December 20, 2016 Lunch – Amerasia. Dinner – sautéed duck breast with a Blackberry Cassis sauce and stir fried vegetables and roasted and sautéed Kabocha squash

December 20, 2016 Lunch – Amerasia. Dinner – sautéed duck breast with a Blackberry Cassis sauce and stir fried vegetables and roasted and sautéed Kabocha squash

Luke made oatmeal for breakfast and I ate a bowl with maple syrup.

At 1:00 I went to Amerasia for dim sum.  I ordered my two favorites, BBQ Pork and sweet bean filled Bao  (steamed buns) and mushroom and wood ear stuffed deep fried tofu in its broth. With water, the total was $7.70.

December 20, 2016 Lunch – Amerasia. Dinner – sautéed duck breast with a Blackberry Cassis sauce and stir fried vegetables and roasted and sautéed Kabocha squash

Luke made oatmeal for breakfast and I ate a bowl with maple syrup.

At 1:00 I went to Amerasia for dim sum.  I ordered my two favorites, BBQ Pork and sweet bean filled Bao  (steamed buns) and mushroom and wood ear stuffed deep fried tofu in its broth. With water, the total was $7.70.

Suzette brought home two duck breasts and a whole duck given to her by an employee whose husband hunts.  We discussed dinner and decided to sauté the two duck breasts.

Luke wanted to eat some of the Kabocha squash we had bought for the roasted vegetables for our Christmas Eve buffet last week at Sprouts ($.99/lb.), so Suzette roasted the squash in the oven for about 45 minutes.

We decided to stir fry some vegetables, so we chose mushrooms, green beans, onions, and Suzette and I went to the garden and picked a basket full of fresh chard and about ten sage leaves. We sliced, de-stemmed and chopped the vegetables.

Then we discussed a sauce for the duck breasts. At first we thought of a cherry Port wine sauce, so I went to the basement to see if we had a ruby port and found that we had only vintage ports, which I did not want to open for a sauce.  So I decided on using an old bottle of Hiram Walker Crème de Cassis with some of the fresh blackberries I had bought at Sprouts or Costco.
Suzette started sautéing onion in olive oil and butter in a large skillet for the duck breasts.  Luke and Suzette cut the Kabocha in half vertically and skinned and diced it into about 1 inch cubes and that went into another skillet with butter, some garlic in olive oil, the thinly sliced sage leaves,  and a dash or two of whole cumin seeds by Luke to heat.

I stir fried the rest of the onion in my wok with a bit of olive oil.


Blackberry Cassis Sauce

I put a handful of blackberries into a small enameled sauce pan with 1 T. of butter and heated that.  Then I added about ¼ cup of Cassis and cooked that for several minutes until the berries started to yield liquid.  Then I started adding fresh lemon juice until the sweet and tart came into balance.  I then added a dash of salt and about two tsp. of cornstarch.  Suzette had cooked the duck breasts by then and called for the sauce to finish the duck, so I poured the sauce into the duck breast skillet and it thickened into a lovely thick sauce suffused with duck and onion flavor.

While all this was happening I had added the mushrooms and green beans to the wok with the onion and I added a T. of. Butter to the vegetables and a bit of salt.  Finally, Luke added the chard to the wok and I stir fried that into the other vegetables and covered the wok to steam the chard.

We all were cooking together, even helping cook another person’s dish.

It was fun as the food flew into skillets and the meal came together. When the chard softened we were ready to eat.

I poured glasses of Famille Perrin red Cotes du Rhine Reserve and Suzette plated the meal. We enjoyed a delicious duck dinner.

While we were eating Willy at 8:00 and sat with us and then watched an episode of Black Mirror with Suzette.

Luke and I went to bed.

Bon Appetit