Recipes, as promised.
It's snowing.
It's snowing rather a lot.
I promised malaveaux my awesomely simple Duck Recipe, and there are a few other things lately that have been successes, and I want to record them before they leap out of my head, just on the off-chance that I might want to do them again sometime.
Duck with Bread stuffing
1 duck*
1/2 loaf (or so)crusty french bread**.
1 smallish roasting pan
1 large mixing bowl
1 bamboo skewer or trussing supplies
Some Butter
Some Spices: Basil, Paprika, Oregano, Tarragon, Salt, Garlic, Onion powder***
Thaw out your duck. I usually leave it in the sink overnight. When it's room temperature, open it up and pull out the package of craptastic orange sauce inside. That goes in the trash, along with any giblets you don't feel like chopping or can't immediately recognize. Save out the gooey, easy-to-chop giblets and as much blood as you can - those go into the big mixing bowl. Rinse out the inside and outside of your duck. Pull off any feather bits still attached. Set aside.
Preheat your oven to 325.
Slice up your bread and tear/chop it into little knuckle-sized raggedy bits, until you have about two cups worth. Set the rest of the loaf aside. Chop up your giblets. You *can* fry these up - along with the blood - quickly in a little saucepan with some salt and butter, but you don't actually have to: you can just add them to the stuffing raw and it won't hurt anything at all. Toss them into your mixing bowl and mix with your hands.
After you have washed the pink grue off your hands, measure out your spices. Opinions vary, of course, but my own mix is 2 Tbsp Basil, 2 tsp. Salt and 1 Tbsp everything else. (J.- is very big on basil.) Put these into a pestle and grind them together, then add to the mixing bowl. Mix the stuffing vigorously with your hands until your hands smell delicious. If you are using fresh onions, chop it wet (wet board, wet knife, wet onion) and add it last, otherwise your kitchen will tear up.
If you aren't using a rack, rub a little butter over the bottom of your roasting pan before you put the duck on there.
Stuff your duck. Put half the stuffing in the big flap of skin around the neck cavity and tuck it under. This will be a messy process, so do it first. Once you've got that done and the duck breast-side-up again, stuff the body cavity. Don't worry about the bread expanding, pack it as tightly as you like. Extra stuffing can go between the wings and the body, or tucked under the skin of the legs.
Use the skewer (or poultry truss, if you have 'em)to sew up the flap of skin around the cavity, making a little pouch with the tail (more room for stuffing that way). Once everything is reasonably neat, rub the skin with butter and sprinkle paprika on top.
Into the oven it goes! Estimate 20 minutes per pound. Pull out the pan at the half-mark and baste the heck out of it so the skin gets nice and cracklin' brown. There will be a LOT of fat. Baste baste baste. You can also dipper off some for gravy or other stuff halfway through. Check and baste often for the second hour of cookin'.
NOTE: Rare duck is good and won't kill you (unlike rare chicken), so you don't have to wait until the meat is falling off the bone to eat it. In fact, overdone duck is probably some kind of irish sin (like spilled whiskey), so pull it out fifteen minutes early and serve it.
*these are usually four to six pounds. If you are feeding more than three people, you will want a big duck.
**I find the crustier the bread, the better. If said bread can survive an epic baguette fencing match in the middle of the bakery without significant deformity, it is good bread. Also, stale bread works fine.
***Or just chop up some damn onions. Joseph has this THING about veggies.
****************
What to do with Leftover Duck
1 picked-over duck carcass
1 soup pot
1 bottle leftover wine
assorted other leftovers
1 smaller soup pot
1 colander or strainer
Well, first off, pick off any leftover stuffing and eat it. What was delectable bread stuffing yesterday will be, the next day, delicious DUCK-FLAVORED CROUTONS. Omg yum.
