Graveyard Shift

It's 4:00 AM, I'm taking a quick break from writing copy for the fourth iteration of the Productivity Enhancement website, and a new batch of glace de viande is a-cookin' on the stove.

I love making glace. It takes about twenty hours, and the most sleep you can effectively get at any one time is about three hours. But the results are so very much worth it.

Glace. It's poetry.

My first attempts many years ago were a coin toss until I got the techniques down. Now it's like second nature. The final reduction is still a bit nerve wracking because it's only a couple of minutes between beautiful and burned, but I haven't burned a batch in a long time.

Another thing contributing to my consistent successes these days is my wonderful suppliers:

My regular butcher at Publix gets me these utterly fantastic marrow bones, where every single bone has at least an inch diameter piece of marrow in the shank. And I get them for (hold on to your ass) about a buck-forty a pound! I also use a meaty veal shoulder blade left over from boning one out earlier (I freeze them for later use).

Dekalb Farmer's Market is where I usually get canned Rega brand San Marzano tomatoes by the case, but last time I stocked up I also picked up a few cans of Rega brand tomato paste. I grew up brand-married to Contadina tomato paste, and have always been loyal, but I got divorced the moment I tasted the raw Rega product. Oh my God, this is a perfect product. It's bright natural red (Contadina is much muddier), perfect acidity, perfect natural sweetness, perfect salinity, perfect consistency (Contadina is too solid). Next time I go I'm picking up two cases, which should last me about a year.

Twelve pounds of beef and veal bones, three pounds of vegetables, and a sachet of herbs will end up as a half-inch thick, nine-inch diameter disk of dark brown hard rubber. I'll cut it into half-inch cubes and place them in an open bowl in the freezer.

Then, when it's time to turn a sauce into a masterpiece, I'll take a couple cubes and bring them to room temperature using a ramekin, a little liquid, and a few seconds in the microwave, then whisk them into the sauce.

Oh, where shall I use it?

I have sixteen chicken legs cleaved above the knee joint marinating in pinot noir and aromatic vegetables in the refrigerator since last night. Friday morning it will be transformed into a young hen version of coq au vin, and the sauce will be mounted with some of tonight's glace de viande and a bit of pureed chicken liver for depth of flavor. The chicken will be browed in rendered bacon fat and flambeed with cognac before the sauce goes on, then everything goes in the oven for three hours or so.

Here's the trick with reducing the fat: slice the slab a little more than 1/8" thick and then crosswise into 1/8" little lardons, don't blanch the lardons before frying, and fry slowly until the fat is fully rendered so all that is left is crispy meat. The crisp meat will soften again when the dish stews in the oven, but won't add fat.

After removing the fried bacon from the pan, leave *all* the bacon fat in the pan and fry the chicken legs about four at a time on all sides over medium rather than high heat, which gives the chicken skin a chance to render some of its own fat. The extra fat in the pan enables the chicken to fry deeper and render fat better. It's true: there are some ways to use more fat during cooking so that you eat less fat than you would with typical cooking techniques that use less fat.

Drain the chicken on a rack rather than on paper towels. When all the chicken has been fried you'll end up with a good bit of fat in the pan that you can just pour out. Deglaze the fond that remains using the strained reserved pinot noir marinade before adding the chicken and fried bacon and stewing in the oven at 325F.

After everything cools for a few hours any remaining excess fat (including what rendered from the chicken during stewing) will float on top where it can be skimmed.

So the final relatively lowfat reduction sauce is mounted using fatless glace and a little chicken liver.

I'll let you know how it turns out.