Pan-seared Duck Breasts with Kumquats is this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice.
If you were to take a five-day getaway, I’m thinking you wouldn’t choose College Station, Austin and Dallas, as your destination choices. However, if you’re wandering along the presidential libraries trail as I am, the Lone Star State is a good place to visit. You may be wondering what that has to do with this week’s recipe choice.
Here’s the answer: JarJar Duck.
JarJar Duck, my main course at Chef Tyson Cole’s Uchiko restaurant.
While in Austin last week, I ate atUchiko, a traditional and very hip Japanese farmhouse restaurant. Its talented chef, Tyson Cole, was named “Best Chef, Southwest” at the 2011 James Beard Foundation Awards. I ordered, as my entrée, something described as seared duck breast and duck confit with candied kumquat and endive served in a mason jar and pumped full of rosemary flavored smoke. When my JarJar Duck arrived, my traveling colleague, Donna Grauer, spectacularly captured the moment.
Cornbread with Caramelized Apples, Shallots and Thyme is quite tasty with duck.
Is it serendipity this week’s French Fridays dish is Pan-seared Duck Breasts with Kumquats? I love, love, love duck but JarJar Duck merely whet my appetite. (Sorry, Tyson.) After my plane landed in Aspen Sunday afternoon, I dropped my bags, grabbed my grocery list and headed for the market. Although I easily found meaty, tender and flavorful Muscovy duck breasts, there wasn’t a kumquat in sight. “We’ll have those when it’s closer to the holidays,” my produce guy said.
Donna’s and my first stop, George H.W. Bush’s library in College Station (Texas A&M).
A lovely bin of figs, sitting nearby, seemed to be shouting, Why not me?Bonne Idée. Pan-seared Duck Breast with Figs. While Dorie admits this is her riff of classic French cuisine’s Duck à l’Orange, she’s still kept the citrusy flavor by using kumquats. Better yet, with this recipe there are no last-minute tasks. Both the sauce and the candied fruit can be made days ahead. Dorie’s recipe is printed below. I substituted with figs but made no other changes. Delicious. Just delicious.
In Austin we visited LBJ”S library. Since The Sixties was such a seminal period for us, I think this library was our favorite.
Although Pommes Dauphinois, mashed potatoes or Celery Root Purée would be the perfect mate to this delicacy, I am currently playing with cast-iron skillet recipes. Cornbread with Caramelized Apples, Shallots and Thyme served as my side. What’s wrong with enjoying your bread, fruit and veggies all in one slice? (I’ll post that recipe soon.)
During this trip we visited three presidential libraries and one presidential memorial. So sad.
If you’re fortunate enough to have precious leftovers, make a sandwich, salad, or, what I hope do this week-end, duck enchiladas.
We are an international cooking group working our way through Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours. To see the results of my colleagues cooking this week, click on our French Fridays link.
2 large duck breasts or 4 small duck breasts (about 2 pounds total), at room temperature
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Instructions
To Make the Kumquats (Figs): Bring the water and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan, stirring to make certain the sugar dissolves. Add the kumquats, lower the heat so that the syrup simmers gently, and cook for about 10 minutes or until the kumquats are tender and translucent. Set aside to cool. (Can be made up to 5 days ahead, sealed and refrigerated.)
To Make the Sauce: Put the wine, chopped shallots, balsamic vinegar, crushed peppercorns and coriander seeds in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook until the liquid is reduced by half. Add orange juice, bring to a boil and cook another 5 minutes. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil and cook until reduced to 2 cups of liquid. Strain the sauce and set aside. This sauce can be made 2 days ahead. Cover and chill.
To Make the Duck: Preheat oven to 250°F. Using sharp knife, score skin of duck breasts diagonally to create a 3/4-inch-wide diamond (or, crosshatch) pattern, cutting deeply into the layer of fat without nicking the meat. Sprinkle both sides of the duck with salt and pepper. Heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Place the duck breasts, skin side down, and cook until the skin is brown and crisp, about 8 minutes. Turn and cook the meaty side for 3 minutes (rare) or 5 minutes (medium). Transfer the duck breast from the Dutch oven onto a sheet of aluminum foil and place in oven to keep warm.
Drain the kumquats, reserving syrup. Pour off fat from the pot, leaving 2 tablespoons fat and place over medium-high heat. Add the sauce and bring to a boil, stirring until the sauce is thickened, about 5 minutes. Stir in 3 tablespoons reserved kumquat syrup. Season with salt and pepper if necessary.
