A WORD FROM THE KITCHEN: Consommé

Last week I was flipping through a cookbook and saw a recipe for Consommé. The clear, double strength soup is an old school preparation, since most cookbooks contain recipes instructing the addition of stock from a can or a carton, it is rare to see an author explain consommé. The soup is made through an elaborate process of reduction, filtering and clarifying. The final step involving egg whites, finely diced vegetables and usually ground meat added to a stock pot and stirred continually over low heat (as not to cook the eggs to quickly) sometimes for a half an hour or more.

Complaints could be made that everyone wants their cooking to be flash and flame - to kick it up a notch or produce a 30 minute variation, that no one wants to cook - to lose yourself in the often mundane, repetitive tasks in the kitchen. In this instance, consommé might have fallen off the menu because who needs a soup course, that isn't how people dine any more. Still, looking at the recipe and reading all the variations for a garnish: Because the soup is clear, consommé is served with an elaborate garnish in the bowl - a singular slice of tenderloin about the thickness of a sheet of paper, thinly sliced crepes, a leaf of Italian parsley rolled between two nearly transparent sheets of pasta, a julienne of vegetables bundled together by a strip of green onion or a half dozen thin enokis floated next to one plump roasted chanterelle - for a fleeting moment I understood the value of a small, perfectly constructed taste.

My brother Carl, who reads and writes poetry, probably understands that idea on a much deeper level than I, below he explains the history of the word consommé and offers his own thoughts on a soup that is rarely seen or served these days.

Consommé

The French term consummar mean to complete, finish. One is also supposed to consult the word consummate for a richer understanding. But first things first, consommé is a clarified soup and quite magical. Take a cooled down stock, dice any and everything you want and place it in the pot, add egg whites and heat slowly. With a large spoon begin stirring and remain stirring until temperature reaches 160 degrees. The surface of the soup should form a crust and all diced material will be gathered up, trapped in the egg whites’ web of protein. Let broth simmer under this small geological experiment. Break through with a ladle and find a deeply elegant soup.

Jesus said: it is accomplished. Translations, when time and usage change are added, become very difficult to comprehend. If he said anything at all he might have said achieved or satisfied or consummated. The broth is a union of all things in the universe of the stock pot. The many becomes one. Marriage, in its way, dances the same dance. There is the egg and what it binds. Consummation is the ultimate end, a thing perfected. The soup is finished, yet it needs to be served and consumed. Like marriage and like Jesus it seems once something is finished, it is far from over, that in fact, it is just beginning a life of its own.

-Carl Adamshick