October 27, 2019 Brunch – Breakfast Burritos Dinner – Sautéed Duck Breasts with Wild and Brown Rice with Cranberries and sautéed Green Beans with toasted slivered almonds

October 27, 2019 Brunch – Breakfast Burritos  Dinner – Sautéed Duck
Breasts with Wild and Brown Rice with Cranberries and sautéed Green Beans with toasted slivered almonds

In Hungary, like many European countries with homogeneous cultures there is a Sunday dinner.  In Hungary it is roasted duck and sautéed red cabbage.  Today I wanted Duck for some unknown reason, perhaps because I saw them in the freezer yesterday when looking for something else.

I like Duck with wild rice and brown rice because one of the first times I ate it was with my father at La Louisiane in San Antonio, when I attended the Texas State Bar Convention with him in my youth in the 50’s.  It was probably the first time I ate duck prepared by a real French restaurant and it was served with wild rice and I fell in love with both.  So I prefer duck served with wild rice.

I drank a cup of hot chocolate with a dash of rum at 8:00.  Suzette dipoles not eat breakfast and Suzette was working this morning so at 10:00 I prepared brunch of breakfast burritos filled with eggs scrambled with a cubed smoked pork chop, 2 oz. of diced pasilla chili, diced asparagus, red onion, 1 clove garlic, and sliced Jarlsberg cheese.  We both doused the flour tortilla toasted over the open flame on the stove with a few drops of Cholula hot sauce.

After brunch we drove to Home Depot where Suzette bought a skeleton and then gassed up at Costco and then drove to Gruet and tasted champagne and still Chenin Blanc and Petit Mineur and picked up my allotment of eight bottles of wine, which included the new Extended Tirage Blanc de Noir and the new 30th anniversary barrel aged Blanc de Blanc .  Both were amazing bubblies.

We then drove home and I rested while Suzette dressed the skeleton she bought at Home Depot today in Mrs. Lindemuth’s wedding dress that Suzette brought home when the family home was sold last year.

Here is a picture.

At 5:30 we started cooking.  I made the rice and fetched a bottle of Wellington 2012 Cabernet Franc. As it turned out we had enough wine left in open bottles.

I added dehydrated chicken stock and cranberries to the rice plus two green onions thinly sliced. I put 2 ½ cups of water into a sauce pan and added 1 cup with 1/8 cup of wild rice and 7/8 cup brown rice and cranberries and the sliced green onion and  cooked the rice for an hour on low heat.

The Duck Breasts

Suzette salted and peppered the duck breasts and then sautéed them to medium rare in the large cast iron skillet.  She then sliced about 1 cup of poached Quince quarters with a small handful of raisins
and a dousing of cognac to make a fruit garnish for the duck breasts.

I snapped the ½ lb. of green beans we bought yesterday at Sprouts

Suzette dried the duck breasts and then salted and peppered them with ground Nepalese peppercorns, Timur, and sautéed them on moderately high heat for fifteen to twenty minutes using the Bobby Flay method of weighing them down with a skillet filled with water.

I toasted a small handful of slivered almonds and then added the snapped and rinsed green beans.  We shuck them to coat them with butter and then covered the  beans to steam.

Willy arrived at 6:45 when everything was ready.  Suzette plated the plates with the rices and string beans and I sliced three duck breasts, which were cooked to medium rare (just a hint of pink in the middle of each breast) and lay each on the pile of rice on each plate.

I poured the Wellington  cab into Willy and Suzette’s glasses and the Charles Shaw organic Pinot Noir into my glass.  Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw California Organic Pinot Noir is my favorite inexpensive Pinot at $3.99.

We all enjoyed dinner as I thought about this meal being my definition of comfort food.  Perhaps like Hungarians think of their Sunday duck dinners, it is fabulous food but served in a completely non-celebratory manner, instead, as a weekly ritual.

I would love to adopt such a tradition because I love duck and brown and wild rice. I would welcome the opportunity to investigate which wine complements duck the best.

Talking about traditions, at 7:00 we watched The Durrells in Corfu and at 8:00 Poldark, with quick check-ins on the World Series, in which Houston was leading.

At 8:45 Willy left after modeling his shirt and pants he bought to wear to Drew’s wedding in Maine this next weekend.

Suzette finished the chocolate ice cream for dessert and I finished the vanilla ice cream.

We watched some of the new contemporary Masterpiece theater, “Press”  and at 10:00 we went to bed.

Bon Appetit