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Don’t rush, the process is slow and that's one reason roux is less popular. It takes too much time.
When the roux has turned the appropriate color, stir in a little cool soup to form a paste. For a
lump-free roux it is critical that you stir continuously and add the liquid slowly and gradually.
Lumps are often a problem for less experienced cooks, another reason cooks turn the page when
they read a recipe that requries roux. Continue to add liquid slowly until the paste is thin as
cream. Then stir it into the soup, simmer for about 10 minutes to get rid of the raw flour taste,
and there you have it—a nice thick soup with a good body. A blond roux you make with one
tablespoon each of flour and fat provides adequate thickening for a quart (liter) of liquid.
If you’re a frequent user of roux for sauces, soups and vegetables, you can prepare
quantities in different shades of color in advance instead of making it up each time. Store the
extra in the refrigerator and scoop out a little whenever you need it, diluting it with a small
amount of hot liquid to make a paste, then adding it to the pot. This is a simple and elegant
thickening, but it is not used much in North American cuisine. If you do any French or Cajun
cooking, it is an quintessential part of the process.
The technique of making a roux is simple and foolproof if you observe a couple of points.
Be patient with the browning process—do it slowly. Add cold liquid to the finished hot roux just
as slowly, making a uniform, velvety, lump-free paste.. If lumps appear, they won't disappear as
you continue cooking your dish, no matter how much you stir or wish them away. If that
happens, either skim off as many of them as you can from the surface of the soup or press the
lumps through a fine sieve or pretend they are intentional—perhaps a new-age garnish. After all,
an important part of being an accomplished cook is handling minor disasters with aplomb.
When you use a cold roux from your refrigerator, add hot liquid to cold roux.
The finishing touch
When it comes to soups, the term garnish is ambiguous. It refers to edible stuff that cooks
add to the soup to make it richer, more hearty and satisfying. But it also refers to items they add
at the last minute to make it more appetizing looking, more appealing to the eye.
Garnishes of the first category you add in small amounts and are not meant to change the
flavor (though some garnishes are very tasty by themselves). A simple garnish for this purpose is
pasta, a vermicelli or any other thin pasta shape. Others are more complex, like tortellini filled
with cheese or even meat, tiny meatballs or matzo balls. Then there are cute little things called
soup puffs (they used to go by the name dumplings but that gives the wrong connotation) that are
basically irregularly-shaped egg pastas that you make yourself from flour, water, egg and salt
(see recipe). The most fun and satisfying garnishes are always the ones you make yourself.
Soup puffs
These soup puffs are like a rich home-made Italian egg pasta or German spaetzle
(spätzle). It takes minutes to prepare and they add glamour to any hot soup. You can also make a
soup puff dough into vermicelli if you knead more water in the dough until it is thin as mashed
potato. Then press this through a strainer directly into the hot soup.
Ingredients
1
egg yolk
play © erdosh 29
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