The more I cook and the more I read about cooking, the more I realize how much I have yet to learn about cooking.  Sound familiar?  Perhaps not, but then again if you haven’t read “The Elements of Cooking” by Michael Ruhlman it may be a realization you have yet to undergo.  Ruhlman is a compelling writer who expounds on what he firmly believes are the definitive elements of cooking; starting with essays that discuss stock, sauces, salt, the egg, heat, tools, cookbooks and the finesse of cooking.  Following these essays, Ruhlman provides an A to Z description of the elements of cooking with entries ranging from ingredients, to cooking techniques, to cooking equipment.  Throughout Ruhlman presents his views, as exemplified by the following excerpt on Veal Stock which Ruhlman reveals as the home cook’s most valuable ingredient.  While you may not agree with everything Ruhlman says, there is no doubt that while reading The Elements of Cooking, even experienced cooks will find much to learn in this interesting book.  You may even, as I did, learn just how much more their is to learn.

Veal Stock—a personal reflection on the home cook’s most valuable ingredient

From The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman, Scribner 2007

Veal stock is distinguished from all other stocks by its neutrality and its gel­atin: the meat and bones don’t have a strong flavor of their own, and so magnify the flavors of what they’re combined with; as they are the bones from a young animal, they contain abundant collagen, which breaks down into the gelatin that creates excellent body in the finished stock.

From such simple material comes not only one of the most exquisite tools in the kitchen, but something more akin to a natural wonder or a great work of art. Few people put veal stock in the same category as, say, the Goldberg Variations or Plato’s cave allegory, and this lack of understanding amazes me. There’s a reason why veal stock is considered the backbone of the finest culinary tradition of the Western world, what many consider to be, in the hands of the right chef, true artistry.

But it’s almost never used in the home kitchen, and this is as unfortunate as it is unnecessary. It’s no more difficult to make than chicken stock, it’s one of the most powerful tools in professional kitchens, one of the biggest guns in the professional chef ’s entire arsenal, and it’s virtually unknown to the home cook. If there is a single ingredient that could transform a cook’s repertoire at home, it’s veal stock.

Perhaps one reason for its absence in the home kitchen is that most books geared toward the home cook don’t offer veal stock recipes. Or they offer recipes for meat stock, not bothering to distinguish between beef, pork, chicken, and veal. Both Joy of Cooking and Craig Claiborne’s The New York Times Cookbook, excellent all-purpose books, contain veal stock recipes without explaining why one would make it, as if it were inter­changeable with chicken stock. The New Good Housekeeping Cookbook con­tains no recipe, nor does The Essentials of Cooking, by the respected author and teacher James Peterson. I’m not sure why this is. Recipes for chicken stock abound in cookbooks and seem not to need a justification. Veal stock is no more difficult to make than any other stock, it’s a hundred if not a thousand times more useful, and it’s a rarity.

Veal stock is the essential. If you could only have one preparation in a book of essentials, veal stock would have to be it. In a book with many essentials, veal stock is the only logical choice for the lead-off preparation.

About The Elements of Cooking

Modeled on Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, The Elements of Cooking is an opinionated reference work destined to stand alongside the shelf among the great works of the kitchen: On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, Escoffier, The Joy of Cooking and the CIA's The Professsional Chef. Unlike those monoliths of the kitchen, this book is slim, clear and very to the point: here are the things you need to know how to do, here are the words you need to speak the langauage of food, and, most importanly, here are the ways you need to think about and approach food, the absolute essentials that every, not only good but great, cook knows. Simply written, this is a book that can be read in an afternoon and it's lessons be practiced for a lifetime.