Remove the duck breasts from the oven and foil and place in the pot for 30 seconds on each side. Slice the duck breasts crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Divide duck breast slices among 6 plates. Drizzle duck with red wine sauce, garnish with candied kumquats, sprinkle with crushed peppercorns, and serve.
In America we generally call my French Fridays recipe, Beef Stew. Plain and simple. In France, it’s a Daube, a stew cooked in wine in a deep casserole. Dorie suggests it could also be named Boeuf aux Carottes. That gets my vote and here’s why.
Dorie’s Go-To Beef Daube, also called Boeuf aux Carottes.
It’s already snowed twice in Aspen. Old Man Winter is knocking at my door. I’ve never found the perfect beef stew recipe, a go-to winter meal. By chance I discovered that my French Fridays colleagues made My Go-To Beef Daube, a recipe from Around My French Table, in May, 2010. Unfortunately, that was before I joined FFWD. It seemed that it was Opportunity knocking at my door this week.
What interests me most about the recipe is there are very few stars in this production. The economical beef chunk roast, which gets a lazy, three-hour braise, is the meat of choice. The only other major players are carrots and parsnips. Being from the same family, Apiaceae, they dance well together. That’s what I love about this stew. It’s simple goodness.
While beef, carrots and parsnips may be the main ingredients, it’s the flavoring and spices that pack the wallop. Oh, yes, there’s that bottle of red wine. Before the beef chunks and veggies ever hit the pot, the heady, aromatic sauce is already bubbling nicely. Bacon, onions, shallots and garlic provide rich flavor and a bouquet garni lends the spice. Did I mention the Cognac? This stew is a keeper. I posted the written recipe at the end of this post.
The star players: beef, carrots and parsnips. C’est tout.
I’ve polished off the stew these past few busy days, happy for the tasty leftovers. We leave this week for another presidential library tour, this time to Texas. You may remember that I consider the 13 presidential libraries managed by the National Archives to be the uncrowned jewels of our country’s historical tourist opportunities. Very little is written about these treasures. I hope to change that.
With the completion of this journey, I will have visited 9 of the 13 libraries. The ones I haven’t seen will be: G. Ford, Ann Arbor, Michigan; J. Carter, Atlanta, Georgia; F.D. Roosevelt, Hyde Park, New York; and J.F.Kenndy, Boston, Massachusetts. Can you figure out where I have been?
Last fall my good friend and companion in all things presidential, Donna Grauer, accompanied me on the road trip to the midwestern libraries of Eisenhower, Truman and Clinton. This year she’s game for the fly/drive to Dallas, Austin and College Station. With Donna, our resident brainiac, it’s always an adventure. Stay tuned.
My colleagues made Osso Bucco à l’Arman this week. See their efforts here.
We are an international cooking group working our way through Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours.
A bouquet garni—2 thyme sprigs, 2 parsley sprigs, 1 rosemary sprig, and the leaves from 1 celery stalk, tied together in a piece of cheesecloth
Instructions
1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Put a Dutch oven over medium heat and toss in the bacon. Cook, stirring, just until the bacon browns, then transfer to a bowl.
3. Dry the beef between sheets of paper towels. Add 1 tablespoon of the oil to the bacon fat in the pot and warm it over medium-high heat, then brown the beef, in batches, on all sides. Don’t crowd the pot—if you try to cook too many pieces at once, you’ll steam the meat rather than brown it—and make sure that each piece gets good color. Transfer the browned meat to the bowl with the bacon and season lightly with salt and pepper.
4. Pour off the oil in the pot (don’t remove any browned bits stuck to the bottom), add the remaining tablespoon of oil, and warm it over medium heat. Add the onions and shallots, season lightly with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring, until the onions soften, about 8 minutes. Toss in the garlic, carrots, and parsnips, if you’re using them, and give everything a few good turns to cover all the ingredients with a little oil. Pour in the brandy, turn up the heat, and stir well so that the brandy loosens whatever may be clinging to the bottom of the pot. Let the brandy boil for a minute, then return the beef and bacon to the pot, pour in the wine, and toss in the bouquet garni. Once again, give everything a good stir.
5. When the wine comes to a boil, cover the pot tightly with a piece of aluminum foil and the lid. Slide the daube into the oven and allow it to braise undisturbed for 1 hour.
