GIGO

Apologies to my loyal reader, deadlines loomed, apathy reigned.

But I’m back, I’m sure your heart is all atwitter.

Garbage In Garbage Out – GIGO – was one of those acronyms that I remember being tossed about in the early days of personal computing. I think it first heard it when I was taking a PASCAL class, if that dates it at all, but I don’t hear it as much anymore with regards to software.
What the hell does that have to do with food? Well, the making of stocks, for one, something that has been on my mind a lot lately.

The French word for stock is fond which shares its roots with the English word Foundation. The stock is the basis for a whole range of “small sauces,” and it is safe to say that western cuisine would be a radically different thing were it not for the creation and use of stocks. Sauces may not be all the rage today, but they underpin the French Culinary Tradition, and, like it or not, that underpins most of the Western Culinary Tradition (and yes, I am aware of the role of the Medici’s, thank you very much).

Anyway, in the French Tradition, if you make a bad stock, virtually everything that follows will be bad, since it is tainted by that stock. Your braising liquid, the liquid your vegetables were blanched in, the foundation for the sauce that ties it all together, all use that crappy stock, and thus, they too are crappy.

The key to a good stock? Use good ingredients. Don’t throw in scraps that you wouldn’t eat yourself (some mushroom stems being an exception), don’t use old veggies, rancid bones or bad water. The quality of what you start the process with will totally define the quality of the end product. If you can produce a good stock, then all of those dishes that use that stock are lifted by it, rather than oppressed by it. But if you put garbage into it, you get garbage out of it.

I suppose that to some extent, GIGO applies to all cooking, but stocks are different somehow. I suppose it is because they are the foundation of so much more.

More on stocks tomorrow.