Adventures with Duck

Although my status as a carnivore has for the most part, been on a down trend, every so often I break away and indulge in some good old-fashioned meat-eating.
My favorite animal to eat is duck.
The deliciously tasty and most excellent duck.
The skin especially, is just down right decadent.

Guh.

How can one commit to a life of complete vegetarianism after tasting duck skin?

Tell me this!

My spectacular trip to London this Summer involved my first ever Peking Duck experience, which I shall never forget, no matter how many more brain injuries I sustain in my life.

The started out with no plans of a duck feast in sight.
We did a little sight-seeing…

Hung out in the park and acted like annoyingly adorable teenagers…

Met up with QT and consumed some wine on a boat bar on the Thames River…

Before you know it we were on a tipsy mission, wandering the streets of London in search of the duck feast to end all duck feasts…

Soon enough we were seated in a fabulously elegant Chinese restaurant ordering a duck and a half, and even more wine…

Moi, patiently awaiting the duck feast!

Snacks!

THE DUCK!!!

MMMMmmmmmmm…

Duck Skin…

The spread…

So here is what you do to make your taste buds have the biggest most fantastical explosive party in your mouth ever…

You take a pancake, you spread some plum sauce on it, you add cucumber and spring onions…

You grab a nice tender chunk of duck meat and top it with a crispy crunchy lacquered duck skin crackling and you roll it up as quickly as possible; inhaling it like you are in a prison camp.

Because it disappears fast!

QT tries to hide the shame of shoveling duck into his mouth…

Oh! And they clean the rest of the duck and stir fry it with bean sprouts!

There is no shame! Only joy!

Wow. That was an awesome day.

So the other night, I attempted to make my first duck and roasties using the UK fan oven.

DUCK!

Check out those taters atop my new Acacia chopping block…

And the finished product!

MAGNIFICENT! CRISPY SKIN, TENDER DUCK!

Super easy to make!

Simply sear the duck legs for a few moments on a hot skillet til the skin gets nice and brown and transfer to the oven with raw sliced potatoes for 1.25 hours on 190 degrees Celcius
(for UK fan ovens).

You can season the potatoes however you wish, although I just opted for simple salt & pepper.
As the duck legs cook, the fat seeps out of the duck and cooks the potatoes to the most gorgeous crispy golden brown, while also enriching it with a truly sinful flavour.

Here is the US equivalent…375 F for 1.25 hours
(Remember, I’m all British now)

Okay y’all…more later! Back to veggies and soymilk for me!

How to make Barack-A-Mole (guacamole)

Okay, so my Guacamole has nothing to do with Barack Obama other than the fact that I started making gobs of the delicious stuff around Election time last year.
I simply started calling it that because it sounds awesome and it’s basically the most simple and tasty guacamole recipe I have found.

This recipe will make enough for you and others to eat on for a few days or for a lot of people to share.
I make tons when I make it, and this recipe really yields enough to fill a medium-sized mixing bowl.

You will need:
3 tablespoons lime juice (2 if you like less lime taste)

5 avocados

1.5 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons minced garlic

2 Jalapenos, diced

2 medium sized tomatoes, diced (I used two heirloom varieties named “Mortgage Lifter!”)

(chopped cilantro is optional, and very tasty)

You will also notice that my recipe lacks onions. Good job being observant. I don’t like onions.

Now notice how perfectly delicious all this freshly scooped avocado looks!

See how much my patient doggy Nina appreciated the beautiful avocado!

And not to leave out my other constantly-starving-for-human-food puppy, Sake.
I managed to drop some avocado right onto the top of his little doggy head because he insists on lurking underneath me while I cook.

(that’s pretty damn cute)
Okay, so back to the guacamole preparation!
Make sure to take a knife or fork and chop up the avocado a bit more and then add the rest of the ingredients saving the diced tomatoes for last.

You will want to shake or strain out any excess tomato juice before slowly folding the tomatoes into the mixture, (tomato juice will just make your guacamole really watery and gloopy and you don’t want that because it’s not baby food)
Your finished product should look something like this:

And it should taste like the heavens collided with Mexico and all of your tequila dreams came true.

If you have never made Guacamole before, you should be forewarned that it will appear brown the next day and have little pools of juice at the top. Don’t worry because it’s still totally awesome and fine to eat. (It is often much spicier the next day!)
Simply pour out the juice that has accumulated and stir it back up til it looks normal again.
Bravo! Guacamole is saved! All is well! You are Welcome!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies From Scratch!!!!

I have been doing a lot more baking lately now that I have accepted that baking requires exact measurements and I really have to pay attention.
I’m sort of a rebel in the kitchen.
And by rebel I mean that my knife skills are laughable, I have no idea how to do 1/8 of the fancy culinary tricks on Top Chef, and I have no formal or informal training.
I just sort of wing it.
Despite my being a complete novice in most respects, I am learning as I go.
The thing about baking that I have definitely learned is that most of the time 2 eggs means 2 FREAKIN EGGS!

I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with making the perfect chocolate chip cookies, and this weekend I got a little bit more creative and added peanut butter to the mix.
I used a recipe from one of my favorite baking blogs http://www.joythebaker.com/blog/2008/03/peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies/


The dough was much firmer than what I’ve gotten used to when making chocolate chip cookies, and the recipe called for 1/2 cup more flour than I typically use.
(this worried me)
The recipe also called for rolling the cookie dough balls in just a tiny bit of sugar before placing them on the parchment paper, but that sounded pretty smart and was actually a super nice touch!

I must say, they looked much prettier once rolled in sugar.

Peanut butter cookies just aren’t complete without their traditional criss-crossed fork pattern!

I only have enough cookie sheets and oven space to bake half of the cookie dough this recipe yields at a time and this served me well because the first batch I baked came out a little bit cakey and spread weird (which I had sort of expected might happen since the recipe called for that extra 1/2 cup of flour).
In order to salvage the rest of the dough I simply mixed in another half stick of butter and let me tell you, these came out SO MUCH BETTER!
I think perhaps the extra flour is due to the addition of the peanut butter, but the kind I used wasn’t very oily and maybe that made a difference.

I would definitely suggest only using 2 cups of flour, or adding an additional stick of butter to this recipe if you like crunchier, less cakey cookies.

They were absolutely scrumptious and I pawned them off quickly onto family & friends.

See? Even Nina approves!