I wanted to procrastinate so badly i went to make duck liver crostini

I was hoping that my essay would be done by this time tonight, but I know now that that was just wishful thinking. It's 11:05pm and I'm only 27.53% of the way through it. And it's only my first, of 4 essays due within a week. Argh!!

Anyway, about an hour ago I took a study break and made some crostini.

391. Duck liver crostini (Dinner)

The method for these crostini is pretty much the same as the chicken liver crostini. The only difference is that Nigella says to omit the capers and anchovies, add some orange zest, and to use Grand Marnier in place of Marsala. It took about 30 minutes to make, whilst listening to Rod Stewart's Greatest Hits. (Yes, it's still in my CD player, and it still ROCKS).


crostini duck liver

Ok, back to the essay now. Duck liver crostini is totally a normal thing to be eating late at night during essay time.

They're pretty good actually, despite my aversion to liver and my stress-induced lack of appetite. And I guess I should mention here that the mushroom crostini and chicory and mustard salad were really, really good. My parents and I have been picking at them all day, and Dad declared the salad dressing "delicious".

Boosted by Breasts

337. Duck (Fast Food)

In the Fast Food chapter, Nigella suggests duck breasts for a quick and easy meal. She gives 3 types of marinades which you can brush onto the breasts, before baking for 20 minutes at 200C. My parents and I had these for lunch today to boost a lunch of leftovers.

1. Honey and Seville Orange (retrieved from the depths of my freezer)
2. Ginger marmalade and soy sauce
3. Grainy mustard with pineapple juice and brown sugar


marinades


marinaded breats


Lunch: Duck breasts (honey & orange at the back, ginger & soy in the middle, and mustard at the front), with leftover penne alla vodka (from Feast, I made it for lunch yesterday), guacamole, lentils, and fish wrapped in parma ham.

We basically sliced the duck breasts up to share, so we could try each flavour. They were all great! The honey and orange one looked the best - the honey in the marinade made the breast go lovely and brown - but they all tasted lovely. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to choose just one. If duck breasts weren't so damned expensive, I'd be eating these all the time!


Ooh, how nouvelle!

Must've been a pretty big duck!

We had a relatively simple dinner tonight - spaghetti and meatballs.

327. Duck Meatballs (Feeding babies and small children)

This is the last of Nigella's 4 meatball recipes.

31. Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
145. Special Meatballs
260. Ham & Turkey Meatballs

For the balls, she says to mince up a duck breasts with a chopped, cooked cooked onion (fried in the rendered duck fat, naturally), milk-soaked bread, orange zest, an egg and cinnamon. I actually used meat from other parts of the duck - duck breasts are very expensive here, so the last time I needed duck breasts, I bought the whole duck (much cheaper per kilo), used the breasts, and froze the remaining carcass for this recipe. I defrosted it last night, and cut off as much meat as I could with a very sharp night tonight.

The meatball mixture turned out quite soft and gloopy, but they didn't break up or fall apart at all. You form the mixture into balls, fry it, and then drop the balls into a gently simmering tomato sauce.

I know that Nigella likes her meatballs with rice, but we always prefer it with pasta.


duck meat ball pasta

It was very nice, and perfect for a freezing cold night. But you know, after having tried all of the meatball recipes, I truly believe that the original (plain beef) was still the best.

Duck with Pomegranate

It’s been harder to go shopping since the school holidays finished and Dad’s gone back to school. (I, on the other hand, being a uni student, still have a couple of weeks of freedom – sweet, sweet freedom). Last year, Dad was only part time and did 3 days a week, but now he’s been moved up to full time, and organising shopping expeditions has become harder. Luckily, today both Mum & I had a free morning, so we went Box Hill, huge shopping list in hand, with the aim of buying the ingredients for a steak béarnaise for lunch, and for pomegranate duck breasts tomorrow. (I naturally assumed that fresh pomegranates would be unavailable, but I do have a carton of juice in the freezer).

However, all my steak plans were foiled, because even though I could find every other ingredient, there was no freakin’ tarragon. No-one, anywhere, had any in stock today, so a steak béarnaise was out of the question. Grrr! And all I wanted was some meat!

I suppose fate was urging me towards the duck breasts, because after the tarragon incident, the first thing I saw in Safeway was a huge tray of deliciously ripe and juicy-looking pomegranates, imported from the USA and only $2.50 each. Score!

