November 18, 2012 Roast Duck, Glace Pears and a rice, spaghetti squash, and asparagus medley

November 18, 2012 Roast Duck, Glace Pears and a rice, spaghetti squash, and asparagus medley

Suzette was back in the kitchen today and we dealt with uncooked and uneaten food most of the day.  We started in the morning by coring a bucket of apples we had picked in Taos in September.  After they were on the stove and cooking, I peeled and sliced three bosc pears that were going bad and we put them in a pan with a container of PPI quince and pear syrup and left them on the stove until dinner.

At around 5:00 I returned from a ten mile ride and Suzette and I discussed dinner.  I fetched the cryovac package of duck halves and the wild and basmati rice medley from the fridge. I suggested steaming asparagus, but Suzette said we needed to cook the roasted spaghetti squash.  I said that sounded fine except squash and rice did not sound like a likely match, but that I did not care because I was going to take a shower and she could cook whatever she wanted. 

When I returned around 5:45 p.m. Suzette had combined diced asparagus and squash with the rice into a mélange in a skillet and the pears were heating on the stove and the duck was roasting in the oven.

Suzette said that the dinner was ready and to go get a wine.  So I went to the basement.  I wanted to drink something different, so I selected a bottle of Handley Vineyard’s Farmhouse Red, which is a combination of several reds grown in Anderson Valley, CA because I thought that might taste like my favorite wine with duck, Rhône, which oftern combines up to 10 types of red wine grapes.  When I opened the bottle there was a ring of sediment around the neck below where the cork rested and I did not have time to decant the wine and let the sediment settle, so I put our new 5 in 1 spout into the neck of the bottle because it had a filter in it that would stop the sediment, I hoped. 

It seemed to work.  The duck and vegetables were delicious.  Suzette had chopped the squash into short strings, which went well with the small pieces of rice and asparagus.   The duck had roasted to perfection in about thirty minutes at 350 degrees F. and the pears were terrific cooked in the quince glaze. 

A pretty good meal for a forty-five minute effort.

We liked the wine so much that I decided to slice into my newly purchased fruitcake (Costco $14.99) and it was great with the heavy red wine also.

Bon Appètit