Even reconstituted, the soup still turns to Jell-o in the fridge. Nice!

I made some stock the other day. A ton of it.  Probably close to three gallons.  We just recently have been getting rid of our plastic kitchen storage in favor of glass, and I just don’t have enough of the glass containers lying around to just breezily relegate 4-5 of them to the freezer for the next few weeks. So, I did something that I had never thought to do before with stock, although I should have. Duh. I reduced it.  There wasn’t anything in the stock that would get bitter with boiling, so after straining it, I just let it boil. And boil. Until it had reduced by about 2/3, leaving me with a gallon of ridiculously gelatin-rich stock. And a rain cloud in my kitchen.

After cooling the stock pretty quickly, I chilled it in two–only two!–glass containers until it set up like Jell-o.

See–I’m not even kidding! Jell-o.

And then I scooped it into cupcake papers and froze it.  I ended up with 30 frozen stockcakes, each ready to be reconstituted at 1:3, and they all live happily in the freezer in two gallon-sized zipper bags.

The Beloved brewed in Charlotte this weekend, so I thought it would be Kind of me to make him some dinner last evening, so I broke out 5-6 stockcakes and used them, along with some organic chicken breasts, kale and Other Vegetables, to make a Very Lovely and Filling Soup.

I hesitate to write this as a recipe, because making stock and making soup are really just techniques.

Stock:

1. Put a bunch of meaty bones in a pot.
2. Add some aromatics and some acid.
3. Cover with cold water.
4. Slowly bring to a low simmer and walk away for several hours.

Soup:

1. Put what you like and what seems to go well together in a pot.
2. Add stock and/or water and/or wine and/or Some Other Liquid.
3. Season to taste.
4. Simmer everything together for awhile.

See? Told ya.  So, I’m not going to turn it into a Recipe.  I’ll just show you what I put in mine. Oh, I just remembered! As a bonus:

How to Make Perfectly Cooked Chicken for Soup

Poaching low-fat meats is a Dicey Proposition.  If you let it simmer at too high a temperature or wander off and forget, you will end up with rubbery Meat Pucks.  I thunk and thunk about how to get around this, because I was in the middle of reading a Very Good Book and didn’t want to have to hang around and babysit chicken.  And then I thought, “Hey lady! Why don’t you just do it like you make hard-boiled eggs?” So that’s what I did, and you can too.

1. Put boneless, skinless chicken breasts in your Liquids/Seasonings of Choice.
2. Bring to a boil and let boil about one minute.
3. Turn off the heat, slide the pan to a cool burner, and set a timer for 15 minutes.
4. When the timer goes off, your chicken will be perfectly cooked.

This is the chicken to make if you want to make chicken salad. Or chicken soup, for that matter.  Cool, huh?

Okay, back to the stock and the soup.

What I Put in the Stock (using what was in my freezer)

• three chicken carcasses, or parts thereof
• small handful of peppercorns
• 2″ piece of gingers, scored
• 2 stalks lemongrass, pounded
• 1 large onion, skin on, quartered
• 3 medium carrots, scrubbed and broken in half
• 2 large ribs of celery, scrubbed and broken in half
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• cold, filtered water to cover

I let this simmer for about 8 hours, then I strained it, skimmed off a lot of the fat and boiled it at a full rolling boil until reduced by about 2/3. You can reduce it as much as you want. Or as little as you want, for that matter.  Chill quickly (I put the stock pot in the sink filled with ice and some water and stir off and on until warm) and then either ladle into cupcake papers or other small vessels for freezing or just pour into containers.  Either way, chill in the freezer first before freezing so your freezer doesn’t have to work so hard.

Stockcakes. Very handy.

What I Put in the Soup

• 6 stockcakes
• 4 cups of filtered water
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1 rib celery, diced
• 2 medium carrots, diced
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, poached
• salt and pepper, to taste
• Fennel Citrus Sea Salt, to taste
• Champagne vinegar, to taste
• fish sauce, to taste (it is The Best in chicken soup. Honest).
• 3 red potatoes, peeled and diced
• 3 big leaves of kale, washed and torn, large center rib composted
• 1/2 bag frozen mixed vegetables–mine contained zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, green beans and peppers

This was a very easy soup to make. I didn’t do any fancy sauteing steps or anything. Once I poached the chicken and set it aside, I just added the vegetables to the stock/water mixture in the order from longest-to-cook to shortest-to-cook, although I put the onions, celery and carrots in at the beginning to add more flavor and sweetness to the soup.

