cooking.with.gas

we all scream

"We took strolls in the musty-smelling bazaars of the Shar-e-Nau section of Kabul, or the new city, west of the Wazir Akbar Khan district. We talked about whatever film we had just seen and walked amid the bustling crowds of bazarris. We snaked our way among the merchants and the beggars, wandered through narrow alleys crampedwith rows of tiny, tightly packed stalls. Baba gave us each a weekly allowance of ten Afghanis and we spent it on warm Coca-Cola and rosewater ice cream topped with crushed pistachios."

from The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (New York: Riverhead Books, 2003, page 23.)

But if I didn't own a pressure cooker...

...I'd take the exact same ingredients, put them into a heavy pot, put the lid on, and simmer the whole shebang for a couple of hours.

A plucky tale.

"Ruby had already torn the meat off the bones of one bird and had its carcass boiling in the big pot over the fire to make broth for Stobrod. So Ada sat Inman down by the hearth and handed him a plate of the pulled turkey to start nibbling on. Ruby knelt and tended the pot with great concentration. She skimmed the grey foam off the water with a spurtle she had whittled that afternoon out of a poplar limb for the lack of the dogwood she needed to do the job right. She flung the foam in the fire, where it hissed away"

from Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1997, page 414).

"Inman ate without talking. Before he was finished, Ruby judged that the turkey carcass had given the creek water about all it had to give in the way of sustenance. She dipped out enough to half fill the smaller pot. The broth had the life of the wild bird in it and was rich and cloudy, the color of nutmeats toasted in a dry pan."

from Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1997, page 414).

In these times, when it's just as easy to pluck chicken broth from a tin or a tetrapak, it seems like rather a bit of effort to make it at home. But even though a recent taste test I saw on a consumer programme over on the Radio-Canada network had Broth in a Box rated as tasting the most chickeny, and even though said Broth has a home on my pantry shelf, I can't help longing for homemade.

My early broth experiences were not unlike that of Ruby, described above -- taking the carcass from a chicken already eaten, and trying to boil anything good left out of it. But my broth was decidedly NOT like Ruby's -- it had little flavour, it was not rich, and was weak in colour. I eventually abandoned it, and constantly wondered how people DID manage to turn out decent broth at home.

Fast forward a few years. I move to France, where by some miracle there is a convergence of events that lead to my making a chicken broth that is the best I've ever mustered.

So what did it take?

First: our kitchen was equipped with gas, and we bought a gas cooktop. Normal in France, not normal for me, who had never, ever cooked with gas before. I was a bit nervous about the whole thing, but was quickly converted (so much so that I insisted that a gas line be installed in my kitchen when we moved into our house recently). Soon I was cooking with gas, and I've never looked back.

Second: I discovered the joy of working with a pressure cooker. I'd never had one, because of the horror stories that I'd heard about the things exploding. But lo and behold, the pressure cooker is a staple in French households, so much so that the things are actually advertised on television. I bought one (I now own three of the things), I began to learn how to use it.

Three: French chickens are great, even from the supermarket. Free-range, grain-fed, lovely yellowy things, not too large (not having been pumped full of things to make them grow), and full of flavour. I havne't tasted good chicken since I moved back to Canada.

So how do these three things connect to make chicken broth? Although you can very well use a pressure cooker on electric elements, they work best on gas. And if you have a really nice chicken, you can easily make broth in the pressure cooker.

You take your pressure cooker. You put a whole chicken in it. You add an onion, a couple of bay leaves, a carrot, some celery leaves. You cover it with water (in my pressure cooker, I just filled it to the maximum line). You bring the pressure cooker up to high pressure, then lower the heat just enough to keep it at pressure for 25 minutes. Then you turn off the heat.

When the pressure comes down naturally, you can carefully open the pressure cooker and voilà! Absolutely perfect chicken broth.

At this point, I strain everything out, set aside any chicken meat to put in a soup or casserole (it's not tasty enough for sandwiches), then I put the broth into containers into the fridge. When it cools, the fat separates out and soldifies on top, at which point I take it off. A French cook would probably set it aside to cook with, but my cholesterol levels stop me doing that.

Then, I can put it into containers and freeze it for later use, or set it aside to make soup. I generally made broth every one to two weeks, because I use it in lots of things, soups and stirfries and suchlike.

I put no salt or pepper or spices in it, as some recipes can call for, because I preferred to add that in later.

Mind you, I've not made broth since we moved back to Canada. I now have two of my ingredients, the gas cooker and the pressure cooker. But I've yet to find a chicken that seems appetizing enough to put in the pot. Preferably grain-fed, free-range, and drug-free.

When I do, though, I'll be happily making chicken broth, and confident of its flavour.