6. Pull the pot out of the oven, remove the lid and foil, and stir everything up once. If it looks as if the liquid is reducing by a great deal (unlikely), add just enough water to cover the ingredients. Recover the pot with the foil and lid, slip it back into the oven, and cook for another 1 1/2 hours (total time is 2 1/2 hours). At this point the meat should be fork-tender—if it’s not, give it another 30 minutes or so in the oven.
7. Taste the sauce. If you’d like it a little more concentrated, pour the sauce into a saucepan, put it over high heat, and boil it down until it’s just the way you like it. When the sauce meets your approval, taste it for salt and pepper. (If you’re going to reduce the sauce, make certain not to salt it until it’s reduced.) Fish out the bouquet garni and using a large serving spoon, skim off the surface fat.
8. Serve the beef, carrots and parsnips moistened with sauce.
9. Storing: Like all stews, this can be kept in the refrigerator for about 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months. If you are preparing the daube ahead, don’t reduce the sauce, just cool the daube and chill it. Then, at serving time, lift off the fat (an easy job when the daube’s been chilled), reduce the sauce, and season it one last time.
Baby Beet Tarte Tatin from River Cottage Veg, authored by Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall, an October Cottage Cooking Club recipe choice.
By no stretch of the imagination would you call me a Vegetarian. My granddaughter, yes. Close friends, you bet. But, me, absolutely not. That’s why it’s surprising that lately Deborah Madison, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Yotam Ottolenghi and I have become best buddies. I’m in awe of these three cookbook authors whose recently published cookbooks make vegetables sexy.
River Cottage Veg, 200 inspired vegetable recipes, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
For the past 6 months, since joining Cottage Cooking Club, I’ve been exploring Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg, 200 inspired vegetable recipes. This month I baked his scrumptious Pumpkin & Raisin Tea Loaf (no butter, no oil) and Baby Beet Tarte Tatin. Both recipes were unique, compelling, flavorful and dinner guest-worthy. Visit my October 7th Post, devoted to his Tea Loafhere. Find the recipe here.
Pumpkin & Raisin Tea Loaf
Tarte Tatin is a classic, of course, if you use apples. With beets? Not so classic. “But,” as HF-W writes, “the principle of caramelizing some delicious round sweet things, topping them with puff pastry, then flipping upside down, works equally well in the savory interpretation.”
Baby Beet Tarte Tatin
I simplified the preparation by purchasing vacuum-packed, ready-to-eat baby beets. My puff pastry of choice is DuFour Pastry Kitchens, available in grocery stores. Basically, halve the beets, caramelizing them and then fitting snugly into an 8-inch ovenproof container. Having already cut out a puff pastry disk to fit the dish, place it over the beets, patting firmly and tucking its edges down the pan’s side. After 20 minutes in the oven, the pastry should be a puffy, golden brown. Cool for 15 minutes before inverting it carefully onto the serving plate. Top with the vinaigrette (recipe included) or crumbled feta cheese. Serve immediately.
Spicy Chickpea & Bulgar Soup from Plenty More, a cookbook authored by Yotam Ottolenghi
Baby Beet Tarte Tatin is an excellent appetizer, first course, entrée side or, as I found, delicious lunch. I enjoyed this with a bowl of Ottolenghi’s Spicy Chickpea & Bulgar Soup, a recipe from Plenty More, his latest cookbook published this month. What I love about Ottolenghi is his no-holds-barred attitude regarding ingredients. There’s a whole vegetable world out there with its accompanying flavorings and spices that I’ve never met.
Plenty More, Yotam Ottolenghi’s latest cookbook
For this soup I did have the spices on hand, cumin, coriander and caraway seeds. Garlic, onions, carrots and celery added flavor and crunch. Bulgar wheat was a first time-ingredient for me but Bob’s Red Mill brand carries all kinds of Natural Foods, Mixes and Flours in our grocery stores. Harissa Paste, I knew about but had never used. My advice? Perhaps, less heat? Use 1 TBSP instead of 2 TBSP. For stock, vegetable, chicken or water work equally well. Instead of the Creamed Feta Paste garnish, I cut calories and just sprinkled feta chunks on the top. This soup is goodness.
Spicy Chickpea & Bulgar Soup topped with Feta Chunks
Deborah Madison waded deeply into the veggie business in 1997 with the publication of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, a James Beard Foundation Book Award winner, and, now, a classic. But it’s her recently published Vegetable Literacy, a celebration of the plant kingdom’s diversity, which has been captivating. Nostalgic moment, my mother often cooked with rutabagas. When the Indian Summer fades and our snow falls turn serious, I’m all over her Rutabaga and Apple Bisque and Winter Stew of Braised Rutabagas with Carrots, Potatoes and Parsley Sauce.