When it came time to add the other vegetables, the kale went in first, followed by the potatoes, and the frozen veggies.  The kale cooked for about 20 minutes, the potatoes for about 15 and the frozen vegetables for about 7.  I added the chicken back in for the last minute or so of cooking, just to heat through.

And there you have it. Three Un-Recipes from me to you.  Enjoy, and don’t for one minute think that you can’t add pasta to your soup. Or beans. Or lentils. Or barley.  Make it with what you like, and have a lovely day.

Share your favorite recipe for a chance to win!

A couple of weeks ago, I won a copy of The Food52 Cookbook through a giveaway hosted by Heather, @FarmgirlGourmet. (Thank you, Heather)!! Last Friday, it came in the mail, and The Beloved and I spent portions of the weekend Perusing its Pages and curating a short list of 21 recipes that we found particularly inspiring and delicious-sounding.  Not to say that all 140 recipes aren’t great–they all seem to be. For some, though, I didn’t need more than the name of the recipe. From the name, I can put together something Extremely Yummy without having to look at the specific ingredient list. You know the kind of recipe I mean–the ones whose titles are a description of the dish itself: White Fish en Papillote with Citrus on a Bed of Asparagus and Mint Risotto. (No, this is not a recipe in the book, but it could be).

There were a couple of recipes–just a couple–that the winner for that week submitted without ever having tried. I think that is cheating, although the recipes won and obviously deserved to be in the book. But still, I think you should have actually made–or at least tasted–your submission. But then again, I wasn’t an editor and I didn’t make the rules.

At any rate, we have our short list, and now it is time to pass on the book. I hope that the winner curates their own short list and then passes the book along to inspire someone else, but I shan’t hold the winner to that. Besides, this book really is a keeper. The pictures are lovely–I like the Artful presentation of the ingredients for each dish–and the words are nice, too, with a little about each cook and maybe a short back story on the dish as well as Food52 community members’ feedback on the recipes.  The folks who submitted are all passionate cooks, and it certainly shows in their work.  I really have been inspired, and this year I will be doing a series of posts based upon our Short List of Yum. But you don’t want to hear about that right now. You want to know how to win this copy for yourself.

Since all the recipes in The Food52 Cookbook are shared by home cooks–and there wouldn’t be a Food52 Cookbook at all if nobody was a share-er–for a chance to win, simply share a recipe with me here on my facebook page. If you’re not on facebook, please share your recipe in the comments section of this post.  I’ll choose a random winner on Friday, January 27, 2012 at noon EST.

Looking forward to seeing all of your amazing recipes. Who knows, maybe I’ll put together our own community cookbook!  And remember, those of you who are squidgy about sharing recipes, if nobody wanted to share, there wouldn’t be so many wonderful cookbooks out there, not to mention magazines, blogs, websites, etc. So don’t be shy; share for a chance to win The Food52 Cookbook!

**Unfortunately this contest is limited to folks who live in the US since I shall be paying shipping and I am not, contrary to popular belief and my fervent hope, made of money.  Also, please note this is not a brand new copy, as I have perused the book and will be passing it along to the winner. It is in like-new condition however.

Click the picture for attribution.  Thanks, DigitalNative for the fantastic photo.

You may or may not have noticed that I changed the name of my blog from Pastry Methods and Techniques to The Balanced Pastry Chef. I changed the name after really coming to understand on a deep personal level that food can heal, and food can kill. Not like the Deadly Oleander–suddenly and with sharp stomach pains–but slowly and insidiously.  And advertisers keep wanting us to buy Killer Food. Dead food.

I really don’t want to sound all scarily heavy and Depressing, but I think there are still people out there who think that, if it’s sold in a grocery store as food, then it must be okay to eat.  And that’s just not true. The more overly processed the food is, the more I feel the need to enclose the word in quotation marks, thusly: “food.”

And that’s where the balance comes in. Because y’all know I’m a Fan of sugary goodness, of gooeyness, of deep, dark, chocolatey love, of caramel. Mmmm…..caramel….

