Stocks and jus are not common preparations on the farm, so I learned these during my apprenticeship with Uncle Michel. And these iterations are the result of working and refining them ever since.
When I opened my restaurant in 2015, we, of course, had all of these stocks and jus, but they changed depending on various factors—who was making them, who was finishing them, what was coming into the kitchens. Jake Abbott, who worked his way up to sous chef, took it upon himself to create what is in effect a stock program, refining and streamlining our stocks and jus. This is important for a restaurant that makes hundreds of gallons of stock a week and any number of jus (concentrated stocks) and the many derivatives that those jus become. This commitment to quality and consistency came from his love of the process and the stock itself, a magical essence. He has researched, and really studied, stock making for the past ten years, comparing the way Alain Ducasse and his team makes theirs with how Heston Blumenthal and the team at the Fat Duck makes theirs, for instance, or the way the French Laundry uses stocks to make their quick stocks, like the jus here. And he’s become an expert at the finer points of stocks, which is great for consistency at the restaurant, but it’s knowledge that’s equally applicable to any kitchen, whether you’re making one liter or hundreds. They are not called the fond de cuisine, the foundation of cuisine, for nothing.
