Taking Stock in the Kitchen

I'm going to come right to the point this week.

THERE IS NO REASON YOU SHOULD NOT BE MAKING

YOUR OWN CHICKEN STOCK.

I'm going to repeat this.

THERE IS NO REASON YOU SHOULD NOT BE MAKING

YOUR OWN CHICKEN STOCK.

I watch a lot of shows about cooking, and when I see someone using canned or boxed chicken stock in a recipe, it really pisses me off. Meats stocks are used in so many recipes around the world. They're used as a base for gravies, sauces, rice preparations, soups... the list can go on forever. If you are interested in cooking, and cooking well, why would you use an inferior ingredient when you can make the same at home, deliciously, as well as economically?

Let's take chicken stock as an example. For "gourmet" chicken stock, you'll pay upwards of $4.00 per quart at your local market. You can make the same at home for almost nothing. Here's how I do it.

I almost never buy anything but whole chickens. I can get a whole roaster at my supermarket for anywhere between 89 and 99 cents per pound. I cut up the chicken into its constituent parts, freezing any pieces that I'm not going to use right away, and use the remaining carcass for stock. Oh, inside the chicken you'll usually find a small bag that contains the neck, livers and gizzards. Don't throw these out. Like Dan Ackroyd said in that famous SNL Julia Child sketch, "Save the liver!" You'll use the neck and gizzards in your stock.

Never broken down a chicken? Don't worry. It's easy and only takes a few minutes. All you need is a good sharp knife. Watch the following video and you'll see how easy it is.

All right, now that we're all experienced chicken cutter-uppers, let's make our stock. There are two basic types of chicken stock, roasted and unroasted. Roasted chicken stock uses the roasted chicken parts and unroasted chicken stock uses the raw chicken parts.

Roasted Chicken Stock

Place your chicken parts in a roasting pan a roast at 400 degrees until the chicken has turned a deep brown. When done, place these in a pot. You can also use the remains of that roast chicken you had last night. Waste not want not.

Add two or three carrots, two or three celery stalks, and one onion, all roughly chopped, and one clove of garlic, crushed. Don't bother to peel any of the vegetables.

Add a couple of bay leaves and about a teaspoon of whole peppercorns.

Add enough cold water to cover everything by about an inch.

Bring to a boil and reduce the heat so that the water is just simmering. This makes for a clearer stock. You can also skim the fat and foam that develops to help keep it clear. After a little while there won't be anymore foam to skim. Go do something else and let this stock simmer for three to four hours and let cool. You may have noticed that I didn't add any salt. You add the salt when you use the stock.

When cool, strain the stock, remove the fat and store, either in the refrigerator, or frozen in small batches. To defat the stock, refrigerate it and when the fat sets, remove it in pieces with a spoon. I like to use a fat separator. The one I recommend is by Oxo Goodgrips. It has a little stopper that goes in the spout and really keeps the fat out.



If you keep your stock in the fridge, bring the stock to a boil every few days and it will keep indefinitely, and just add it to the next batch you make. Did you know that in China there are master sauces that are reportedly hundreds of years old, kept fresh and unspoiled by continuously adding new ingredients and reboiling?

We're not quite done yet. There's still a lot of meat on them thar bones. Pick the meat from the bones and use it in soup. Or, if you have pets, it makes a nice special dinner treat. Around our house, the dogs call it shmutz night. Actually, we call it that. The dogs just eat it.

Unroasted Chicken Stock

Make unroasted chicken stock the same way, just don't cook the chicken. The resulting stock will be a little lighter and clearer, good for light soups and sauces.

The final cost? About a buck for a couple of quarts. Remember, the chicken would have normally been thrown out, so, what did the chicken actually cost? You really only had to buy the vegetables, and they probably didn't even cost more than a dollar. That's pretty economical, and once you used your own chicken stock, the store bought stuff is never going to taste the same.

So start making you own chicken stock today. I don't want to have to come to your pantry and check for boxes and cans. Remember:

THERE IS NO REASON YOU SHOULD NOT BE MAKING

YOUR OWN CHICKEN STOCK.

Welcome to Sarajevo

I was in Bosnia in 1998 to shoot series of reports on U.S. troops, three years after security forces entered the country. The military, under terms of the the Dayton Accords, were scheduled to begin withdrawl in July of that year, but their stay was ultimately extended.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the countries that make up what is known as the Balkans, is a beautiful country, with rolling hills and tile roofed buildings. Although the three years of intense war, between 1992 and 1995, ravaged the countryside, the cities and the people, the people were warm, inviting and most of all, glad for the presence of NATO forces. Although the threat of overt violence had been largley stemmed when I was there, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina lived with the daily threat of death and dismemberment because of the hundreds of thousands of undetonated and undocumented land mines.





According to the Electronic Mine Information Network, there are still "1,631 identified communities’ impacted by mines and/or unexploded ordnance. These threats directly affect the safety of approximately 921,513 people, out of whom 154,538 live in high-impact communities, 342,550 in medium-impact communities and 424,425 in low-impact communities." If you would like to learn more about mine action around the world, go to the Electronic Mine Information Network.

To see the reports that came out of that trip, click on the clips below.

During the times when I wasn't shooting, we were able to get out into the surrounding communities and I was able to sample some of the local fare. One day, in Tuzla, we stopped at a little cafe and had a dish called cevapi (pronounced cheh-vah-pee). Actually, what we had was a sandwich; but, oh, what a sandwich. The Food Network has a show called The Best Thing I Ever Ate, and one of the recent episodes was about sandwiches. If I was on that episode, I would definitely cite cevapi as one of the great things to eat between two pieces of bread.

Cevapi is a dish made of grilled minced meat, usually a combination of beef and lamb. It is considered the national dish of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro; but, it can be found (in various forms) throughout the Balkans. The word cevapi is the serbo-croatian form of the arabic word, kebab, which we all know and love. In the Balkans, cevapi is served on a kind of bread called lepinja, with sliced onions, and that's it. Simple and delicious. Here's how you can make cevapi at home.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound ground beef and lamb (I like to use a 50/50 mix, but let your taste be your guide)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium onion, minced
2 tbsp mineral water
1 tbsp oil
pepper to taste
Vegeta* or salt to taste

*Vegeta is a powdered seasoning made in Croatia and used throughout the Balkans and eastern Europe. It contains salt, dehydrated vegetables, spices, sugar, cornstarch and MSG. You can get it in most supermarkets that have an international aisle, or on the web. Just look for the happy chef on the bright blue bag.

TO COOK
Mix all the ingredients by hand.

Refrigerate mixture for at least two hours, or overnight.

Wet hands with water and shape the mixture into uniform rolls about the size of breakfast sausages (you know, like Parks Sausages you find in the freezer case).

Cook the cevapi on a hot charcoal, or wood, grill for 6-10 minutes, turning frequently (oil the grate first). You can also cook these in a lightly oiled frypan, but try to use a grill, if you can.

Cevapi can be served between slices of lepinja, or on its own, with sliced onion and tomato.

I have looked, and looked, for a recipe for lepinja, with little luck. There is one recipe on the internet that you can try, but my attempts didn't match what I had in Tuzla. It may be the recipe, it may be me. But, unless you live near a serbian or balkan community, your best bet will be to use ciabatta rolls. They're pretty close to lepinja.

And what should you have to drink with your cevapi? Pivo, of course. That's serbo-croation for beer. Try this recipe in place of hamburgers some time. You won't be disappointed.

Until next time, do vidjenja, and keep eating.