I have also been known to eat an entire bag of Cheez Doodles on a road trip. Not even a long road trip. And a big bag.  YooHoo is my favorite road trip beverage.  Oreos delight me.  I used to unroll Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls and lick out the filling (notice the past tense there. I recently realized that they taste like chemicals. Go figure).  No matter how large the container of ice cream, it contains one serving.  I cannot shove Cool Ranch Doritos into my face quickly enough.

Because I am aware of my “food” weaknesses, I stay away from them for the most part.  I haven’t had a Cheez Doodle/YooHoo binge in well over a year.  I haven’t eaten Oreos in at least that long.  I never buy Little Debbies anymore. Ever.  Cool Ranch Doritos? A misty memory from 2010, probably. And ice cream? Well, I try to only buy some once every couple of months.

I could go on and on about why these processed foods are Bad for us, but there are plenty of people who do it better than me, and with stuff like Research to back them up.  I’ve read some of the research, but for me, all that boxed, packaged food just feels intuitively Wrong.  And I trust my intuition. And the research. For now, I’ll leave this alone and move on.

Around the time I changed my name to BPC, The Beloved and I started drinking green smoothies.  Tasty and nutritious.  Also, cottage cheese and flax oil smoothies (which are delightful, by the way) to get good fats into our cells.  And we’re eating a ton more vegetables in stir fries and just as Side Dishes. And these are all good things, things that I think balance out my ooey-gooey, chocolately, bready, ice creamy, caramely indulgences.

These are all good things, and both of us are feeling happier and healthier in general.  But, especially after the holidays, I felt that I really needed to do something a bit Radical. To wipe my digestive slate clean and start off fresh.  I’d been reading about The Master Cleanse off and on for a few months now. I sheepishly must admit that the first time I ever heard of it, it was from @mrskutcher. I don’t even really know how it happened, but at least it was on my radar. Thanks for that, Demi.

Since I’m more than a tad OCD, I read everything I could get my mouse on about The Master Cleanse, and it appears to Do Things that I have previously decided were important, like alkalizing and balancing and detoxing and cleansing and a bunch of other benefits that just seem, well, beneficial.

So, I’m doing that now. Even as I type, I am five days into a ten day cleanse, and all is going well.  And when I’m finished with the cleanse, when my Innerds are Tabula Rasa, I will slowly start to reintroduce healthy foods, and I will also welcome the more-frequent-than-occasional indulgence, and I’ll share them all with you. The healthy and the Not So Healthy. But never the Dead. (I’ll keep that to myself).

I wish for you all not only health and happiness, but enough dessert to keep you that way. Because it really is all about the balance.

Hello, friends, and Happy New Year–January 4, to be precise.  I trust your holidays were lovely. Ours were.

The first of the year is the traditional time to Take Stock and set some goals, to close one chapter (or book) and open another.  I have never been a big one for resolutions. I can recall that a friend of a friend used to host a New Year’s Party and as part of the festivities, everyone was asked to write down their resolutions and then share them with everyone else at the party. Further, they would contact all the Party-Goers every quarter to remind them of their resolutions so they could Take Stock and Adjust as Necessary. Really?! Downer, right?  More like a shareholders’ meeting than a party.  Not festive at all.  Decidedly disgruntled, I Refused to participate on the grounds that any resolutions that I Might make were nobody else’s business, and I didn’t need a group of (subdued) revelers to Hold me Accountable.

Let’s just say that that particular tradition faded quietly away.

So, I don’t have any resolutions to share with you. I do have some Items to share, however.

Item 1: since I felt all Give-y last month and ended up giving away a Chemex coffee maker, some wee prep bowls, my favorite hot sauce and a kitchen scale, I have decided that I shall be Give-y at least once a month.  Some stuff I may give away, as Enumerated by some facebook fans: Microplanes, offset spatulas, Useful Gadgetry, Silpats, Keen ingredients, more scales, thermometers and whatever else seems Fun.

Item 2: I haven’t made any videos in awhile, but I think they are a Useful Tool, especially for visual learners.  If you have any ideas for instructional videos, let me know. Nothing too specific–I’m not going to make a video on how to make a coconut cake with lemon curd filling and coconut cream frosting. But I will be happy to make one on how to make fruit curd or even on how to frost a cake, if you want.