Quite often, when I finish a three or four-hour hike, my reward is to stop by the Woody Creek Tavern, an old Hunter Thompson hangout, and have a burger, fries and beer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, a journey down the veggie highway created by these three masterful chefs is well worth my time and effort also. Having it all is a good thing.
The Cottage Cooking Club is a virtual international group cooking its way through Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s excellent River Cottage VEG cookbook. Please join us in our adventure if you wish. To see what delicious fare my colleagues created this month, go here.
Today is Dorie’s birthday. October 24th. We tasked two of our Doristas, Liz Berg, That Skinny Chick Can Bake, and Susan Lester, Create Amazing Meals, to organize a virtual celebration worthy of our leader. Also, of note, Dorie’s 11th cookbook, Baking Chez Moi, Recipes From My Paris Home to Your Home Anywhere, arrives in bookstores next week.
Palets de Dames, Lille Style, a frosted tea cookie, from Baking Chez Moi, Recipes from my Paris Home to Your Home Anywhere
Why not be the first to bake from Dorie’s new book, they suggested, before it’s published? We had a Plan. Dorie shared four recipes from Chez Moi so we each made our choice. Cookie-monster than I am, the Palets de Dames, Lille Style, a frosted tea cookie, was my pick. Described as “adorable”, Dorie suggests that “with wide, flat uppers iced in white with rounded bottoms, they look like children’s tops or open parasols.”
With Dorie Greenspan who was the keynote speaker at last year’s IFBC in Seattle.
To that I will add, “and, are doggone delicious”. The palets are easily made, a sugar cookie that’s hand-dipped in icing. I know two 11 and 13-year-olds who can bake these for Christmas. The secret, I discovered, was to make them small. I started large and finally worked down to using a 2-teaspoon capacity cookie scoop. Because I devoured five of these little darlin’s while they were cooling, I packed the rest up and delivered them to the Pitkin County Library crew and The Gant kids. No complaints.
I balanced off my sugar-high with Pacific Cod and Double Carrots, last week’s French Friday’s recipe choice. Dorie’s recipe called for monkfish but any fleshy white fish will work well. What makes this dish a hit is the double carrots sauce. I’m not a fan of cooked carrots and this recipe doubled down on them, using both carrots and carrot juice. Surprisingly, this duo worked, enhancing the fishy taste of the cod. Good enough for dinner guests, that’s for sure.
Pacific Cod with Double Carrots
For her past five birthdays, Dorie has been working on Baking Chez Moi. One can only imagine the work, time and effort that this cookbook represents. Having received an advance copy months ago (thank you, Dorie), I’ve discovered these are plain and simple baked items that I can replicate quite successfully. I know that was Dorie’s goal and, to my mind, she scored. My next effort? Tarte Tropézienne, so named because it was Brigit Bardot’s favorite dessert!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, sweet DORIE and, also, to my many good friends who have October Birthdays – Ellen Fahr, Michelle Morgando, Amalia Sciscento, Cathy O’Connell, Marysue Salmon, my Mother, who would have been 98 years old on October 4th – and, yours truly.
To see what my colleagues chose to bake this week – Cannelés, Chocolate Cream Puffs, and Brown Butter-Peach Tourte – visit our French Fridayslink. I have shared links to all the recipes in today’s Posts. As I mention weekly, we are an international cooking group having a blast working our way through Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours.
Next-Day Beef Salad, my French Fridays recipe this week and my last lunch on my balcony. Can you tell by the shadows that Old Man Winter is lurking nearby?
This week presented another opportunity to choose a recipe my colleagues made before I joined them. My family’s been here for their autumn vacation and my friend, Judy Boyd, brought us some fantastic meals. Judy deals very patiently with Low-fat, Gluten-free, No Dairy, Bring It On (my son-in-law) and I’ll Eat Anything (me). She had our bases covered all week while Melissa and I relished the breather.
After the kids left, I dealt with leftovers. When I spotted the remains of a skirt steak, Dorie’s Next-Day Beef Salad came to mind. It wasn’t hard to pull together this voluptuous salad by revisiting my fridge. What’s distinctive is its simple dressing – mayo and two French mustards, Dijon and grainy. A diced, tart apple alerts us to this salad’s sweet side. Add onions, olives, cornichons, tomatoes, capers, red bell and chile peppers to the mix and it’s a meal. Serve it over greens, with crusty bread, and your leftovers become super stars.