273. Duck with Pomegranate (One & Two)

This recipe follows the liver with sweet onions recipe in the One & Two chapter, and Nigella offers two options for treating the duck. The first option is to roast a whole duck, basting it with reduced pomegranate juice, and making a sauce from the pan juices and some herbs. Alternatively, “a lower-effort take on the same theme” is to fry duck breasts, and deglaze the pan with pomegranate juice for the sauce.

Lower effort…?
Duck breasts…?

I obviously chose option 2, as this meant no faffing around with roasting trays or bones. It was thus the easy option for both the cook and the eater. (Both of whom are me!) More importantly, duck breasts rock. I could eat them every day.

I started by chucking the breasts in the pan, and putting some home-cook frozen fries in the oven. I’d bought them for the steak, and even though I was happy to substitute breasts for meat today, there was no way I was going to miss out on my fries!

While the breasts and fries were cooking away, I dealt with the pomegranate.


Pomegranate

I cut it in half…


Halved

…and did the Nigella-thwacks-it-with-a-wooden-spoon method for extracting the seeds from one half...

…and with the other half, I squeezed the juice out, using my Living Kitchen blue juicer. To be completely honest, I was quite wary of using the juicer for such a sturdy piece of fruit. As gorgeous as the Living Kitchen range most definitely is, I haven’t found the products to be entirely appropriate for heavy-duty kitchen activity. I needn’t have worried, however. Despite the pomegranate outer hardiness, the inside was perfectly soft and yielding – even easier to squeeze than an orange.


juiced and seeded

So, once the duck breasts were cooked, I deglazed the pan with the pomegranate juice, and lunch was ready! I served it with some salad (it’s too hot for peas), and the frites, and it was a lovely lunch for my mother and I.


one serving


two servings

Mmm... Daniel... you like duck liver... don't you?

To feed my brother and I today at lunch, I looked again to the children's chapter.

238. Duck Liver Sauce

Now, in my opinion, you really can't go wrong with a Nigella recipe for pasta sauce. Or can you? After today's pasta, I'm unsure. Nigella says that duck livers are "sweeter and moussier than chicken livers, and so more child-friendly". Hmm. Sweet? Moussy? Since when would I want a sweet and moussy pasta sauce?

I bought some duck livers yesterday (when I bought the salmon), with a view to using them in this sauce today. I wasn't feeling optimistic as I opened the bag of duck livers - they smelled feral. But I persevered, rinsing them under water and letting them drain in a colander.


sweet and moussy

The method for the sauce is pretty much the same as normal - start by cooking an onion/garlic/bacon/carrot mixture until soft, then add the livers, followed by tomato passata, hoisin sauce and tinned tomatoes. Once it's all cooked, you whizz it up in a processor.


Check out my very 80's spag-bol presentation - tomato sauce on top of pasta.

Dan and I ate it in front of the tv, (Futurama, of course). Daniel very politely ate all of his pasta like a good boy, and didn't complain. I, on the other hand, was not impressed. It had this weird fluffy texture and taste (because of the livers, obviously), and I needed a shitload of parmesan cheese and chilli to make it palatable for me. About halfway through eating, I got used to it and didn't mind it any more, but I wouldn't be in a rush to make it again. In this instance, I think that ordinary meat (beef, chicken, lamb) would just taste better.

The 3 Bird Orgy, Part III [I still get to buy a new dress]

210. Kafka-esque or Soft and Crispy Duck (Cooking in Advance)

As I mentioned in Part I of The 3 Bird Orgy, this duck can be made in advance except for a 30-minute blast in the oven, and is thus perfect for entertaining. By poaching it before cooking it at high heat, you keep the duck both soft on the inside, and crisp on the outside, I'm told.

You start by poaching the duck in a deep frying pan in boiling salted water for about 45 minutes, then remove it from the water, let it cool, and refrigerate it for a couple of days until you want to cook it. Easy. I did the poaching on Sunday night, and it was a lot less hassle than it looks on the page.


water


duck


lid


boiled

I was afraid the duck might catch and burn on the pan, as Nigella warned it might, but it didn't. I did use a heat diffuser, which might have protected it slightly.

Anyway, once that is done, you can put it in the fridge and just wait for the night of your dinner to roll around...