Before you make yourself sick with leftover stuffing, pop the whole carcass into a soup pot with 2 whole onions, garlic, and whatever else you have lying around for soup stock. Any stuffing clinging to the carcass is fine - it will just thicken up the soup, and you're going to strain it anyway, so relax. Cover the carcass with water and a little leftover wine (and pour the rest into a glass - it's not as if its going to keep, after all), add a bit of salt, and get it just boiling. Turn the heat way down and simmer it for two hours while you putter around doing dishes or something. When the onions have dissolved into goo, take the pot off the heat and let it cool for a bit. Set up your smaller soup pot with the colander atop it in your sink. When the carcass bones are cool enough to handle, pour off the stock into the small pot, letting the colander catch the bones and jellied onions and undissolved bread bits. Put the stock aside and poke around the bones in your colander. you should be able to reserve a cup or two of little meat bits off the carcass. these go back into the stock. Everything else gets tossed. The small soup pot goes into the fridge for tomorrow, when you can skim off the duck fat and make it into soup by adding fresh spices, a half-cup of beans, lentils or rice, and whatever else sounds yummy.
*************
Fast Curried Chicken
Well, maybe not that fast.
1 package boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 ziploc bag
1 small pan or casserole dish
4-6 Tbsp good curry powder
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp each onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne, paprika
2 Tbsp basil, other spices to taste
1 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp Corn starch
1/4 cup milk
Throw the spices, flour, cornstarch and milk into the ziploc baggie, seal and shake vigorously until blended.
Un-curl, de-vein and de-fat your chicken thighs. You can also chop them up if you want lots of surface area exposed to the curry, but it isn't really necessary. add the chicken to the curry baggie, re-close it and squish everything around with your fingers until it's mixed. Throw the bag into the fridge and let it marinate until you're ready to cook - the longer the better.
To cook, dump the whole gooey mess*, marinade and all, into a buttered pan/casserole, and cook at 350 for- ooh, mebbe 30 minutes. 40 if they aren't chopped up. Pull out the pan at 20 minutes and turn things over/stir if you aren't using a lidded casserole, otherwise the top gets dry.
Serve with a pot of basmati rice.
*minus the ziploc baggie, natch. Plastic and ovens don't play well together.
************
Done today:
- Finished (& sent) last illustration for the nice game company. Yay!
- Invoiced said company through PayPal.
- Cooked curried chicken.
- Updated LJ
- Began sketches for *next* illo project. My free time, where did it go?
- Avoided going out into Frosty Weather of Death. W00t!
Gah. It's still snowing.
It's snowing rather a lot.
I promised malaveaux my awesomely simple Duck Recipe, and there are a few other things lately that have been successes, and I want to record them before they leap out of my head, just on the off-chance that I might want to do them again sometime.
Duck with Bread stuffing
1 duck*
1/2 loaf (or so)crusty french bread**.
1 smallish roasting pan
1 large mixing bowl
1 bamboo skewer or trussing supplies
Some Butter
Some Spices: Basil, Paprika, Oregano, Tarragon, Salt, Garlic, Onion powder***
Thaw out your duck. I usually leave it in the sink overnight. When it's room temperature, open it up and pull out the package of craptastic orange sauce inside. That goes in the trash, along with any giblets you don't feel like chopping or can't immediately recognize. Save out the gooey, easy-to-chop giblets and as much blood as you can - those go into the big mixing bowl. Rinse out the inside and outside of your duck. Pull off any feather bits still attached. Set aside.
Preheat your oven to 325.
Slice up your bread and tear/chop it into little knuckle-sized raggedy bits, until you have about two cups worth. Set the rest of the loaf aside. Chop up your giblets. You *can* fry these up - along with the blood - quickly in a little saucepan with some salt and butter, but you don't actually have to: you can just add them to the stuffing raw and it won't hurt anything at all. Toss them into your mixing bowl and mix with your hands.
After you have washed the pink grue off your hands, measure out your spices. Opinions vary, of course, but my own mix is 2 Tbsp Basil, 2 tsp. Salt and 1 Tbsp everything else. (J.- is very big on basil.) Put these into a pestle and grind them together, then add to the mixing bowl. Mix the stuffing vigorously with your hands until your hands smell delicious. If you are using fresh onions, chop it wet (wet board, wet knife, wet onion) and add it last, otherwise your kitchen will tear up.
If you aren't using a rack, rub a little butter over the bottom of your roasting pan before you put the duck on there.
