Happy Anniversary to Me!

Whoot, whoot, shimmy, shimmy! Today just happens to mark the one year anniversary of this blog. Aren't you impressed? Now, I know that you are asking yourself: how does Marilyn intend to celebrate such a momentous occasion? By spending the day in the kitchen, of course!

First, let's have some freshly made salsa and a nice glass of white wine.

This time around I had tomatoes (Roma tomatoes from my garden, vine-ripened tomatoes from the store), 3 small but potent Serrano chiles from my garden, some red onion, flat leaf parsley from the garden and fresh lime juice for the salsa.

And now, on to the main event.

I just needed to make some vegetable consomme today.

Here I have a fresh bay leaf, a sprig of fresh oregano, 2 green onions, 7 carrots (unpeeled and scrubbed), 10 black peppercorns, some Crimini mushrooms, a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme, a tomato, a russet potato, a Vidalia onion, some sprigs of fresh flat leaf parsley, a bunch of celery heart (including the young leaves) and 2 cloves of garlic.

Wash and scrub the veggies and wipe off the mushrooms. Quarter or chop the veggies and place in a large roasting pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 1-1/2 hours, stirring once.

Meanwhile, add the celery leaves, fresh herbs and the whole peppercorns to a bit of water in a large stockpot.

At the end of the roasting time, remove the veggies to the stock pot.

Add 2 cups of water to the roasting pan and heat over medium heat. Gently scrape the bits from the bottom of the pan. Pour the contents into the stockpot.

Add more water to the stockpot and bring to a boil. Once the mixture begins to boil, turn the heat down to medium-low and simmer for 2 hours.

Admit it: you are wishing you had smell-a-blog right now. Yes, it smells that good.

Remove the spent veggies and chill the pot of stock in an ice bath.

I decided to take this stock a step further and make consomme. After cleaning out the pot and other utensils, I added all but 1 cup of the cooled stock back to the pot. Heat over medium-high heat until the stock reaches a boil.

Add the white of one egg and the egg shell to the remaining 1 cup of stock. Add to the now-boiling stock and place the pot off to one side of the burner. Set your kitchen timer for 5 minutes. When the time is up, turn the pot one quarter turn and set the timer for another 5 minutes. Repeat twice more until the pot has made one complete turn on the side of the burner.

Notice how the egg whites have begun to coagulate and gather the impurities of the stock together.

Vegetable stock.

Vegetable consomme.

Brighter, clearer, more intense. Quite simply, perfection.