The 3 Bird Orgy, Part I [The Evolution]

I hadn’t really intended for tonight’s dinner to become a 3-bird orgy, it just kind of evolved into one. But I suppose these types of things only happen when you don’t plan them.

It started like this – I got an email from a friend a while ago saying something like…

“Sarah, I really feel for you. I was reading through my How to Eat, and I saw the goose recipe. Holy shit! A fan is involved!”

I then read through the goose recipe, which is stuffed with mashed potato, and sounded divine. Because it is so rich and filling, Nigella doesn’t mention any starters or sides, or even desserts. It’s practically a dinner party in itself. She just says to serve some fruits and nuts afterwards. And the only people I could think of to cook a goose for were Uncle Mike and Aunty Helen. Do you remember them? I had them over for steak and kidney pie with banana custard, and also for Blakean fish pie and rhubarb crumble. They’re some of our oldest family friends.

So the next time I went to the Prahran market, I bought a goose, to bring home and freeze, in anticipation of a future, as yet unscheduled, dinner party. The only goose I could find was technically a “gosling” and weighed about 3 kilos. It also cost $74. Dad and I nearly had a fit. But we bought it anyway, and it has been sitting in the freezer since then.

A week or so later, I emailed Uncle Mike asking him to come over “sometime in the next few weeks for roast goose”. He seemed pretty excited at the prospect. Nigella’s recipe says you need a 4.5 kilo goose for 6 people, and knowing Nigella’s portioning, I figured that a 3 kilo gosling would be fine for us, as long as there were enough side dishes. However, the next day I read a thread on the Nigella.com forum about the very topic of goose-portioning. People were saying that a 3 kilo goose wouldn’t be nearly enough for 6 people, that geese were very fatty and boney, and had hardly any meat on their big big boney bones. These were people, real people with (presumably) more conventional appetites than our lovely Nigella, I couldn't just ignore the portioning advice. I obviously couldn’t cancel on Uncle Mike, so there was a dilemma here… would I buy a second goose, thus spending more money and preventing myself from buying that new Dangerfield dress? Then we’d have more than enough goose for 6, and I’d have to invite more people. Or could I just keep the invitees as they were and just be really skimpy with the portions? But that was just a silly idea, no Nigella devotee could ever in good conscience provide skimpy portions.

Then it hit me… just add a different bird!! The soft and crisp roast duck from Cooking in Advance would be perfect. It’s cheaper, easier to make, and has the advantage of being able to be made in advance, save a 30 minute blast in the oven just before eating. We could just give a couple of slices of each bird to each person, and that would be sufficient. I also decided to add a side dish – the red cabbage from the Weekend Lunch chapter, because I saw a friend's photos from Germany of goose paired with cabbage, and it looked too good not to go together.

So with that dilemma thoroughly sorted out, I emailed Uncle Mike and we arranged for Monday night to be the goose and duck night. (I also went out and bought that dress).

If one bird is a meal, two birds are a feast. And if two birds are a feast, then three birds are a hedonistic orgy of rejoicing in the bounteousness of life. Or something like that.

The third bird in this orgy came in the form of the consommé – again, I hadn’t intended for this to be part of the meal, but I’d made it on Saturday for the hell of it, and thought that I may as well add it as a (non-filling) course to the dinner party. Besides, I couldn’t think of when else we’d drink the consommé.

So, the date was set, the dishes were planned, the guests were invited... all that was left to do was deal with those birds...

Wednesday Night Dinner – A Seville Orange Orgy

Yes, the Seville oranges are now in season. And I’m excited. Maybe a little too excited. I saw them for the first time last week at Victoria Market and snapped up 2.5 kilos, ready for Seville orange action.

I actually attempted making Seville Orange Marmalade the other day, but it didn’t work out. Stay tuned for a post on that disaster.

Tonight’s dinner, however, was the “Seville Orange Orgy” (so named by DG), and it was much more successful than the marmalade.

58. Scallops with Bitter Oranges (Basics etc.)
59. Canard à l'Orange (Basics etc.)
60. Petits Pois à la Francaise (Cooking in Advance)
61. Seville Orange Curd Tart (Weekend Lunch)
62. Shortcrust Pastry (Basics etc.)

