Pinçage

I haven't written for five months. But no biggie, I guess, it's not like this is a real blog with readers and a book contract as the happy ending. Plus, I can't keep up the cheerful bloggy tone. What have I been doing for the last five months? I started another blog, Portland Walk, that involved making Google maps of my walks. Then I sprained my ankle and couldn't go on any long walks for a while. And then I got a job as a technical writer, but being me, what with job preoccupation plus my need for copious down time and looking for a house and such, I haven't kept up with the blogging. But I do miss having an easy internet-reachable reference of my favorite recipes.

Here's something I sort of tried (and would like to try again, when the time is ripe):

Pinçage

Francis Lam gives recipes for mirepoix and pinçage on salon.com, in one of the most strangely written food pieces I've ever read. But I thought that the pinçage (a flavorful brown paste or mush made from long-cooked onion, carrot, and celery in oil) would make a good instant vegetable broth. I love to have broth on hand for soup, but am loathe to buy boxed vegetable broth at the grocery store, because the decent brands are quite expensive and you need several boxes to make a big pot of soup. Bouillon cubes, while cheaper, aren't very good. And making homemade broth is time consuming. I wouldn't mind making an enormous batch and freezing it, but don't have the freezer space to keep very much. Frozen pinçage paste could be the solution to my broth problem.

I made a half-assed version of the pinçage one day, keeping the flame too high, and leaving out the tomato paste, and it was good! I can no longer remember what kind of soup I used it for, but remember feeling satisfied with the experiment. Because my pinçage was lazy, the soup had bits of blackened vegetables floating in it, but flavor was excellent. One day, I'll make a big batch of pinçage just as Lam directs, and see if it makes a good instant vegetable broth.

Francis Lam made a guest appearance in Orangette's Spilled Milk podcast on peas.