recipes cont.

From below in more detail. I've always had the idea for this Group of recipes and wanted to try it out. It makes sense to me to make dressings or even bases/finishings for sauces. As mentioned this is an old one but necessary for the others to come from his process. This is ARTICHOKE. 1/3 lb slab bacon. 3 carrot. 2 spanish onion. 1 head celery. Light chicken stock. Light vegetable stock. White wine/ prefer a mineral/earthy based chardonnay or even better yet something a little sweet, a reisling or pinot gris. But be careful to not use to much of the sweeter wines. 2 fennel bulb. 2 parsnip root peeled. 1 case 24ct Artichokes (peeled and prepped for cooking. This is a very important part of the recipe. One must take the time to turn each choke by hand, remove the bitter seeds, and make sure that all the strands from the base are removed. I use a peeler personally at this point. What ever works best for you. Sweat the bacon and root vegetable until clear. Add some toasted Fennel seed, black peppercorns, bay leaf. Add artichokes and cook 5 minutes. Deglaze with wine. Reduce to sec. Add half and half stocks to cover. Parchment paper lid and cook till desired tenderness. I always pull them 20 minutes before they are done so that I can let them cool in the walkin in their juices. This is preferred if time and space allows. once the artichokes are cooked and chilled remove them from the liquid and use accordingly. For our purposes we want the artichoke broth. Bring back to a boil and strain through a chinois. In a separate clean heavy bottom rondo sweat out some more root vegetables and dry spices accordingly to what flavor your anticipating. Personally im going for straight up artichoke with the background of bacon and wine minerals. Once your vegetables are clear deglaze with white wine and reduce to sec. Add artichoke broth and SLOWLY reduce by half. Make sure to have traditional bouqet with leek leaf and all. Once reduced by half strain through chinois. Cool in ice bath and skim off surface. Bring back to a simmer and add 1/3 total artichoke broth volume of heavy cream. Reduce this by half, again strain, cool, and skim. At this point we should have a very thick jelly like quantity of artichoke and cream reduction. The idea is to use the very minimal amount of cream possible. Its tempting to want to use a whole quart or more to "strech" it out. This is not something that can be streched or short cutted in any way. The end result as you will see is based completly on this theory or process. Whatever you want to call it, ive seen to many guys add 50 percent cream to broth, come out with twice the amount of dressing but wonder why it doesnt taste like artichoke. Very simple, you get what you give. Bring to room temperature and place in vita prep. Slowly emulsify in a good quality olive oil. Use some grape seed or canola oil if your loosing to much flavor. Fresh lemon juice, sea salt and white pepper to taste. Strain through and push through a chinoise into a clean squeeze bottle. "ARTICHOKE DRESSING" is what we have come to. It can be used on any number of dishs as a sauce, we use it on our cold shaved fennel salad as the dressing with the loup de mer in summer time on the coast. Its even been used as a dipping sauce for fried artichokes. (But what a waiste! ) now that we have established this base idea, there are many many directions to go. Its late so we will sleep on it for the night, but this feels like the beginning of something new and unique to use as part of our arsenal in the BOH. Did I mention glazed vegetables???;) .