January 23, 2012 Roasted Duck, Roasted Stuffed Delicata Squash and Asparagus

January 23, 2012 Roasted Duck, Roasted Stuffed Delicata Squash and Asparagus

This was a super easy and delicious meal.  I cut a delicate squash in half length ways and scooped out the seeds and saved them for planting in the spring.  Then I diced enough onion to fill the cavity and added about 1 ½ Tbs. of brown sugar and about ½ Tbs. of butter to each half.  Then I baked the squash halves in a 350°F oven for about an hour.  For the last ½ hour I roasted the duck halves.  When Suzette came home I made an Orange Sauce by heating 3 packets of the prepared sauce that came with the duck and adding to it about ½ cup of Madeira, the zest of two lemons (we did not have any oranges) and the juice of ½ lemon and about 2 Tbs. of butter at the end to approximate the Julia Child recipe.  Then we steamed a handful of snapped stalks of asparagus.  I recommend delicata squash.  It has a natural sweetness and a tender flesh that I love.

When fetching the onion, I saw that two sweet potatoes we had were beginning to go bad, so I cut out their soft spots and baked them in the baking pan that had been used to bake the delicata squash, which was still coated with the sweet sugar and butter filling that had sunk through the softened, baked skin of the squash in the still hot oven while we ate dinner.  See January 25 Dinner for the finish to the potatoes.

We served the dinner with a lovely bottle of Pinot Noir we had been gifted for Christmas.

About 15 minutes after finishing dinner, I ate a toasted piece of whole wheat bread smeared with butter and the last of the Explorateur cheese from Christmas with some of the Pinot Noir for a very French finish to the meal.

This is one of my favorite French dishes but prepared without any fuss.  I guess you could say it is almost sinfully simple when you think about the typically two or three day preparation of the duck in traditional French Cuisine.  Although this is a very simplified version of the dish, Duck L’ Orange has always been my favorite meal.  When my Mother would ask me what I wanted to eat for my birthday when I was young, I would always request it.  So this dish always reminds me of my Mother and the large platters of hot roasted duck coated with the ladles full of warm fruity, sweet, orange sauce our family would enjoy in my youth.  I guess you could say this is my ratatouille moment.   

Bon Appètit