duck, duck, mmmmmmmmmm

although i don't eat it that often, i really love duck. like fish, the biggest problem has been where to get humanely- and sustainably-raised duck. well, every now and then, marin sun farms has some at the saturday sf farmers' market - they work in partnership with a duck farm - and so last saturday, i secured enough to make dinner for two.

it's a good thing i didn't really ask kevin what he thought about having it for dinner, cuz he would have said, "yuck, no thanks, ma'am." it turns out, except for peking duck (which, btw, is my absolute FAVORITE duck dish. [*mouth-watering, sigh*]), he was under the impression that he doesn't really like duck. well, he was wronnnnnnng! he actually really liked it and ate everything on his plate. (hrm, hrm, evidence i should keep ignoring him (just for dinner planning, of course)? heehee)

below is the recipe. i served it with creamy mashed potatoes and roasted baby carrots. the skin was perfectly crispy, the duck was a beautiful medium rare, and the sauce was delicately sweet and savory at the same time. this particular dinner takes about 45 minutes from prep to serve. enjoy!


Duck with Earl-Grey Tea Sauce

1 1/2 lbs boneless Muscovy duck breast
1 cup finely chopped shallots
2 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice
4 tsps Earl Grey tea leaves
1 tbsp honey
3 tbsps butter, cut into small pieces
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450°F. Pierce duck breast skin all over with fork and then sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper.

Over high heat, heat large skillet then add duck breasts, skin side down. Sear until skin is browned, about 5 minutes. Turn duck over and cook 2 more minutes. Remove pan from heat, set aside. On a roasting pan with a rack, transfer duck breasts and roast in oven for about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let rest for 10 minutes.

While duck is roasting, heat skillet (with pan drippings) over medium heat. Add shallots and sauté until softened and beginning to brown, about 5 minutes, making sure to scrape up and stir in any browned bits stuck to pan. Drain off all duck grease from pan, then add stock, orange juice ,and tea leaves. Boil until mixture is reduced by half, about 20 minutes. Strain sauce into a bowl and discard solids. Return sauce to skillet; add honey and bring to simmer. Whisk in butter, then season sauce to taste with salt and pepper.

Slice duck breasts thinly across grain. Divide equally into 4 servings and plate by overlapping slices slightly, then spoon sauce onto duck. Serves 4.

marlene's marinade

so remember how i was saying during a few posts that i didn't get what people meant when they said grass-raised beef had to be cooked differently? well i finally figured it out a couple weeks ago: it matters for really lean cuts of beef, like most steaks.

turns out you can't grill them up with just the usual salt and pepper (and maybe a little olive oil) rubbed in. well, i guess you CAN grill them up if you insist, but you'll wish you had just listened to me instead. ;) but seriously, grass-fed steaks are so lean, they really benefit from hanging out in a marinade, preferably for overnight.

one marinade i really like is a recipe from kevin's mom, marlene. it's especially great on beef tenderloin (which is what the marinade is actually for), but it works really well for any cut of beef. tonight we used it on a rib-eye steak. so, ok, rib-eye isn't all that lean, but it was pretty awesome anyway. recipe below.


Marlene's Marinade

1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
1/2 cup Teriyaki sauce
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, crushed

2-lbs beef of your choice (e.g., beef tenderloin or steaks)

Mix all ingredients into a Ziploc bag. Add beef to marinade. Marinate overnight. Roast or grill as usual. Reserve marinade; place in small saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer sauce until reduced by about half; keep warm.

If you're cooking with grass-raised beef, meat will cook more quickly than conventionally-raised (grain-fed) beef. Serves 4, with sauce on side. There should be enough leftovers for tasty things like sandwiches!

make me some pie!

well so it looks as though cherry season is in full swing in northern california. it's also already almost over - i started seeing cherries a couple weeks ago at the sf farmers' market, and this saturday, the farmer i buy my cherries from - twin girls farm - told me that they expected to have them only for a couple more weeks. *sniffles*

having heard this, i figured it was now or never to get my cherry pie on. we were going to a memorial day bbq on sunday; when i had asked what i could bring, i was told dessert or wine would be great. well, imo, bringing wine to a party is BORING, so i decided to make pie. the week before i had acquired my first-ever cherry / olive pitter that i was pretty enthralled with, so as i made my weekly farmers' market grocery list, i made sure to write down the ingredients i didn't already have on hand: namely, a pound or so of cherries and a 1/2 cup of lard from humanely-raised pork at prather ranch.

WHAAAAAAT - LARD?!??! you exclaim? yes, that's right. i use lard in my pie crusts. do you want to know why? because vegetable shortening is FAKE. it's WEIRD. it's NOT NATURAL. take a look at the ingredients in crisco: soybean oil (probably from a genetically-modified organism - "GMO"), sunflower oil (also probably from a GMO), fully-hydrogenated palm oil (sounds so natural - NOT), mono- and diglycerides (...), TBHQ (what the *fudge* is THAT?), and citric acid (noted in the ingredient label as an "antioxident"... whuh?!).

