GZ,
Would be fun to have you two there.... Dinners at 6:30....!
We'll send the corporate jet down. <smile>
The duck is going to be fun to make..... I did one this spring with artichokes and olives. These Bell and Evans ducks are absolutely delicious.
It will be skinned, defatted and quartered...., grilled or braised for a few minutes and then put into a sauce pan and cooked in a herbed stock for 20-30min with some of the skin and fat. This will keep the duck breasts moist, which dry out and toughen up when grilled to long. One could take the left over drippings and make a gravy using flour, but that is not healthy, nor what I wanted....!
This old French recipe came out of the "Larousse Gastronomique" an odd culinary composite of very old French recipes. The "Canard sauvage braisé d'une récipé ancienne" was in there..., along with a quick reference to a Plum Sauce which caught my eye.
Was telling a friend this weekend about the planned meal..., and my hope to use a plum sauce, he said they'd just picked a bunch of plums from their trees, and please come do the same...., I jumped at the opportunity. Turns out they're rare variety of "cherry sized" deep red plums with a sweet taste and bitter skins, and an early American/Canadian variety.
I've done some more research on the "Plum Sauce" and it can be done in two ways.
1- a reduction sauce using red wine, shallots, herbs and eventually some Madeira or Port
2- a mixture of sugar, lemon, and ground cloves and the cooked plums.
I've chosen the 2nd and will keep with the more natural sauce, and add some zest of orange to produce a little surprise and make the sauce my own invention. <smile>
Also have to do the 'gâteaux croustillants de risotto d'ail resotto' and make the sorbet de citron from scratch.
Chip |