My brother and I went to Box Hill today to pick up all the supplies, and I started cooking at around 4:30. Yes, that’s right, I started making pastry at 4:30, and the curd at 5:00pm… cutting it very very fine time-wise. Eeek.

The scallops and ducks come from the Basics etc. chapter, and are basically suggestions on how to use the seasonal Seville oranges.

For the scallops, you fry them in some butter for a minute on each side, then the corals, then deglaze the pan with Seville orange juice. Nigella says to serve them with watercress, but as watercress isn’t in the shops at the moment, I used some mixed lettuces.


Scallops with Bitter Oranges

Mmm… this was so delicious! Scallops are my favourite seafood, and I managed to find fresh ones on the half-shell today, which are so much better than frozen.

For the duck (I made two so we could have leftovers), you shove half a Seville orange in the cavity, and brush with a mixture of Seville orange juice and honey. Now, about the ducks themselves – Nigella says to use a mallard, and in fact DG warned me that I had to use the right species of duck.

“Don’t use the Peking duck duck as it’s too fatty and won’t crisp up.”

However, I don’t think our Australian butchers are quite as illustrious as the English ones, and the only ducks I could find at the poultry shop, without ordering them specially, were generic roasting ducks, species unspecified. (And I think that the ones I got were the “too fatty Peking duck” ducks). See, Nigella says 40 minutes at 210c for a duck, whereas the duck packet said something like 30 minutes per kilo plus an hour at 180c. I ended up using Nigella’s times and temperatures, but got worried about them burning before being properly cooked, and turned the heat down about halfway through. They cooked through, but weren’t very crispy.

There’s also a recipe for Petits Pois à la Francaise in Feast, which I’ve made heaps of times and absolutely love. The only problem with those peas (cooked in stock), is the resultant unpleasant “stock-breath”. However, How to Eat's Petits Pois are made stock-free. Fab! Even though you can make them a few days in advance (thus reducing the workload on the night of your dinner), I didn’t plan very well, and just made them tonight for tonight.

The ducks were really tasty, and we hacked at them hungrily with hands and knives (none of us are brilliant carvers).

Dad: ripping out a duck leg and putting it on his plate... F*#&! This is hot!

I prefer the How To Eat peas to the Feast ones. Yum. I’m so obsessed with peas right now.


Double Duck (what am I supposed to do with the neck? Do I cut it off or tuck it under?) + Petits Pois à la Francaise


Ducks from the rear

Dessert was the Seville Orange Curd Tart. FYI, for the pastry, I used half vegetable fat, half butter, because we had some vegetable fat sitting in the fridge. The pastry was flaky and light. Nigella suggests either shortcrust or sweet pastry, and I opted for the plain shortcrust. I think, though, that I'd prefer a sweeter, more biscuity pastry for this type of pie. The pastry-making process was, again, no drama. The only problem is that my flan tins are too large for Nigella’s recipes, so I’ve ended up with very thin tarts that can’t support their filling. I’ve got to go shopping for a new one, as there are quite a few tarts in How to Eat.

Making the curd is quite similar to making custard, which made me panic a little, but it wasn’t too difficult. It’s a mixture of eggs, extra yolks, sugar, Seville orange juice and zest, and butter, which you stir over a medium heat until it thickens and boils. I was being too timorous to let it boil properly, (didn’t want it to curdle) and just stopped when it got thicker. I then poured it into the pastry case, but I was worried the curd wouldn’t set, so I stashed it in the fridge until dessert time. Also, because of the thinness of the tart, I’ve got quite a bit of filling leftover, like a small bowlful… I might make a Victoria sponge or something to use up the rest.

The colour of the curd is fabulous…


Colour - very intensely orange


Tart – quite thin, and not terribly even


Gooey pie with double cream

I loved the vibrant, intense taste of the tart, but it was actually very, very sour. Perhaps my oranges were exceptionally sour or juicy. However, the tartness was offset easily, with a spoonful of double cream. I knew that double cream would be just right, because the mini lemon tarts that we serve at work have a quenelle of cream on top, and extensive taste-testing on my part has shown me that the sharpness of the filling is wonderful against the bland fatty cream.

Tonight's dinner was lovely, but definitely not something that can be whipped up for quick midweek meal. Thank goodness it's holidays now. I'm actually very tired now - 4 straight days of work, and very little sleep on Monday or Tuesday nights. After preparing that huge meal, I'm quite ready to pass out under the kitchen table.

