Chapter Two: In which Leon cooks a Duck
On Sunday, I went on an excellent date with a Woman of the Net. Yes, I'm practicing Internet dating, because the Computer Science department doesn't have many women, and I don't have occasion to interact with many people outside of the department. In any case, I met a very interesting and attractive woman, we saw a great taiko drum performance, and we already have a planned date for Friday evening. I happen to have a duck in my fridge right now, and I'll cook it up, and she'll bring wine, and everything will be splendid.
So here's where you come in: how can I prepare the duck in a fancy way? The Joy of Cooking tells me how to bake a duck, and it sounds good, but I'd like to take advantage of my special ingredients: I have homemade plum jam and homemade pomegranate molasses. Surely one of those will go well with the duck. Now, the Internet has a little bit of advice, but the recipes I found all call for cooking the duck at a much higher temperature than the Joy of Cooking does, and I'm inclined to trust the Joy. The Joy has a recipe for orange sauce to go with your duck, and I could probably adapt that to use plum jam instead of orange marmalade, but it's not clear that's best. So what can I do with a duck and some plum jam, or maybe some pomegranate molasses?