Item 3: With every post, tweet, status update, email, video and Interaction, my intention will always be to help, to teach, to support.  And maybe to be funny.  But never to be mean.  I will never make you feel dumb because you ask a question.  I will never get all Snobby on you. I won’t ever be that Overblown Food Blogger who makes you think you can’t Possibly make the Awesome stuff that I make. You guys should just know that.  So, please, ask questions–I’m here to be a teacher and a friend, not some kind of Weird Pastry Oracle.

Item 4: My fundraiser for Johnston County Animal Protection League is ongoing. There’s a button for donating over in my side bar, if you’re feeling give-y.

Okay, so that’s that. And now, I want to share with you the Smackerel that The Beloved and I shared on New Year’s Night.  Easy, tasty and–Bonus–on Sticks!

 The components: cubes o’ bread, cheese, sticks. Oh, and fire.

  And if we’re gonna play with fire, we’d better go outside…

 Bread on stick, stick in fire.

 Add a dab of goat cheese or a wee slice of havarti.
Back into the fire. Or not. Put in face.

What better way to spend the first evening of the new year,
and what better company?

And that does it. If you’ve never put Bread in Fire, you really should. And then smear it with cheese. It was rather Heavenly. Take care, and have a lovely day.

Please click photo for attribution

I’m not sure why that is.  It’s like there’s this huge build up to Christmas: frantic shopping and decorating and cooking and baking and partying and some worshiping and some more shopping and then some Oh Shit I Forgot Doololly’s Gift and the Final Mad Scramble at the Eleventh Hour.  I don’t know, it’s just a lot of build up to a one, maybe two, day event.  Spurred on by the crazy Target Shopping Lady, we all run around like Mad People making sure to get it all done. And then it is done. (It came just the same). Makes me wonder: should we spend literally 60 times as much time getting ready for a Thing as we spend on the Thing Itself?

And after the Thing is over, we all crash. And we eat. Because on January 1st, we have all sworn to Stop Eating. And between now and then we have a refrigerator, freezer and pantry to clean out people. Don’t just sit there; get busy!

Before we know it, it’s time for New Year’s. Everyone has a different tradition, I guess, but lots of folks dress up and get all Celebrate-y and make sure to find someone to kiss at midnight and they sing and they drink and dance and blow horns and What Not. And most of them haven’t even recovered from Christmas. Some folks don’t even work between the two holidays. Nobody goes to school. Not a lot gets done in the earning/learning department during that weird last week of the year.

The saggy, strange hammock of a week that hangs between the sparkly posts of Christmas and New Year’s.

What have I been doing during Hammock Week?  Let’s see.  I slept a Very Lot on Monday, because I was Exhausted from our Whirlwind Christmas Trip.  I did some writing and cleaning of cat cages.  I bought some glass storage containers, because we are trying to get away from plastics.  [As for the rise of plastics in the first place, I blame Sam Wainwright. (Click that link. Seriously. It's awesome)]. I baked a cake and mailed it off to a dear friend. I sent some folks a few of my new business cards.  We have a friend coming to stay overnight on Thursday, so I expect some Cleaning lies in my future. Ye Olde (Newe) Sleep Number Bed will be arriving on Friday. I eagerly await finding out MY sleep number, as does The Beloved.

Even with some Activity, the whole week feels like a giant Pause. A held breath. The moment when a yo-yo reaches the bottom of the string and just. hangs. there.

It’s as if the whole Christmas-celebrating world grinds to a halt before ringing in a new year that everyone hopes will be better than the one we are leaving behind.  Many folks start the new year on such a hysterical high note that they spend the First Actual Day of that new year in a near-coma. Not an auspicious beginning.  I’ve never really been one to Drink to Excess during celebrations, but even so, as the hammock swoops up to New Year, my intention is to spend January 1st the way that I’d like to spend my year: by giving, by sharing, by being kind.

My wish for all of us is that we find those things that fulfill us and live every day with positive intention, affirming the good in ourselves and others. Without being all Pollyanna-ish, I believe that we can know about the negative stuff going on in the world while still focusing on the good.  We attract what we focus on, and I will focus on the right, the good, the healthy and the tasty.