Christmas cooking
Dec. 25th, 2012 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitDinner was yum. I ended up adding roasted beets with mustard vinaigrette to the existing menu (duck breasts; roast potatoes; and brussels sprouts with chestnuts, cream, and blue cheese).
starlady asked for the brussels sprouts recipe, so I'm posting it here. It comes from the 2006 Bon Appetit Cookbook by Barbara Fairchild.
2 tablespoons olive oil (I used duck fat, since I had lots due to cooking the duck, on which more below)
2 large shallots, halved and sliced
1 pound brussels sprouts, stemmed and halved
7 to 7.5 ounces cooked chestnuts (I bought the vacuum-packed ones from Trader Joe's, which are inexpensive and have better flavor and texture than when I've laboriously tried to shell and cook chestnuts myself)
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth (I used homemade duck broth, which I'm sure did no harm!)
1/3 cup whipping dream
3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives (didn't have, omitted, recipe was fine without)
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
Sauté the shallots in the oil over medium-high heat for a minute or two, then add the brussels sprouts and chestnuts and cook for another minute. Add the broth, cover the pot, and simmer until the brussels sprouts are almost tender. Then uncover and boil until the broth has mostly evaporated. Add the cream and boil for 3 minutes or so until it's all nice and creamy. Mix in chives, add salt to taste (I didn't think it needed any) and pepper. Put in a bowl and sprinkle with the cheese before serving.
Note: besides the ingredient changes mentioned, I stirred the cheese in at the end of cooking rather than sprinkling it on, largely because my blue cheese was soft rather than crumbly. The result was deliciously creamy and might, I think, be more to my taste than having crumbled unmelted cheese on top.
I also wanted to talk a bit about cooking duck, in case you haven't tried it and are curious.
Athough duck breast was my main course, I bought a whole duck, because buying a single duck breast costs as much as a whole duck anyway and you don't get the extras. I bought my duck frozen; unfrozen ducks in the supermarket are probably just thawed, so you might as well get the cheaper still-frozen kind. It took four whole days to thaw out in my fridge (even with one day spent in a big pan of water) and was still a little icy inside, so plan ahead.
The next step was to cut up the duck. The thing about duck is, the breasts are best served medium-rare while the legs need to be slowly, thoroughly cooked. There are plenty of recipes that call for roasting a whole duck (something I must confess I've never tried), but the consensus seems to be that a duck is best disassembled and its parts cooked by different methods. It's really not that hard, and there are convenient video tutorials all over the internet on how to cut up the duck. Having a good sharp knife will help (mine is not very sharp, which made things more effortful and the results imperfect). Removing two boneless duck breasts and two leg/thigh quarters took me about fifteen minutes.
The next issue, or rather wonderful opportunity, is the duck fat. I just trimmed any excess (i.e. hanging out past the breast meat) from the breasts, but since duck legs are best braised, you can remove all the skin. This is probably the slowest and most irritating part of the disassembly process, since the skin on duck legs isn't as loose as on chicken, but once it's all done you have a big heap of duck skin and fat (also remove the skin from the carcass as best you can, and any random blobs of fat) which can be rendered down to make duck fat, aka the cooking fat of the gods. Chuck it all in a pan and cook it over low heat for a long time, until all the fat is rendered and there are bits of browned crispy duck skin sizzling in it. Reward yourself for your labors by eating the skin.
While the duck fat rendered, I also made duck stock. I broke up the carcass as best I could (kitchen shears are helpful) and chucked it in a pan along with a cut-up carrot, a cut-up stalk of celery, a couple of big unpeeled shallots cut in half (I was out of onions but not shallots, weirdly), a couple of unpeeled cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, and a few peppercorns. It would actually have been better to roast the carcass and the vegetables first--you get a clearer and more flavorful stock that way--but it was late, I was tired, and I didn't think of it until I'd already added water to the pan. Putting some red wine or (preferably) sherry into the pot along with the water is also good. I let that simmer for a long long time, skimming the froth off occasionally, until the liquid was flavorful and there was no flavor left in the duck meat. At that point I strained the stock through cheesecloth and refrigerated it overnight. (I didn't, actually, because it was really late by then, so I just let it cool outside for a bit and stuck it in the fridge unstrained; the next day I skimmed off the fat as much as possible, reheated the stock, and then strained it. But it's better to do this the other way around, in part because the fat is easier to remove from a pan of broth than a pan that also contains bones and vegetable chunks.)
Today, when I sauteed the breasts (score the skin in both directions down to but not into the meat so that the fat melts, start in a cold pan skin side down, cook on medium-low to medium heat, turn when the skin is crisp and brown and briefly sear the other side at a higher temperature), I poured off the excess fat and added it to the rest of the saved duck fat--I've got a nice cupful or so altogether. I used some of the stock for a pan sauce for the duck breasts (sauté a shallot in the pan after cooking the duck, add in about 1/3 cup of sherry in which you've been soaking a handful of dried cherries, when the sherry has mostly evaporated add about a cup of stock and cook it down until it has reduced to maybe 1/3 cup, whisk in a tablespoon of cold butter) and some for the brussels sprouts. The remainder of the stock is now in my slow cooker along with the duck legs, some sherry, and a little water; I will use the resulting stewlike braised concoction as the basis for a pasta sauce by adding a caramelized onion, some dried porcini and shiitake mushrooms, maybe a little tomato paste, and simmering it down until it's thick and lovely.
