April 5, 2019. Lunch – French Onion Soup and Salmon in a caper Cream sauce on sushi rice. Dinner – New Recipe - Duck Schnitzel on Cottage fries with Steamed Green Beans and a noisette sauce

April 5, 2019. Lunch – French Onion Soup and Salmon in a caper Cream sauce on sushi rice. Dinner – New Recipe - Duck Schnitzel on Cottage fries with Steamed Green Beans and a noisette sauce

Some days I feel like a gastronomic camel crossing a desert of average boring food and then recharging my system on an oasis of really great food.

Today was the oasis where I recharged my taste buds.

I started with a 1/3 slice of sesame seed bagel smeared with cream cheese and garnished with red onion and Lax slices and capers.

Then for lunch I heated the last bowl of French Onion our with croutons of French bread garnished with Slices of Jarlsberg cheese with a glass of Spanish Tempranillo and then a reheated PPI of Poached Salmon in a caper Cream sauce with a bit of lemon juice over sushi rice with a glass of Argentinian Chardonnay .  Lunch was wonderful.

 

This morning we decided to thaw out a four pack of Maplewood Farms duck breasts. When Suzette arrived home we put the thawed duck breasts into the fridge and drove to Gruet to sample their new wines and pick up two allotments of wine of six bottles each.

We tried the newly released still Rose of Pinot Noir, the new Chenin Blanc and the newly released 2017 Pinot Noir found decided to get 4 bottles of each, plus we tasted lots of other sparkling wines.  By 8:30 we were tippy and hungry.  We decided to go home and fix a quick dinner of cottage fried
potatoes, steamed green beans and duck breasts.  On the drive home Suzette discussed how we should prepare the duck and suggested pounding it into a scallopini.  I asked, “Do youo mean like a schnitzel?” Suzette said yes and then looked up duck schnitzel recipes on her phone and soon found a recipe for duck schnitzel with speatzle and with a noisette sauce.  We decided to try the award
winning recipe Suzette found on the Internet and were excited to get home and start cooking.

The only new part of the recipe to me was the noisette sauce.  The recipe called for speatzle but we substituted cottage fries because we had prepped a bag of thin potato slices. I removed the skin from two duck breasts and diced the skin from one of  the breasts and put it  in the large skillet to which Suzette added butter and olive oil and the potato slices to fry.

 

Before 

 

                                                                           After

I snapped the green beans and put them into the steamer and added water and put the steamer on the stove on medium high heat to steam.

Noisette Sauce 

Suzette started the sauce by boiling vermouth and white wine with the pulp of a diced peeled lemon, a whole minced  shallot,  1/3 cup chopped parsley and 1 T. of capers seasoned with thyme, salt, and pepper.  After those ingredients reduced to almost no liquid (au sec) Suzette added a cup of cream and we cooked that down a bit and then she added 8 oz. of butter.  After the sauce reduced somewhat we strained it and added concentrated beef broth.  The result was a light creamy tan colored flavorful sauce.  I pounded the duck breasts with a special tool  (a mallet with large pointed spikes on one side and smaller pointed spikes on the other). Here is a picture.

 

The mallet  and other knives used 

Suzette then dipped each flattened duck breast into a succession of flour, egg, and bread crumbs and then sautéed the duck breasts in olive oil.

  

                        The shallot, vermouth, white wine, parsley and capers reducing

The flour, egg, and bread crumbs for breading 

  

                                                 The pounded duck breasts

 

The final schnitzel

 

                                                        The final dish

 

The wine 

 

 

My dinner immersed in sauce

I then opened  a bottle of 2014 Chateauneuf Du Pape that I bought at Trader Joe’s for $19.99.  It was fantastic, complex, good character and great smoothness.

We ate like kings after only an hour of effort.

After dinner I ate a bowl of ice cream with rum, chocolate sauce, rum and whipped cream.

 

Later Suzette and I drank a sip of cognac.

As Suzette said, “it is like being in France” or enjoying a $150.00 meal in the U.S.

We loved powering through the prep super charged on Gruet’s bubbly and the result was fantastic.  Suzette’s assessment was “this is a meal I could serve at the Bistro for $18.99.”

We figured anywhere else it would be $25 to $30.

Bon Appetit