IN THE KITCHEN : A Fine Broth

Escoffier called them “ les fonds de cuisine “--the foundations of classical cooking. But when was the last time you made stock? And who cooks classic French food anymore?

Homemade stock is one of those things that have silently crept off into that good night of food fashion. One minute we’re poring over French cookbooks and are up to our (well-roasted) shinbones in reduced sauces and ragouts. Now we’re suddenly Italian and plucking vine-ripened San Marzano tomatoes for pasta sauce. The next thing you know, we’ll be researching estate-bottled fish sauces.

Times change and so do tastes. Quality does not. Maybe it’s time to revive the cult of stock.

At one point I too was an ardent stock-ite. I confess: For years, I secreted plastic bags full of bones and vegetable trimmings in my freezer. A couple of times a year, I would break them out and cook up a big pot of stock. I remember the process--the browning of the bones, the skimming, the reducing--always made me feel like a cook.

That was years ago, though, when the romance of the kitchen outweighed any practical considerations. In my scheme of cooking, stock-making has, for the last 10 years at least, been definitely relegated to the back burner. On the rare occasions when stock was needed, I was far more likely to do a quick doctor-up job on canned than to make my own from scratch.

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But each time I felt like a cheater. Maybe it was nothing more than the hold of the stock cult; maybe it was something more. Maybe things prepared with homemade stock did taste better. But how much? Was it really worth the effort?

So one day I took my trusty old stockpot out of its hiding place, rinsed out the dust and went to work.

First, I roasted the meat. In this case, I used all the beef bones I could find in my market mixed with a nice meaty piece of neckbone (about 4 pounds of beef, total) and a package of chicken backs and necks (between 3 1/2 and 4 pounds). Though people usually talk about beef stock and chicken stock, I prefer a combination of the two--the chicken adds a subtle sweetness to the beef. Many stock recipes call for veal bones, but they are added for texture more than flavor, and unless you’re planning on demi-glace , they can be left out.

A little less than two hours unattended in a 450-degree oven left the meat nice and dark and crusty. (For a milder stock, you can boil the meats without roasting, but I like the deep-brown flavor that it gives.) After pouring off the rendered fat (of which there was a considerable amount), I put the meat in the stockpot: bones first, then the chicken.

To this I added things I found when I cleaned out the refrigerator--a couple of big woody carrots, a couple of limp stalks of celery (with its greens), a couple small onions, a half-dozen unpeeled cloves of garlic, a couple of over- the-hill tomatoes and several old, open-capped mushrooms. I covered this with water by a couple of inches and set it on the stove over high heat.

This is a good time to emphasize that what I put in the stockpot was what I found, not a hard-and-fast list of required ingredients. If I had them, I would have liked to have added another root vegetable (maybe a parsnip or turnip) and a leek or two. What I do not add (though many other recipes call for them) are any herbs or aromatics beyond a couple of bay leaves. In my previous stock-making life, I would play with different combinations tied up with the celery stalk in a bouquet garni . Not anymore. Any seasonings can be added when the stock is used. That is most emphatically true for salt, which can quickly become overpowering as the liquid evaporates in cooking. I also leave out any vegetables with a cabbagey background. There is a mustard flavor in these that becomes overwhelming when boiled for a long time. No broccoli, no cauliflower, no way.

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When the liquid was nearly boiling, I turned the heat down to low and skimmed the gray albumin foam that floated to the top. The French say to keep stock at a “smile”--a lovely description of that temperature at which bubbles float lazily to the top (a more learned friend says the English word “simmer” is similarly related, via “simper”). Too hard a boil and the heat will seal the outside of the meat, locking flavor in rather than oozing it out.

About 4 1/2 hours later, I pulled the stock off the stove. (In the old days, I put stock on before I went to bed and left it to cook overnight. Somehow, though, waking up to the smell of boiled chicken no longer seems appealing.) I ladled the liquid, roughly 16 cups in this batch, away from the bones and vegetables and through a fine strainer into containers, which I put directly into the refrigerator.

The next day I skimmed off the congealed fat, which had floated to the top and formed a cap thick enough to lift off in one piece, and dumped the stock back into a clean pot. I cooked it again over low heat for several hours, until it had reduced by roughly a third. The change in flavor during this second cooking was remarkable. At first taste, the stock tasted very definitely and separately of both roasted beef and chicken. After reducing, the flavors had melded into a single, round, meaty taste.

After cooling, I ladled the stock into four ice cube trays, which I put into the freezer. This is something of a risky move. Be sure to empty the trays into plastic food bags as quickly as possible: Leaving trays full of stock in the freezer invites disaster. After my wife put concentrated beef stock ice cubes in her mother’s ice tea, I was banished from the freezer for months.

Once you’ve got the stock securely frozen and safely tucked away, it will last practically forever. When you’re ready, add an ice cube for every cup of water, or thereabouts--you’ll figure what ratio fits your taste. This kind of stock is perfect for putting together quick soups or as the base for risotto. And if you decide to make a sauce, it’s already partly reduced.

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Be sure and wait to season the dish until the end, though. Because the stock is made without salt, you’ll probably overestimate the amount required the first time you use it (I know I did--I have a raw potato slice floating in the soup right now, soaking up excess salt, I hope).

And if you have a hard time bringing up taste in the finished stock, add a little water. I can’t explain it scientifically, but sometimes when stocks are reduced too far, the flavors lock up. Thinning them just a bit brings all the meaty flavors back to the fore.

Does the extra effort make a difference? I made two identical vegetable soups, one with homemade stock and the other with canned. Despite the number of added flavors--including potatoes, turnip greens, toasted bread and Parmigiano-Reggiano--the soup with homemade stock had a noticeably deeper, fuller flavor.

You could say the foundation was built better.

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This is not your typical cream of mushroom soup. The mushroom flavor is a little lighter and the texture a bit thinner, to let the taste of the stock shine through. Adding just a bit of soy sauce to a wild mushroom dish is a trick I picked up somewhere, but it does intensify the woodsy flavor. It also makes it most important that you salt carefully.

CREAM OF MUSHROOM SOUP

2 cups homemade stock or 1 (14 1/2-ounce) can unsalted chicken stock, diluted to make 2 cups

2 ounces dried porcini mushrooms

1 shallot

1/2 pound mushrooms, wiped clean and stems trimmed

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon flour

1 cup heavy cream

Salt

White pepper

Bring stock to simmer in small saucepan. Add dried porcini mushrooms. Cook over low heat 1/2 hour.

While stock simmers, drop shallot through feed tube of food processor and mince. Remove processor top and add mushrooms all at once. Chop finely.

Heat butter over medium-high heat in large saucepan. When foam subsides, add mushroom mixture. Cook, stirring frequently, until mushrooms give up liquid, about 5 minutes. Add soy sauce and flour. Continue cooking until mixture is dry, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Strain stock into mushroom mixture through fine mesh strainer. When mixture comes to boil, cook 5 minutes. Reduce heat and add cream. Cook until soup is thick enough to coat back of spoon. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Makes 2 servings.

Each serving contains about:

653 calories; 918 mg sodium; 196 mg cholesterol; 58 grams fat; 32 grams carbohydrates; 10 grams protein; 4.13 grams fiber.