Goodnight!

And it begins... Wednesday Dinner

I was going to kick off the How-To-Eat-Nigella-A-Thon with Squid with Chilli and Clams followed by Ricotta with Honey and Toasted Pine Nuts for dessert, from the Fast Food chapter. I had been going on about it for ages to anyone and everyone who would (or wouldn't) listen. And today, loads my friends were saying to me, “Ooh…looking forward to the clams? How’s the squid?”. I even got an email from England, "was thinking about your squid with clams all the way on the other side of the world, mmm!!". And so on. The plan for today was to go to the library at 9am, study all day, take the 3:30pm train to Box Hill to meet my mum, casually pick up all the ingredients for the weekend, and be home by 5, with plenty of time to spare before the 30 minutes (according to Nigella) required to make the dinner.

Hrmph.

Well, the study bit went according to plan (no, really!), mainly because none of my friends rocked up until 11 o’clock. And after an extended lunch and an unproductive, gossipy and giggly post-lunch study-session, I got the train, and arrived at Box Hill in a timely fashion. The only problem - NO FRIKKIN CLAMS. AT ALL. We went everywhere - Coles, Safeway, Fish Pier, the two Asian fishmongers - but couldn't find any! We managed to get the more obscure stuff on my list - like figs in a jar and duck breasts - but no clams. The figs we found at Athens Greek Deli, (I seem to have been developing a taste for Greek recently...), and we got duck breasts at a poultry shop. They normally don't sell breasts separately, but the butcher cut them out of two whole ducks, sold them to us at a bargainous $20/kilo and generously chucked in the carcasses for free. I'm already salivating, dreaming of the stock they'll make...

So two whole hours after arriving at Box Hill, finally our shopping was done, and we could come home. Of course, without the clams, I went to Plan B, which meant cooking what I'd planned for Thursday night's dinner instead...

1. Duck with Orange Salsa
2. Noodles with Spring Onions, Shitake Mushrooms and Mangetouts
3. Icecream with stem ginger or figs

Like the squid & clams, tonight's menu also comes from the Fast Food chapter, which means it's (allegedly) doable in 30 minutes. No such luck, I'm afraid. I wasn't really measuring - but I listened to Daft Punk's Discovery one and a half times whilst cooking - so just over an hour in total. The lengthiness of the whole procedure is mainly due to lots of fiddly chopping. It's not difficult, but it is time consuming. 5 chillies, 6 spring onions, 1/2 a red onion, 100g mangetouts (aka snowpeas), 240g shitake mushrooms, 2 oranges, fresh coriander and mint. PHEW! Nigella says it's "serenely manageable", but after a huge day of study and stressful shopping, I wasn't feeling very serene.

Thought to self whilst chopping: "Dammit, I'm starving, Dad's back from work, the duck's already done... and I get PAID to do this crap at work!"

Anyway, the chopping paid off in the end. Dinner was delicious. It seemed like a really strange combination on paper, but on the plate, and in the mouth, it all made perfect sense. Smoky mushrooms, crisp snowpeas, dense duck meat, the sharp and refreshing salsa... Mmmm... I was also concerned about 250g of noodles for 4 people - but it ended up being the perfect amount. Duck breasts are so rich and filling that less starch is required.


Noodles


Salsa


All-together - check out the colour combination! It brightened up my (cold and overcast) day!


Dessert

Sara Lee French Vanilla Icecream with random-Greek-brand green figs. Upon opening the jar, I was really hesitant about the figs, their incredible leathery blackness, sitting in thick sugary syrup, and was rehearsing apologies for my family in my mind... "It wasn't my idea, it was all Nigella... maybe figs in England are different from the ones we have here..." But those excuses were all uneccessary. The ice-cream was really good, and the figs were surprisingly edible. Well, more than edible - desirable, tasty, chewy, sweet, yum. Dad was really impressed. He said they tasted like some Malaysian candied fruit from his childhood.


Icecream with figs (By the way, they are green figs... if you hold them up to the light...)

As Nigella says, the figs and ice-cream are "just, delightfully, right after the zingily salsa'd duck".

I'm heading down to Victoria Market tomorrow. I need to get my hands on those damn clams!