Cooking with wine is one of the most basic kitchen skills and one that I personally enjoy a lot.  There is something just so right about pouring a shot of wine into a hot pan or smelling a red wine stew bubble for hours.  Wine can do some pretty amazing things to a dish, and is responsible for many of your favorite meals.  It can turn a tough piece of meat into a tender roast or brown, dried up bits into a delicious pan sauce.  Cooking with wine the right way is basically food magic.

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Let’s talk about shallots.

Shallots are a really great ingredient but many people don’t understand them or feel intimidated to use them.  Shallots are similar to small onions, but have a milder flavor that is both like and unlike onion, garlic, and chives.  Sweeter than the sweetest onion, with just a touch of apple and garlic flavor.  They are one of the keys to the subtle flavors of fine cooking.  They are perfect for poultry and fish dishes.

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A deep, velvety, flavor-rich liquid distilled from basic ingredients; stock is the mother of sauces, soups, stews, just about everything we eat.  What’s the biggest difference between your food and the food at your favorite restaurant?  Most likely, it’s that they have several huge cauldrons of freshly made stock bubbling all day, every day, waiting to be incorporated into nearly every dish they serve in one way or another.  It’s real stock, made in large quantities from real bones, vegetables and seasonings.  Stock is what makes food taste special.

I’m going to show you how to make a dark veal stock, but the same concepts can be applied to any bunch of bones you have laying around.  This is not the stock you would find in the kitchen of a 2 or 3 Michelin-starred restaurant, but it’s serviceable and way better than most home cooks will ever lay hands on.

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