Chef’s Warehouse Cookery School

In the interest of personal culinary improvement with the end goal of passing on said benefits to you, dear reader, Justine and I have enrolled in a back-to-basics class with Liam Tomlin of Chef’s Warehouse.

We recently spent three and a half enthralling hours learning about stocks and consommés. There is not a hint of sarcasm intended in that statement, it was a fantastic evening.

In the daily drudge of getting dinner on the table, we are seduced by recipes that demand a minimal time-effort commitment. Perfectly understandable on your ordinary Tuesday evening, when children require feeding and laundry begs to be folded, yet there are occasions that call for a lovingly crafted, homemade broth, just like the tomato consommé Liam served up.

Seasoned with a touch of 12-year-old balsamic vinegar and set with gelatin, I can safely say that I tasted essence of tomato and went back for seconds. Use homemade stocks to enrich sauces and soups and to poach meat, chicken and fish. A good stock is the basis of a great meal. Once you’ve been caught in the flavour trap, the toil seems a superlatively fair trade.

Here’s some of the wisdom I gleened:

1.    Never allow a stock to boil, the flavour will be best extracted through a long, slow simmer.
2.    Don’t think of a stock as a means to use up leftovers, what you put in is what you get out.
3.    Be patient when you cook, the end result will be worth it.

Liam also demonstrated double chicken stock (basically you make chicken stock, then repeat the process using the original stock instead of water, for an ultimately chickeny brew), veal stock, mushroom stock and consommé and sweet corn soup – all the flavour is drawn from the husks you’d normally toss in the bin.

The evening culminated in an al dente porcini cep risotto fashioned from a musty mushroom stock and finished off with grated Parmesan and truffle salt. As they say, the truth is in the tasting.