In a comment to the last post, Chad asked how the clarification with laboratory glass ware works. Here’s how. Basically it’s a filtration. But if you would use a normal filter paper (such as a coffee filter) and let gravity pull the liquid through the filter, it would take ages. By applying a vacuum to the back side of the filter, the stock is sucked through (or pushed if you like by the atmospheric pressure). The are several possible sources of vacuum. The simplest and cheapest is a water aspirator or a handpump. More expensive solutions include a membrane pump or an oil pump. The particles you want to remove are from 0.0001 mm and upwards to > 1 mm. The best thing would be to first pass the stock through a cheese cloth or a muslin, followed by one or more filtrations using filter paper. This would gradually yield a perfectly clear solution. Pictures of a Büchner funnel, Erlenmeyer flask and a water aspirator can be found on the tools page of Khymos. Pictures of a complete setup can be found by googling. If doing this in a kitchen, you would want to have an Erlenmeyer flask of at least 2-3 L as this is where the clearified stock is collected. The Büchner funnel should preferably have a diameter of 12 cm or more.

The fascinating thing about a filtration like this is that you can also remove color. At the EuroFoodChem XIV conference I was told by Jorge Ruiz of Lamaragaritaseagita that you can make perfectly clear tomato juice by succesive filtrations, starting with a coarse filter and moving to finer filters. All in all, 3-5 filtrations should be sufficient.

This month’s TGRWT is hosted by Le Petite Boulanger, and the foods to pair are chocolate and meat. The recipe for the chocolate beef stock cream is inspired by the Iberian Ham Cream by Ferran Adrià/El Bulli (the recipe can be found on p. 21 in the hydrocolloid recipe collection). I used anis because it brings out the meatiness very well. After mixing in the olive oil I saw that the droplets were not properly dispersed. Addition of some lecithin which solved this problem.

Chocolate beef stock cream
100 g water
2 g beef stock powder
10 g chocolate (70%)
1/4 t anis, powdered
0.5 g xanthan
0.2 g lecithin
20 g olive oil
honey and chili oil to taste

Heat water to dilute beef stock and melt chocolate. Cool. Add xanthan and lecithin. Mix with immersion blender. Add olive oil. Mix until smooth texture. Sprinkle with chives.

Grilled pork tenderloin
pork tenderloin, cut in 3 cm thick pieces
oil
powdered anis
crushed garlic

Marinate meat with oil, garlic and anis mixture. Grill. Serve together with the chocolate meat broth cream.

Verdict: The chocolate beef stock cream has very meaty and almost nutty flavour. Honey is important to round of the otherwise slightly bitter taste of the chocolate. Chili oil gives it a bite, but can be omitted.

You can get an impression of the texture from this video: