I bought a duck
Okay, okay, part two then.
So, I had a lot of cooking to do, as I woke up realizing I had invited way too many people to be filled up by this duck.
Woke around 11 am, (since I had not fallen asleep until about 3 after getting a little schnickered to ward off the emotional hardship brought about by slaughtering a duck with my hands) and went immediately shopping. Bought a bunch of stuff, came home and started cooking.
I made three pounds of string beans sauteed with some julienned tomatoes and bacon and fresh basil from my garden.
I made chopped liver, (No, not from the duck, from storebought chicken livers, but it's one of my "special occasion specialties".
I made guacamole, also one of my appetizer style specialties and a frequent appearer on my menus.
I had bought baby carrots, and I boiled them up for a bit with some dark amber maple syrup and fresh peppermint from my garden. The maple syrup was bought in Vernmont this independence day when we went to my friends two dads house in dorset. and damn, that stuff is good.
And my Friend Pete was in visiting from Chicago, so I had him make the meatloaf. Pete and I have a long history of eating together, and that naturally involves a little cooking together. This meatloaf turned out to be one of the best, if not the best that I've ever had. Perhaps it was the beer and southern comfort...nope, it was just that good.
Also, I made one of my favorite things to make, potatoe croquets. See I have a deep fryer. One day, my friend and I (the one that helped me off the duck) were frying up everything we could get our hands on. I think it was a superbowl party, when you would deep fry anything you can get your hands on. Well, I had some delicious mashed potatoes in the fridge for like four days. I decided to find out what would happen if I made little logs out of them and dipped in egg and bread crumbs. Turns out I accidentally figured out how to make potatoe croquets. And MAN were they good. I made a chipotle sour cream mayo lime dipping sauce for those. When I finished making the sauce, Josh said "it's the wrong color". In true jesterly fashion I asked him "what color should it be blue?" and he said yes. Luckily I had some food coloring on hand, so the spicy space dip was invented. I garnished with some thin slices of lime and violin...people couldn't get enough of it, and all their tounges were blue.
The night before I had made the pecan pie, so that sat on the windowsill. I also have an ice cream making machine, so we found out that if you take nestle quick, (chocolate and strawberry) and just put that right into the machines, it makes an excellent ice milky dessert. Not to be outdone, we put little marshmallows in the strawberry kind, and cocoa krispies in the chocolate milk. no, they didn't go snap crackle and pop.
The duck.
THE DUCK, I had gotten about 5 recipies from the internet, as I like to do when I'm trying to do something traditional like l'orange, and pick the best ideas from each of them, you know, blend it together to suit my tastes and needs.
the recipe I wound up with I'll jump over and post on the recipe thread after I'm finished here as Cary asked.
So I made this sauce, and I stuffed the cavity of the duck with some halved red onions and rested it on top of halved potatoes: to use like a baking rack. Better than metal, and tastier in the long run.
I cut off the wings and legs and flowered them a bit and deep fried 'em, since the thing was hot and sizzlin'. The duck itself I roasted for about 2 and a half hours at various degrees, turning, and brushing with the orange sauce. Thing was, cause it was not a very fatty duck at all, the skin didn't crisp up. But it was still pretty tasty. It just tightened against the meat. It was great.
So one friend brought some Flan over, and she was flaunting her flan to me the day before "my boyfriend loves it" yadda yadda. Turns out she shoulda baked it about 15 more minutes, cause it was more like custard than flan, so we called it flustered. It was still yummy though. And the Pecan pie...gad it was incredible, I had two peices with both strawberry and chocolate ice cream. What a sugar rush. Another friend brought tricolor rotini pasta salad that was very good as well.
Drunk and laughing and full I played the guests the video of the duck on the first day we got it home. We made the video sos we could remember it alive. Buh Gok served us well. And a great time was had by all.
Now, I'll go post the recipe for the l'orange.
