duck, duck, turkey

Survived another Thanksgiving! No travel, no relatives, no turkey, no black friday mall shopping and no college sports!

Yes Miles home from college - with girlfriend Shiori of course, and yes mu-shu duck! I'm sure their blog posts 20 years from now will read pretty much the same, but for the "no mu-shu duck and no scrabble!" But that's their problem. Hopefully they will still appreciate the duck and the day-after duck soup. Don't think they'll ever forget the drying ducks - or the crispy skin for that matter. At least they know what was hanging in the window, unlike what I saw in Shanghai last february. What exactly was hanging out to dry there??? Pork maybe in one picture, but a bear? I think the animal control or the FDA would be on our doorsteps immediately. We did have pumpkin pie. Spiced up with cardamom, heavy on the ginger and a delicious crust made by Gus and assistant Shiori. (Recipe and picture below - sorry no picture of the prepared mu-shu duck due to ravenous customers.)

the mu-shu duck:

1 duck

3 tbsp malt sugar

2 tbsp rice vinegar

11/2 tsp five spice powder

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 small shallots

8 pieces star anise

2 shallots

Start preparing the night before: 

Wash and dry the duck. Bring a kettle of water to boil. Heat the malt sugar and the vinegar until the sugar has dissolved. 

Pour the bowling water over the duck. This will contract the skin and helps it separate from the flesh for crispy skin. Rub the duck all over with the malt sugar mixture. Stuff with five spice powder mixture and sew up the cavity. Hang duck to dry by it's feet. Be careful, it drips.

Next day:

Preheat oven at 375ºF. Roast duck for 1 hr, or until reddish brown and crispy!

Meanwhile prepare the pancakes:

2 cups plain flour

11/3 cup boiling water

salt

1 tbsp sesame oil plus more

Stir all ingredients rapidly together until you have a pliable ball. Divide dough in 4 equal parts. Roll each out in a log about 2" by 4". Cut into 4 pieces. On a lightly floured surface roll each into a 6" circle. Heat quickly on both sides on a very hot cast iron pan or griddle. Brush thinly with more sesame oil to prevent them from sticking together. Keep warm.

Prepare the stir-fry veggies:

bean-sprouts, washed

napa cabbage or bok choy, shredded

shiitake mushroom, sliced

scallions, white part sliced, greens chopped

cilantro

1 tbsp soy sauce

Heat a wok, add pan dripping from the duck. Quickly stir-fry the scallion white parts with the shiitake mushrooms. When the mushrooms are soft, add the cabbage for a minute, the soy sauce and remove from heat. Remove to serving dish. Just before serving stir in the bean-sprouts, cilantro and green scallion parts.

Time to serve:

duck

pancakes

stir fry

hoisin sauce

Carve the duck and slice thinly. Each guest will spread a tsp of hoisin sauce on a pancake. Add a few slices of duck meat and skin and a spoon full of stir fry. Pick up and eat like a taco.

That night I start the duck soup with the bones and left-overs. While certain other family members await their share of left-overs. (Don't worry, we had plenty - even enough for "duck-pot-pie" on the 3rd night.)

Recipe to follow. First the pumpkin pies!

The Pumpkin Pie:

fresh sugar pumpkins

Roast in a 400ºF oven until soft. Scoop out seeds, peel and reserve meat.

pie dough:

21/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 sticks cold butter, in cubes

1/4 cup ice-cold water

Combine all ingredients except ice water in food processor and pulse until coarse but well blended. While the machine is running, slowly but QUICKLY add ice-water through the feed tube until the dough holds together. Divide dough in 2 pieces. Flatten each into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 1 hr.

filling:

4 cups fresh pumpkin meat

3 cups heavy cream

1 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

1 tsp salt

2 tsp cardamom

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp ginger

1 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp cloves

Mix all in food processor and blend well.

Preheat oven at 425ºF

Roll out dough to line two 9" pie pans. Pour in filling and decorate with dough scraps. Bake for 15 min at 425ºF, then lower temp to 350ºF for an additional 45 min or so. Until a knife comes out clean.

first kiln, first wheel, first sale!

