twenty minutes by hand, and I actually struggle to think if it would even be half-ready at that point.

Use the machine, for that is what it is for, but then not every time perhaps.

Remoulade as an example

Once, years back, I was asked to make a remoulade for staff lunch by Chef who had deposited a stout cardboard box of huge round celeriac on my bench whilst I was in the latter stages of setting up for lunch service, and barked gruffly at me that he needed it in fifteen minutes. I immediately shot downstairs to find the robot. The magnet was missing, (obviously) and in the distance I heard my name called out loudly in a heavy French accent, asking me what in fact, the fucking hell I was doing wandering around with the robot in my arms looking for shredding blades and magnets. I mean, did we even have such a thing as a shredding blade?

No one made remoulade in the machine he said.

Not even ten kilos at short notice.

Remoulade for twenty knackered cooks, three sommeliers, and a dozen chefs de rang with four or five commis waiters had to be hand cut according to Chef. It just wasn’t the done thing to think otherwise.

Of course.

Ten celeriac, each the size of a football, were peeled and sliced downwards vertically into three-millimetre slices, then laid flat in little stacks, turned at ninety degrees and sliced again into three-millimetre matchsticks. I can still hear the contempt from the Chef that I had even thought that I might try to save ten minutes by pushing it all through the blades of the processor, seeing as it was for staff who would cram it into their mouths in a matter of seconds before scooting back to their benches to continue with set up. (Except the maitre’d and the sommeliers, who spent about three-quarters of an hour, slowly eating with silver cutlery on a table in the corner of the two-star dining room, whilst we ate from plastic containers with spoons, perched either on the end of our benches or crouched on the floor, next to our station).

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

I cut each slice and matchstick by hand, quickly and was only ten minutes late astonishingly, though I was still reminded by Chef that his grandmother was faster than me.

She’d also been dead twenty years as he liked to remind us often.

The shame.

Boxes of celeriac still bother me in my sleep, turning up unannounced at will in various places in my dreams. Along with missing boxes of globe artichokes, losing my white skull cap, and not being able to remember if I’d ordered the turbot.

Last night I dreamt that I’d cut my hand, but needed to finish service; the noise of the ticket machine, buzzing away as a soundtrack to my disturbed sleep. The bandage which for some reason I was unable to look under, to check the imaginary wound, prevented me from completing my last tickets, so dinner service never ended .

The stress.

I think I’ll save the hours of sleep-deprived tormented dreaming for another day.

No wonder I want to go and live in a forest.

Back to the consommé

And so to continue with this recipe, you need as said above, a pile of vegetables in front of you, ready to chop. You need to pulse them in a food blender individually so they are a textured mush, then you will need to mix all of these together in a bowl finally adding a handful or two of ground meat. Use one sympathetic to the nature of the stock. As this is pheasant stock, you could reserve a couple of breasts of a bird, or perhaps just chicken instead. That would be fine, though don’t add beef. And don’t add beetroot either. Or garlic.

Don’t ask. Just don’t add it.

So if you had a bowl in front of you with a mixture of sloppy pulverised vegetables, mixed through with a ground mixture of meat, you might find it surprising if I were to say that you should now add the whisked-together whites of a dozen eggs.

Just the whites though.

As if you were to start making meringue, crack the whites into a bowl and start to whisk them together so they start to turn to foam, then add this to the bowl of ground meat and vegetables.

And when you’ve stirred it all together into a great frothy mixture, you might think (if indeed you are a dog owner) that the contents of the bowl look familiar.

And you would not be far wrong.

Now you must take your pot of stock, put it on the stove on low heat, and as it starts to melt, pour in the contents of the bowl, along with a good pinch of salt, whisking everything together thoroughly. It will look very weird. Then stop, remove the whisk and wait for the magic to begin.

Pheasant, wood roasted kohlrabi, fermented blackberries and roast pheasant consommé

As the warmth begins to cook the egg white, it will solidify. It will catch all the detritus as it rises through the stock, collecting as it goes. As it begins to set, stir it once or twice, then leave it well alone. As the liquid comes to a simmer, keep the temperature low, and do not be tempted to interfere. It works like a cafetiere for brewing coffee in reverse. But one that is made up of a raft of protein and vegetables instead of stainless steel.

The reason we add all of these ingredients is that the flavour of the stock when clarified by egg whites, gets ‘dented’ as we say. By adding the flavours in the raft, we add them back to the stock as we cook it for a second time.

Let’s say for argument’s sake that an hour of gentle cooking has passed. You should now take a small ladle and make a small hole wherever you please. Take a small amount of the stock in the ladle and it should be crystal clear. If it is not, then it is because you have boiled it, or damaged the raft through interfering.

Or perhaps you asked Alex to come and help you, and then all is doomed.

Once you are happy that your stock is shining, remove it from the heat.

Jellied pheasant, rosehip, crab apple and smoked breast

Take a large sieve and line it with a large piece of double-folded muslin cloth, then place it over a large bowl, and as carefully as you can, decant the liquid ladle by ladle into the cloth-lined sieve. Don’t press it, bang it or anything else you might think of, and whatever you do, don’t pour it. Just ladle by ladle, leaving it to drip by itself through the layers of filtration. This might take a while, but this is a good thing.

When it has dripped its last, remove the assembly and marvel at the deeply coloured, shining consommé that you have made.

Again, like last time, if you have carefully followed these instructions, then you will have made this better than Alex ever did.

And for that, you should be proud.

You could pour it into a mug and sip it like a very posh broth, or you might feel inclined to create a dish of autumny bits and pieces that you could place in a bowl and pour the hot consommé over.

You could also put it in the fridge until it turns into a rich, brown, fragrant jelly and then warm it up in a day or so when you feel a little more inspired.

I hope that I inspired at least one of you to undertake the task.

Until the weekend,

William

Ps. Alex is not his real name.