A big bowl of ingredients for my beef salad: diced beef, onions, olives, cornichons, tomatoes, capers, red bell and chile peppers.
Last Tuesday’s Post, Pumpkin & Raisin Tea Loaf, tackled the 6 steps involved in putting together a post: Choose; Make; Photograph; Eat; Write; and Go Live. For me, it’s a week-long process. As promised, here’s Part II, “Why the effort?”“Why bother?”
WHY I BLOG
1. Realistically, a food blogger must be multi-talented, blessed with kitchen skills, camera-ready, technically astute, creatively imaginative, and more. Think Barnum & Bailey’s Big Top and you’re the only performer. Truthfully, I didn’t qualify. I began blogging because I needed Structure, a framework in which to rebuild my Life. For the last two years of my husband’s life, while in a Memory Care Unit and under Hospice care, and for the next two years that it took to plant myself where I could nurture, the one constant activity in my Life was that damn blog. Whatever else was happening with me, I plodded through those six necessary steps to post a “product” every week. It often wasn’t pretty but, for me, a great accomplishment, week in, week out.
2. “I don’t know where the Summer went,” a friend lamented to me recently. “I can’t even remember what I did.” That’s not a problem for me. My blog is a Diary and Journal. I associate weekly Posts with lifestyle events and activities. At a time when pen-and-ink has become passé, my Blog lives safely on my portable hard drive.
To complete this lunch (or, dinner) cut up crusty bread and pour a glass of apple cider.
3. Using business jargon, food blogging requires a Low Start-up Fee. This project was something I could begin at a nominal cost. I found inexpensive tech assistance via Craig’s List. We all need to eat. Food bloggers wisely feed their families and friends with menus incorporated into their Posts. In our French Fridays group, there are many fine bloggers who are thrifty and cost-conscious.
4. I Am The Boss. My blog is all ME. A dream come true! For the first time in my adult memory, I am responsible for and to no one. When I returned to Aspen, I could either wilt or blossom. Throw a pity party or do and be everything that wasn’t possible in prior decades. I felt I owed my friends and family who offered us unconditional caring, support and love for ten years, to at least try. My blog has evolved from that effort.
I poured a two- mustard/mayo dressing onto the mixture and tossed lightly to saturate it.
5. Friendships. Number 5 is an unanticipated bonus. Without a doubt and throughout my life, I’ve collected the best group of “reality” friends ever. To me, they are priceless. But, virtual friends? Who knew about that? Being a lover of all things Greenspan, in February 2011, I joined French Fridays, an internet food group cooking through Dorie’s Around My French Table. Somewhere between the Cauliflower-Bacon Gratin (12/30/11) and Cocoa Sablés (3/23/12), I realized these were not just colleagues, they were friends. Through virtual networking I’ve met other foodie pals. Blogging in not a lonely sport and I’ll keep doing it if only to maintain these relationships.
6. Through blogging or because of it, my little world has grown richer and been enhanced by the experience. Examples — Because my kitchen is a constant companion, I’m a better cook. I’m on a first-name basis with all the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers up and down Colorado State Highway 82. Food blogging is a daily on-line education. What I’ve realized is how much I don’t know especially when interacting with international colleagues. There’s no time-out for boredom when your investment is in yourself. I thrive on praise (who doesn’t?). Alex, a young bellmen here at The Gant, is still talking about the meatballs I made last Christmas. My blog comments are encouraging, uplifting and sometimes hilarious. “Wear Your Lipstick.” is the heads-up to my friends whenever a social occasion is to become a blog. Good Sports, always. Every day has become an adventure.
Just too much salad – it’s filling. My eyes were bigger than my appetite.
7. By dumb luck, I slide into a perfect niche. As I’ve written, I believe anyone can flourish in the landscape where they’re planted just by dovetailing their passions into the Life they’ve been dealt. We’re all blindsided by challenges and bumps. How we deal with those is key. My blog tells my story, showing how I muddle through my days. My greatest wish is that it provides Inspiration, Hope & Humor to my readers.
To see how my colleagues muddled through their week, visit our French Fridayslink. The recipe for today’s salad is here. As I mention weekly, we are an international cooking group having a blast working our way through Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table.