First: I sold my first pot! Thanks to my dear friend and painter Holly Collins it was less traumatic than I thought. I was not all too ready to part with my favorite piece, but I'm happy it's found a new home with my friends in Vancouver. Holly just opened an ETSY store herself. You should check out her colorful and sparkling pique-assiette christmas trees and other treasures in Holly's store at ETSY  She was in town to attend a glassblowing workshop - who knows what she'll do next - and visiting old Bainbridge friends Trudy and (incumbent - soon to be re-elected - congressman) Jay Inslee. Great to see them again too. Jay just got back from campaigning in Spokane. Not for himself - I'm sure his seat is safe - but for our governor, Christine Gregoire. I think he gave it all he got - he was as hoarse as Bill Clinton on the stump. So, we missed him for dinner, but us girls had a pretty good meal, with a lot of laughs at the "Four Swallows" on Bainbridge. Maybe a few too many and certainly way too loud. Our waitress commented on how nice it was to have some noise in the restaurant, quite unlike most nights after 9 pm on a  Saturday on Bainbridge!? Shows you how "exciting" this town is and why we never bother to eat out. Didn't quite know how to take her comment either. We took it as a clue that, since we were the only ones left beside the staff table, we should maybe clear out. My mussels were cooked fine, but the taste of the broth was overwhelmed by canned tomatoes.

Second: I bought an - electric - kiln and wheel today!!

Yeah, the mudslinging at home can start in earnest now - after I get the kiln hooked up to 240 volts that is. I can't tell you how excited I am. Of course I'm still thinking about the gas kiln too . . . Maybe if I sell a few more pieces next weekend in - oh I had not mentioned - a show I've been invited to join by my instructor Sherri Grossbauer. It's the "Art in the Woods" self-guided studio tour on November 7, 8 & 9. You can find a brochure online at www.cafnw.org. Sherri has offered to "host" my work in her studio space: Mud Club Pottery and I couldn't be more thankful. 

Pots ready for the show!

gas or electric?

The day has finally come to acquire my own kiln. No, the gas or electric question has nothing to do with my kitchen. That was an easy choice made years ago: out! with the electric coils and in! with the 6 burner, griddle and 2 oven Viking gas stove. No, it's time to set up a ceramics studio at home. With x-mas break looming - 8 long weeks until the Eagledale Art Center opens up again - panic has set in. I will no longer put up with pottery withdrawal syndrome. Off to craigslist it is then. Thankfully there are plenty potters who dabble in muck and mud for a while only to realize that you can't strike it rich being a potter and eventually give up. Today's CL has no fewer than 8! kilns waiting for new owners. That's not even counting the one (electric kiln) I'm going to look at tomorrow - guess they think they've sold it to me already. Maybe, maybe not. I looked at a gas kiln last week, but I'm sitting on the fence. Up till now I had fired all my pots in a cone 10 gas kiln, with great results. But a handbuilt piece - I call it the "are-you-coming-or-going?-goat", had me worried that it wouldn't survive the gas kiln. My incredibly resourceful instructor Sherri Grossbauer suggested I fire it in the electric kiln. I knew that I didn't like the way the glaze (Pinell Strontium Blue, aka Weathered Bronze) turned out in cone 5, so we tried cone 6. To great result! So here we go with my dilemma. To gas or to electric? The gas firing process seems daunting, but I love so many glazes that need the reduction you can only get in a gas kiln. On the other hand, this glaze is beautiful in either kiln AND my pieces will shrink less. I guess I will make up my mind tomorrow!

