Consomme and Clarity...

"In the timbre of my voice, the shape of me, my response to another's misery or happiness, in my affections and prejudices, my flavors, so to speak, I am like consommé." - Henri Charpentier

While at work today, I began to think about the properties of a good, wholesome consommé. Consommé, by definition is a clear soup of a richly flavored stock that has been clarified and refined. I remember starting to make consommés in my culinary arts classes by combining ground chicken or turkey, egg whites, vegetables, tomatoes and stock, a cheesecloth filled with spices and herbs, and allowing it to slowly simmer for about fifteen to thirty minutes. The key to my beloved consommé was to never let it boil - boiling make the proteins get tough and therefore gives you a cloudy consommé and is most unpleasant. Once the broth has simmered, the proteins form a raft of the meat, vegetables, tomatoes and egg whites which then trap all the impurities of the soup. After it has reached the desired clear, flavorful consistency, the soup is strained through a fine metal sieve lined with a coffee filter and then the fat is skimmed off the soup, dished into your loveliest soup bowls and garnished with anything you desire from perfectly cut vegetables to herbs, scallions, noodles or egg yolks.

Now, this is a long and very tedious process that takes a whole lot of prep time, cook time and serving time. I am not going to mince words and say that it is easy, that it is not infuriating and aggravating when you are making this delicious soup and find your raft splits into thirds and you are trying to strain it and it is getting little particles all over the place. It is a pain.

But the point of consommé is that it is worth it. It takes a long time and careful care and attention but the results are impressive and quite beautiful. Few dishes are as simple and elegant as a perfectly clear consommé served as a first course. Along with its beauty, few dishes are as nutritionally sound as a fat free, protein rich consommé. Therefore, this soup that takes careful work to make, a careful watchful eye and patience makes it one of the world's most complex and carefully thought out dishes, a dish any chef can be proud to serve at his or her table.

But I have digressed from my original point: thinking about consommé at work. Why was I thinking of consommé at work? No, not another pregnancy craving, although those do come more often lately. Henri Charpentier said this lovely line in order to show a similarity between the thought that goes into a beautiful bowl of consommé and the thought that should go into every action and thought that we have. Whether it is my response to your joy or misery, my affection for you, my tastes, my style, my being - all these things should be carefully considered and attended to such as one attends to a lovely soup. Before reacting, before judging, before living, one should carefully judge what goes into the pot, what effect it will have on the previous and future ingredients and what the final outcome will be. Will anger cloud my soup? Will hastiness cause the raft to break? Will my eagerness cause a greasiness and therefore cause me more work later in the process to completion?

I have often believed that when dealing with our own lives, our own friends and our own homes and families, we act eagerly and hastily, without much contemplation to what our actions and opinions will do to those ingredients that surround us. The same goes into what we put on our tables. Just to get something on the table, we eagerly throw whatever is around on a dish without much thought to taste, function or meaning. Maybe a little thought and intention will save us from a future of broken rafts, greasiness and cloudy judgments. Maybe a little deliberateness causes a clear point of view, a beauty of thought and a perfectly satisfying simplicity that can only come from consommé.