First of all, anything would have to be better than Thursday night dinner, which was assembled out of desperation and a slight sense of perversion.
It was French dip, but not normal French dip. Instead there was lamb with a chicken broth concoction to dip it in. Then there was cheddar cheese, which looks rather lurid. I am not even sure what the proper cheese is. Then there was the Vietnamese spring rolls.
There’s a connection there, if you think about it.
Last night was different, though. The objective was duck soup, and the ingredients were purchased on purpose. It’s kind of funny that at some times when I am most busy I will drop everything and spend all afternoon making stock. I have never missed an actual deadline or anything due to this. It’s just one of my weird procrastination things, I guess. It makes me feel better.
Ducklet in repose. I always forget how long and square they are, because I buy them every couple of years, tops. It’s also interesting to compare the amount of meat they yield to a chicken’s. But chickens are bred to be blobs of meatloaf on little legs, I guess.
The first step was to roast the ducklet with the stock veggies, which produced a metric fuckton of grease. I never stop being amazed.
The directions said to cut the chicken into eight parts. Including the spine/back in any equation would make for an odd number. Which eight parts? I did my best but slipped on the grease anyway. I should have been using my smaller-handled knife.
Once the duck was roasted and the meat sliced, everything went into the drink with some herbs. Sometimes I wish I could make stock for a living, but I know it would get boring. But not for a month, at least.
The fun part was at the end with the duck eggs. One egg contains 144% of your daily cholesterol. Better than pork brain in milk gravy, I suppose.
They are larger than chicken eggs, and the membrane just behind the shell felt much tougher. I cracked them into cups for ease of poaching. I have never poached an egg before, and I consulted a couple of other cookbooks which said to only use a couple of inches of water.
So my eggs went to the bottom of the pool and sat their morosely, like some lame emo kid who was thinking about drowning itself artfully.
Sometimes I wish I had a person to teach me to cook, because it also said to add vinegar to the water, which I am sure does something cool, but what? I would ask a person this. The person would get tired of me and take their mandoline and go home.
When everything was close I bundled the little enokis with some chives from the backyard.
Cute little enoki bundles of firewood. Enoki NOM NOM.
Then at the end you put it all together and you have a duck broth, slices of duck meat from the roasting, buckwheat noodles which I was not crazy enough to make by hand, enokis, egg, and a sprinkle of green onion.
My egg was a little soft in the middle and released some yolky creaminess into the broth. This is good Friday night comfort food.
Nice! Where did you get your ducklings and duck eggs? We have some duck eggs from the egg man at the market and they are really tasty.
We’re going to get some ducks! And then have a million of our own duck eggs! I’m so excited.
looks pretty damn good considering you claim you can’t cook.
Holy shit. I get so excited when you write about food I almost wet my pants.
I aspire to a) cook as well as you b) photograph it as well as you and c) then write about it as well. In addition to this, I aspire to have you make duck soup with me. Someday.
As for vinegar in the egg water, it helps to keep the whites together, i.e. – not get long string-y bits trailing from the main egg bit. You can accomplish the same thing by making a little whirlpool in the cooking water and dropping the egg into the middle of it. Now I’ll pack up my mandoline and come over.
OH the enoki bundles, they killed me. it all looks bloody beautiful :)
Use the vinegar – I can say from experience that if you don’t get the egg DIRECTLY in the center the whirlpool you get watery egg white broth instead of a nice little poached egg.
I had to google “enoki.” Mushrooms! Gah!
Everything else looks delicious!
It looks fantastic! And yes, use the vinegar even if you make little whirlpools, I have poached like a gazillion eggs and still manage to make egg white soup from time to time.
If I lived closer, I would totally pack up my mandolin and come over to teach you to cook and answer random cookery questions! I could finally put my culinary school education to good use…LOL.
Funny side not, I typod that as “goo use”…which is kind of funny since were talking about food….or maybe it’s only funny to me?
I had a friend who was Vietnamise and when I stayed at her house, her father would make spring rolls. I’d never even heard of them until I stayed there. And I do have to agree with Denise. It looks amazing for someone claiming she cant cook. ^.^
You are so not right. I haven’t eaten in two days because of all these stitches in my mouth and then you throw this at me.
Not fair.
Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking will answer *all* your questions about “why this?” and “how does that work”? It’s an awesome, awesome book.
“You can accomplish the same thing by making a little whirlpool in the cooking water and dropping the egg into the middle of it. ”
This is a DIRTY FUCKING LIE!!! It never works!
If you ever want to make the Holiest of Grails in stock, check out my Chicken Feet!
SRSLY!
http://justtherightsize.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-did-chicken-cross-road.html
Your dish looks totally NOM! I’ve never had duck in all it’s ducky glory…will have to try sometime.
I SAW that post recently, and the chasing with a foot picture was crazy lulz. I should have commented! I kind of thought I did.
Hi everyone! People are out in blog force lately. I am thinking the weather is bad or something.
Considering you didn’t use vinegar and apparently did not know of the iffy whirlpool schtick, I see your egg poached beautifully–more evidence that all comes out well for those with good intent. But in future, do use the vinegar as a hedge, right? Miracles tend to work best for the innocent, and once we’ve been taught, we can’t unlearn the lesson and retreat from experience…
Hey Assmitten, nice looking food you have there. :D Poached eggs. I was told a trick which has worked for me for years now. Put a covered pan on the stovetop and turn to high. (About 1″ water is quite adequate.) Wait till water is just starting to boil, with all those hundreds of little bubbles frothing around, then turn off the element. Drop in your eggs – that whirlpool idea sounds cool, but I place my eggs round the edges – put the lid back on and leave for a few minutes. Try not to lift the lid to look too often. :p