I met Suzette at the Greenhouse Bistro after my massage and we discussed whether to eat at the Bistro or go home. Since I had two duck halves thawing at home, I gladly agreed to go home for dinner when Suzette said she wanted to get into her pajamas so she could relax because she was tired and wanted to relax at home.
When I arrived at home, I reviewed the section in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking on turnips and saw that she recommended simply roasting them with butter or beef stock. Julia also suggested blanching turnips for 2 to 3 minutes if they were not young and tender and garnishing them with fresh parsley.
When Suzette arrived, I quickly agreed to her idea of sautéing some turnips and carrots from our garden with some onion in butter, rather than baking them. So I cubed about one pound of turnips and one-half pound of carrots and one-half onion into cubes.
We then pricked the duck skin and placed it on a baking the rack of a baking pan with a rack on it so the fat and moisture could drip down and allow the duck skin to crisp and because the duck halves were not completely thawed and needed to release their moisture. Instead of the normal 15 minutes recommended on the package we roasted the duck for about 25 minutes on the convection setting of the oven, increasing the temperature to 475 for the last 10 minutes to try to crisp the skin.
While the duck was roasting and the turnips, onion and carrots were sautéing I went to the garden and picked about 1/4 cup of parsley and de-stemmed it and chopped it and threw it into the turnip mixture to cook and Suzette seasoned the turnip mixture with a healthy dash of freshly ground black pepper and coarse sea salt. The winter turnip mixture still had slight bitter flavor, so Suzette made a mixture of brown sugar and cheese and added it to the turnips. It created a light sweetness and creaminess to the mixture.
We have received a comment from a reader who mentioned that we use a lot of “leftovers” in our cooking. Since the term “leftover” seems to have a bad connotation, we decided to henceforth use the term “previously prepared ingredient” or “PPI”. There are three previously prepared ingredients in this meal; the cranberry sauce Suzette made about two weeks ago, the orange sauce from last week’s duck meal and the bulgur wheat I made about three days ago.
Suzette did not want the usual traditional Sauce L’Orange and wanted to make a glaze for the duck by mixing about one-half cup of PPI cranberry sauce with about one-fourth cup of the PPI L’ Orange Sauce, so she mixed them in a small enameled sauce pan and put that on the stove on low heat to heat and thicken, while I fetched the PPI bulgur and put it into the microwave to heat.
We discussed our wine selection and Suzette recommended a Pinot Noir. I went to the wine cellar and could not find a moderately priced Pinot because I did not want to drink one of our Londers’ Pinots, I chose a 2005 Terrasses Chateau Pesquié from Ventoux – Rhône Valley Vineyards (Côtes du Ventoux Contrôlée) that was 70% grenache and 30% Syrah, imported by Eric Solomon/European Cellars Selction and one of our Spanish 50% Grenache/50% tempranillo’s. Suzette decided on the Chateau Pesquié.
When the duck had adequately crisped and slightly browned, we took it out of the stove. I carefully removed the breast from the leg and thigh quarter and put the breasts aside for a salad for Sunday and then we plated the leg quarters with a large scoop of the turnip mixture and coated the duck with the thickened Cranberry/Orange sauce/glaze and I added a pile of heated bulgur to my plate. The camera’s battery was dead, so no picture, but I can report that they made a beautiful plate of brown and beige and red.
We poured the wine and began eating. Suzette then commented that the wine was good but not quite right for the dish.
I was sorry I did not select one of our Pinots, but let me explain the reasoning that led me to select the Chateau Pesquié. Since we recently had opened several wines that had gone bad lately due to holding them too long, we decided that we needed to drink the wines that had a bit of age on them before they went bad and because the recommended ageing for the Chateau Pesquié was five years and thus it was into its sixth year, I chose it. The Chateau Pesquié would have been better with a leg of lamb because of the earthy heaviness of its 30% syrah, rather than the elegant smoothness of a good 100% pinot noir, but after the Chateau Pesquié opened up a bit, it was lovely.
Ten hours after opening, as I sip some of the Chateau Pesquié while I write this article, it still has that rich, fruity, yet smooth, earthy character that one associates with the wines of Southern Rhône that stands so well on its own. I would call it a sipping wine.
Alternatively, before dinner Suzette tried a glass of the corked Cutler Creek Cabernet Sauvignon that had been opened a day or two before and had to throw it out because it had gone bad, which made us realize that cheap wines do not have the staying power of well made wines or we need to buy one of the gizmos that extracts the air from or injects some nitrogen into an opened bottle before it is stored .
Bon Apètit
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