The Joy of Stocks

Making stock is one of life's simplest culinary pleasures. It fills the house with a comforting smell (unless it's lamb, which I tend not to bother with), and as a near freebie warms the heart of the austerity cook.

Earlier in the week with son suffering with severe yoot flu I made a chicken broth for our evening meal having prepared the stock in the afternoon using the well-picked carcase of a roast bird. Anyone who believes there is no difference between real stock and a cube has yet to make the real stuff. Same son, aka Sternest Critic, can always tell if I make risotto with the cheaty option.

Yesterday I got around to making some beef stock with the bones and bits from Sunday's roast. It was getting near the time when I would no longer trust it, and Friday being shopping day we needed to clear some room in the fridge. Chicken stock I make in about an hour, as simmered too long it can go a bit gluey; beef can bubble modestly for three or four hours.

The bones were joined by four bay-leaves, a large onion quartered, two sticks of celery and the leaves of several more, a carrot in thick diagonal slices (to give plenty of surface area), with several cloves of garlic, about 12 peppercorns, and two flowers of star anise. Not sure if that is what they should be called but they look like it. Three hours - and a half-teaspoonful of salt - later we have the liquid makings of a Chinese noodle soup, kept in the fridge overnight so the beefy fat can be skimmed off (and probably used in cooking something else, or maybe just on a sliver of toast).

Years ago Chris Johnson, who in Ramsbottom since the 1980s has run the best restaurant in the North West under various different names - the original was The Village Restaurant - told us about a trip to I think a Paul Bocuse eaterie. He had been terribly disappointed, and was scathing about a soup tried there, with as he put it 'no depth' to the stock. He seemed saddened that such a hero of the food world should have erred in so basic a fashion. That depth is in fact really easy to achieve even in the home kitchen, so I can understand Chris's dismay, leaving aside what had been paid for the bowlful.