YUCK! seriously. "TBHQ?!?" apparently this is an ingredient that crisco thinks it can abbreviate and yet i (a decently aware consumer) have no idea what it is. you don't either, do you? frankly, i don't want to know, but since i'm not going to be eating it, i don't need to know. after all, why would i want to consume something that's been pumped full of hydrogen and is more likely than not made out of GMOs? no thanks. this doesn't pass muster with mwah and i certainly hope this doesn't pass any smell test for you, either. oh, but wait... crisco is odorless. so you wouldn't be able to smell it anyway. food for thought: when was the last time you encountered real food that had NO ODOR?! that's right! NEVER! (although i'm sure if you try crisco's "butter flavor" shortening, there might be some kind of smell. ahem.)

besides, using vegetable shortening, at least to me, is like using margarine when you could be using tasty delicious butter. i'd rather have nothing than eat margarine. margarine tastes gross - it tries so hard to be butter, but let's face it, it's just "chemicalicated" vegetable oil. yu-uck. you want to know *why* you can't believe it's not butter? BECAUSE IT'S NOT BUTTER! (garlinghouse, are you reading this?)

so why do i use lard in my pie crusts? well, the biggest reason is taste and texture. i think it makes pie crusts very flavorful and flaky. but it turns out from a "health standpoint" (hahahaha, i mean, we're talking about DESSERT. health! hahahahaha) lard has less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat, and less cholesterol than butter; lard also has no trans fat. i get lard from prather ranch, which subscribes to the ethos of humanely- and sustainably-raised meat. (yay!) plus, the people who work at the store in the sf ferry bldg are SOOOOO nice and friendly, too. [they also happen to have some pretty tasty beef hot dogs (no mystery meat!) that you can munch on (snarf, in my case) as you do your shopping.]

anyway, i majorly digressed. i was supposed to be writing about delicious, yummy cherry pie. below is a new recipe i tried out, and if i do say so myself (and i will:), it came out beautifully. i also really liked the crust - so much so that this might be my new standby recipe. don't be afraid of making a lattice top, either. it looks spectacular (and thus, many assume this = hard), but if you could weave a potholder in elementary school, you can weave a pie crust. for reals.

i finished baking the pie only a couple hours before going to the bbq on sunday, so it was still a little warm when people started to dig in. vadim - although he denies it - had at least 2 pieces, and he's pretty into food, so i'll take it as a sign that the pie was as tasty to everyone else (or at least just to vadim) as i thought it was. this one is a keeper. and, although we didn't have any, i bet either a little almond ice cream (yes, almond!) or whipped cream would be deeelish with this. enjoy!


Cherry Pie

Pie Crust
2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup chilled lard, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
7-10 tbsps ice water

Filling
1 24-oz jar sour cherries in light syrup
1 15-oz can tart cherries, drained
1 lb fresh Bing cherries, pitted
6 tsps arrowroot
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 whole nutmeg, cracked in half
1 whole star anise
1/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup whipping cream


Pie Crust
Place flour, sugar, and salt in food processor. Add butter and lard and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Transfer to medium bowl. Add ice water 2 tbsps at a time and mix with fork until dough begins to clump together. Gather dough together, divide in half and flatten each into disk. Wrap both well in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an 1 hour. (DO NOT skip this step, otherwise, your pastry will be a mess.)

Filling
Strain syrup from sour cherries into large saucepan, reserving 1/4 cup. In a medium bowl, whisk reserved 1/4 cup syrup and arrowroot until blended and no lumps remain; add sour cherries and toss gently to combine. Set aside.

In the large saucepan with syrup, add cinnamon, nutmeg, and star anise, bring to a boil, then simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes. Add tart cherries and simmer until liquid reduces to about 3/4 cup, about 10 more minutes. Discard nutmeg and star anise, then add sugar and fresh Bing cherries. Simmer on medium heat until fresh cherries are tender, about 3-5 minutes. Stir in sour cherry mixture to saucepan and continue to simmer, stirring occasionally until mixture thickens, about 2 minutes. (Don't turn your back on it, it thickens pretty quickly.) Immediately remove from heat and transfer to medium bowl to COOL COMPLETELY.

Assembling Pie
Place rack in bottom third of oven; preheat to 400°F. Roll out first dough disk on floured surface to 13" round. Transfer to 9" glass pie dish. Trim dough to 1" overhang. Spoon cooled filling into crust.

Roll out second dough disk to another 13" round. Cut dough into 3/4"-wide strips. Evenly space 5 dough strips across pie in 1 direction and weave in 5 strips spaced evenly in opposite direction, forming lattice. Trim strips evenly with bottom crust overhang. Turn dough edges under, pinching to seal, and crimping edges decoratively. Brush edges and lattice lightly with whipping cream. Place pie on foil-covered rimmed baking sheet and bake until crust is golden brown and filling bubbles thickly, about 50 minutes. Cool pie on rack. Serve either lukewarm or room temperature. Serves 8-10.