There's definitely some effort involved in all of this, but you also get the basis for far more than just one dish or even one meal, so I think it's worth it.
starlady asked for the brussels sprouts recipe, so I'm posting it here. It comes from the 2006 Bon Appetit Cookbook by Barbara Fairchild. 2 tablespoons olive oil (I used duck fat, since I had lots due to cooking the duck, on which more below)
2 large shallots, halved and sliced
1 pound brussels sprouts, stemmed and halved
7 to 7.5 ounces cooked chestnuts (I bought the vacuum-packed ones from Trader Joe's, which are inexpensive and have better flavor and texture than when I've laboriously tried to shell and cook chestnuts myself)
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth (I used homemade duck broth, which I'm sure did no harm!)
1/3 cup whipping dream
3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives (didn't have, omitted, recipe was fine without)
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
Sauté the shallots in the oil over medium-high heat for a minute or two, then add the brussels sprouts and chestnuts and cook for another minute. Add the broth, cover the pot, and simmer until the brussels sprouts are almost tender. Then uncover and boil until the broth has mostly evaporated. Add the cream and boil for 3 minutes or so until it's all nice and creamy. Mix in chives, add salt to taste (I didn't think it needed any) and pepper. Put in a bowl and sprinkle with the cheese before serving.
Note: besides the ingredient changes mentioned, I stirred the cheese in at the end of cooking rather than sprinkling it on, largely because my blue cheese was soft rather than crumbly. The result was deliciously creamy and might, I think, be more to my taste than having crumbled unmelted cheese on top.
I also wanted to talk a bit about cooking duck, in case you haven't tried it and are curious.
Athough duck breast was my main course, I bought a whole duck, because buying a single duck breast costs as much as a whole duck anyway and you don't get the extras. I bought my duck frozen; unfrozen ducks in the supermarket are probably just thawed, so you might as well get the cheaper still-frozen kind. It took four whole days to thaw out in my fridge (even with one day spent in a big pan of water) and was still a little icy inside, so plan ahead.
The next step was to cut up the duck. The thing about duck is, the breasts are best served medium-rare while the legs need to be slowly, thoroughly cooked. There are plenty of recipes that call for roasting a whole duck (something I must confess I've never tried), but the consensus seems to be that a duck is best disassembled and its parts cooked by different methods. It's really not that hard, and there are convenient video tutorials all over the internet on how to cut up the duck. Having a good sharp knife will help (mine is not very sharp, which made things more effortful and the results imperfect). Removing two boneless duck breasts and two leg/thigh quarters took me about fifteen minutes.
The next issue, or rather wonderful opportunity, is the duck fat. I just trimmed any excess (i.e. hanging out past the breast meat) from the breasts, but since duck legs are best braised, you can remove all the skin. This is probably the slowest and most irritating part of the disassembly process, since the skin on duck legs isn't as loose as on chicken, but once it's all done you have a big heap of duck skin and fat (also remove the skin from the carcass as best you can, and any random blobs of fat) which can be rendered down to make duck fat, aka the cooking fat of the gods. Chuck it all in a pan and cook it over low heat for a long time, until all the fat is rendered and there are bits of browned crispy duck skin sizzling in it. Reward yourself for your labors by eating the skin.
While the duck fat rendered, I also made duck stock. I broke up the carcass as best I could (kitchen shears are helpful) and chucked it in a pan along with a cut-up carrot, a cut-up stalk of celery, a couple of big unpeeled shallots cut in half (I was out of onions but not shallots, weirdly), a couple of unpeeled cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, and a few peppercorns. It would actually have been better to roast the carcass and the vegetables first--you get a clearer and more flavorful stock that way--but it was late, I was tired, and I didn't think of it until I'd already added water to the pan. Putting some red wine or (preferably) sherry into the pot along with the water is also good. I let that simmer for a long long time, skimming the froth off occasionally, until the liquid was flavorful and there was no flavor left in the duck meat. At that point I strained the stock through cheesecloth and refrigerated it overnight. (I didn't, actually, because it was really late by then, so I just let it cool outside for a bit and stuck it in the fridge unstrained; the next day I skimmed off the fat as much as possible, reheated the stock, and then strained it. But it's better to do this the other way around, in part because the fat is easier to remove from a pan of broth than a pan that also contains bones and vegetable chunks.)
Today, when I sauteed the breasts (score the skin in both directions down to but not into the meat so that the fat melts, start in a cold pan skin side down, cook on medium-low to medium heat, turn when the skin is crisp and brown and briefly sear the other side at a higher temperature), I poured off the excess fat and added it to the rest of the saved duck fat--I've got a nice cupful or so altogether. I used some of the stock for a pan sauce for the duck breasts (sauté a shallot in the pan after cooking the duck, add in about 1/3 cup of sherry in which you've been soaking a handful of dried cherries, when the sherry has mostly evaporated add about a cup of stock and cook it down until it has reduced to maybe 1/3 cup, whisk in a tablespoon of cold butter) and some for the brussels sprouts. The remainder of the stock is now in my slow cooker along with the duck legs, some sherry, and a little water; I will use the resulting stewlike braised concoction as the basis for a pasta sauce by adding a caramelized onion, some dried porcini and shiitake mushrooms, maybe a little tomato paste, and simmering it down until it's thick and lovely.
There's definitely some effort involved in all of this, but you also get the basis for far more than just one dish or even one meal, so I think it's worth it.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-26 09:46 pm (UTC)Really? That's not the case in the UK.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-29 07:15 pm (UTC)