November 20, 2011 Dinner – Duck Salad
What a way to leave on a trip. The problem with our style of cooking is that since you are always preparing dishes and ingredients that last into the future, what happens when you leave town and that process is cut off. How do you plan for a trip in such a way that your ingredients are used up as you walk out the door? Well this trip is a good example of how that process can work. As you know we ate roast duck last night and saved the breasts for a salad. Suzette said that our new crop of lettuce in the garden was ripening, but I was not sure. Alas, she was correct. When it was time to start dinner Suzette walked in with a basket full of baby salad greens from our garden; our first fall/winter crop. I then made a tarragon wine vinegar dressing with our newly made tarragon vinegar, about a tablespoon of dried tarragon (from the garden), a little Dijon mustard, two pressed cloves of garlic and some olive and grape seed oils, whipped until stiff. Suzette steamed the last of our bundle of asparagus and I heated and sliced cranberry glazed duck breasts. This was one of the best duck salads I have ever eaten. The fresh garden greens were so delicate that they almost melted as they touched one’s tongue. We ate the salad with the last of a bottle of Concannon Sauvignon Blanc.
After dinner I fetched all the salami, gelbwurst and coarse Liverwurst (Braunshweiger) from the fridge and some German rye bread slices and the last three pieces of German fullkorns bread, smeared bread with mayonnaise and German deli mustard and then layers of meat and then sliced Swiss cheese, bagged them with a quartered gala apple and our trip food was ready.
Arguably, this was one of the best food ending, trip starting, transitions in very long time.
Bon Voyage . . . off to Sayulita, Mexico
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