pasta di zucca

That's pasta with pumpkin in Italian. I reserve half of one vegetable bed to grow sugar pumpkins just to be able to eat this and - of course - pumpkin pie. I can't tell which of these two I love more - guess it depends on my mood; savory or sweet. After being engulfed by sugary fumes while canning jellies and applesauce all last week, I was definitely inclined towards savory. On top of that I had a little taste of it while assisting my friend and chef, Greg Atkinson, on a catering job. We catered a fundraiser for the annual "Wintergrass Festival" in Tacoma. Greg put together an Italian feast of hors d'oeuvres - starting with 3 types of crostini, one version topped with roast pumpkin, a fried sage leaf and grated parmesan. I'm glad I managed to sneak one in my mouth before the guests snatched them all of my handmade platters. That was just a little teaser, but probably a timely one. Nothing worse than to go out in the pumpkin patch and find the bottoms of the pumpkins eaten by slugs and hollowed out by mice. Now they're safe and dry on the kitchen counter, awaiting their fate. Spared too from falling prey to Floortje and Bunior, our dogs. Unlike their poor hapless fellow-sufferers: the apples. (We can't find a place to walk or sit down anywhere in the house without smooshing a half chewed apple.) 

Now to the recipe:

pasta di zucca:                                          

1 small sugar pumpkin

olive oil

coarse sea salt, pepper

2 oz pancetta, diced

freshly (!) grated parmigiano reggiano

1/2 stick of butter

handful of sage leaves

1 lb pasta (ie gemelli, fussili)

Cut the pumpkin in segments and remove the seeds. Peel and dice.

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil for the pasta. Heat a little olive oil in a large casserole over medium high heat. Add the pancetta. When brown on all sides remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add the pumpkin to the same casserole, season with salt and pepper and brown on all sides, stirring every so often.

Add a little olive oil and the pasta to the boiling water; cook till al dente. Drain.

Fry the sage leaves in the butter in a frying pan over medium heat. The butter should be brown, but be careful not to burn it. Remove the sage leaves to drain on a paper towel. Season with salt. (And don't eat them all just yet!)

Mix the pumpkin, pancetta and pasta together on a platter. Sprinkle with sage leaves, drizzle with the brown butter and serve with freshly grated parmesan and a fresh salad.

Serves 4 people.

Note: In a more elaborate version I fill handmade ravioli's with the pumpkin, sage and parmigiano, drizzle with the browned butter and top off with more fried sage leaves. No pancetta necessary.

a little Provence blues

Sadly, last year around this time, Michael and I were eating our way through the Provence. No such luck this year and I'm feeling pretty nostalgic. Didn't help to open up my iphoto on a picture of the market in Aix-en-Provence. A sad reminder of what lunch could taste like. I do my best with homegrown tomatoes and trying to find the best goat cheese, sausages and olives around here, but it's never going to be the same. The amount of delicacies and the quality and freshness just can't be recreated here. Where do I find a Banon?A goat cheese painstakingly wrapped in marinated chestnut leaves. A stall with at least 50 kinds of sausages? Heaps upon heaps of wild mushrooms. Mountains of porcini?

OK, enough already. I did have to try something for lunch to bring me closer to Provence. At least we have Port Madison Goat Cheese here on Bainbridge Island. And I do have the freshest of tomatoes, a little jar of Herbes de Provence, some Fleur de Sel from the Camargue and a drizzle of good olive oil. Not perfect - for one the sound of the market is missing and - even worse - I'm out of rosé!

canning season

Once again! Not that nothing went on between the last post and this one. Oh well. It's been awhile and that's enough said. I'll get straight to what I've been busy with these last weeks. Canning - for one. It's not been the warmest of summers, but the raccoons let us know that the grapes were FINALY ready to harvest. It took me 4 days to pick them all. During that time we got nightly reminders that there were still more grapes to be picked. The announcement was usually made by Bunior - our boston terrier pug mix - barking at the loud snarling noises coming from a family of 6 raccoons prowling the roof. This would lead to dear husband Michael abandoning his sleep for a midnight chase on the roof - armed to the teeth with a broom no less. (Where's that picture?!) Of course it was raining and the tomatoes and blackberries needed to be picked too. AND I caught a couple of hippies trawling my orchard - ladder and all! - for apples. So I've squeezed, juiced, sauced and jellied wheelbarrow loads, but there's still more to be done. Luckily I came across a recipe for chutney that uses apple, grapes and most important - green tomatoes. Of course I've tweaked it so much, since it was too bland for my taste, that it's now my: 