Stuff your duck. Put half the stuffing in the big flap of skin around the neck cavity and tuck it under. This will be a messy process, so do it first. Once you've got that done and the duck breast-side-up again, stuff the body cavity. Don't worry about the bread expanding, pack it as tightly as you like. Extra stuffing can go between the wings and the body, or tucked under the skin of the legs.
Use the skewer (or poultry truss, if you have 'em)to sew up the flap of skin around the cavity, making a little pouch with the tail (more room for stuffing that way). Once everything is reasonably neat, rub the skin with butter and sprinkle paprika on top.
Into the oven it goes! Estimate 20 minutes per pound. Pull out the pan at the half-mark and baste the heck out of it so the skin gets nice and cracklin' brown. There will be a LOT of fat. Baste baste baste. You can also dipper off some for gravy or other stuff halfway through. Check and baste often for the second hour of cookin'.
NOTE: Rare duck is good and won't kill you (unlike rare chicken), so you don't have to wait until the meat is falling off the bone to eat it. In fact, overdone duck is probably some kind of irish sin (like spilled whiskey), so pull it out fifteen minutes early and serve it.
*these are usually four to six pounds. If you are feeding more than three people, you will want a big duck.
**I find the crustier the bread, the better. If said bread can survive an epic baguette fencing match in the middle of the bakery without significant deformity, it is good bread. Also, stale bread works fine.
***Or just chop up some damn onions. Joseph has this THING about veggies.
****************
What to do with Leftover Duck
1 picked-over duck carcass
1 soup pot
1 bottle leftover wine
assorted other leftovers
1 smaller soup pot
1 colander or strainer
Well, first off, pick off any leftover stuffing and eat it. What was delectable bread stuffing yesterday will be, the next day, delicious DUCK-FLAVORED CROUTONS. Omg yum.
Before you make yourself sick with leftover stuffing, pop the whole carcass into a soup pot with 2 whole onions, garlic, and whatever else you have lying around for soup stock. Any stuffing clinging to the carcass is fine - it will just thicken up the soup, and you're going to strain it anyway, so relax. Cover the carcass with water and a little leftover wine (and pour the rest into a glass - it's not as if its going to keep, after all), add a bit of salt, and get it just boiling. Turn the heat way down and simmer it for two hours while you putter around doing dishes or something. When the onions have dissolved into goo, take the pot off the heat and let it cool for a bit. Set up your smaller soup pot with the colander atop it in your sink. When the carcass bones are cool enough to handle, pour off the stock into the small pot, letting the colander catch the bones and jellied onions and undissolved bread bits. Put the stock aside and poke around the bones in your colander. you should be able to reserve a cup or two of little meat bits off the carcass. these go back into the stock. Everything else gets tossed. The small soup pot goes into the fridge for tomorrow, when you can skim off the duck fat and make it into soup by adding fresh spices, a half-cup of beans, lentils or rice, and whatever else sounds yummy.
*************
Fast Curried Chicken
Well, maybe not that fast.
1 package boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 ziploc bag
1 small pan or casserole dish
4-6 Tbsp good curry powder
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp each onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne, paprika
2 Tbsp basil, other spices to taste
1 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp Corn starch
1/4 cup milk
Throw the spices, flour, cornstarch and milk into the ziploc baggie, seal and shake vigorously until blended.
Un-curl, de-vein and de-fat your chicken thighs. You can also chop them up if you want lots of surface area exposed to the curry, but it isn't really necessary. add the chicken to the curry baggie, re-close it and squish everything around with your fingers until it's mixed. Throw the bag into the fridge and let it marinate until you're ready to cook - the longer the better.
To cook, dump the whole gooey mess*, marinade and all, into a buttered pan/casserole, and cook at 350 for- ooh, mebbe 30 minutes. 40 if they aren't chopped up. Pull out the pan at 20 minutes and turn things over/stir if you aren't using a lidded casserole, otherwise the top gets dry.
Serve with a pot of basmati rice.
*minus the ziploc baggie, natch. Plastic and ovens don't play well together.
************
Done today:
- Finished (& sent) last illustration for the nice game company. Yay!
- Invoiced said company through PayPal.
- Cooked curried chicken.
- Updated LJ
- Began sketches for *next* illo project. My free time, where did it go?
- Avoided going out into Frosty Weather of Death. W00t!
Gah. It's still snowing.