all green tomato, apple and grape chutney          

6 lbs green tomatoes, chopped

10 green apples, peeled, cored, chopped

2 large onions, chopped

4 cups apple cider vinegar

5 cups dark brown sugar

1 tbsp. picillo peppers

1 fresh habanero pepper, finely diced

2 tsp salt

1 tbsp mustard seeds, lightly crushed

1 tbsp turmeric

3" piece juicy ginger root, diced

2 cups golden raisins

21/2 lbs green seedless grapes

Throw everything, except for the grapes, into the largest pot you own - I use a 7 qt Le Creuset cast-iron pot. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 1 hour. Add the grapes and continue simmering until the chutney starts to thicken. Stir frequently! 

Meanwhile, prepare your jars and lids. I fill my 14 qt stock-pot with as many washed jars and bands and as I can fit, cover them with water and bring to a boil. When the chutney starts to thicken I boil my tongs, ladle and a funnel as well, before removing the hot jars and bands with the tongs to a clean dish towel on the counter. Quickly fill the jars, dip the lids in the boiling water, close up the jars and invert them on the towel for 5 min. Turn them over - they should pop pretty soon. Add more jars and bands to the boiling water and repeat the whole process until all chutney has been canned. 

Great with chicken or lamb, or on ham or roast beef sandwiches.

root vegetable, barley and meatball soup

It's been a while, to say the least.  I could bore you with why I had nothing worth writing about, but that defeats the purpose of keeping quiet and not bothering anybody. Let's just blame it on winter-blah. I could easily hibernate from X-mas till spring. But . . . we've had a few nice days here and there and I've slowly been getting my butt out in the yard. Weeding, tilling; getting the garden ready for planting and otherwise getting my blood to flow - burning way more calories than a hibernating sloth should. 

What to do when you come home ravenous, looking for food and YOU are the cook?  This is when it's good to plan ahead. I think I've finally learned my lesson after many years of not planning and succumbing to that "low-blood-sugar-grazing" of whatever happens to be in sight. Much better to come home to a giant cauldron of soup steaming and bubbling away on the stove. You start your concoction before you head out. Just toss the ingredients in a pot of water, get it to boil, turn to simmer, cover with lid, let it do it's magic and out the door you go! You come home, you strain the brew, add some fresh ingredients, heat a few rolls and sit down. Time to replenish! That easy! Before you know it you're belly up on the couch resting that sore back.

I've been making this soup for a few years now and still love it. The picture is from 2 years ago when I had to try out a set of dishes I was making as my nieces wedding present.

root vegetable, barley and meatball soup

The Stock

2 giant marrow bones

1 onion

1 garlic clove

2 tomatoes

1 rutabaga

1 parsnip

4 celery stalks

4 carrots

5 bay leaves

pinch whole mace

1 tsp. peppercorns

Toss in a 12 qt. stock pot. Bring to a boil, cover with lid, turn to simmer for 2 hours or more.

The Meatballs

1 lb ground pork

1 lb ground lamb

1 egg

pepper, salt, cloves, cayenne to taste

pinch ground thyme

Shape into 11/2" balls.

The Finish

11/2 cup barley

2 large carrots, sliced

1 small head savoy cabbage, shredded

generous amount of shredded basil

Strain the broth. Reserve the root vegetable and cut into cubes. Scrape the marrow into the soup. Add salt to taste. Add the barley and cook for 1 hr or until done. Add the carrot slices, cabbage and reserved root vegetables. Simmer for 5 min.

Serve in bowls topped with shredded basil with a side of heated buttered rolls.

Perfect soup after a hard day's work outside. Rich in flavor, filling but lightened by the crunchy bite of fresh vegetables and herbs.