I set out on Monday to run a few errands and gather all my ingredients. The last stop of the day was to get the duck at the awesome downtown Central Market. Tragically, it was not so awesome that day as they were all out of duck breast! Oh no - it was way too late to completely change the menu. Then I spotted this. I was already charting new territory cooking duck - I wasn't about to butcher the thing too!
Central Market became totally awesome again in my book when they butchered it and gave me the most beautiful boneless duck breasts ever (and a lot of other duck parts too). I paid a lot more than I would have otherwise - but it was still cheaper than a fancy steak.
I'll cut to the good stuff... here are the recipes I used.
Seared Duck (note - I used black cherry jam instead of currant)
Cheese Grits
Sautéed Spinach (no recipe needed, but I did use a little of the leftover duck fat to sauté the spinach)
I knew we wouldn't be eating until late (had to get kids to bed first) so I made a little snack to tide us over - some simple scallion cream cheese.
And while selfishly preparing our romantic dinner, I didn't have much extra time or energy to fight with the kids over theirs. Trust me, there were no complaints.
Back to our meal. I kept the sides simple. I was nervous about getting the duck right and didn't want super complicated sides. Originally I was going to get more fancy with the cheese I used in the grits, but in the end went with the called for sharp cheddar and oh my! Seriously best cheese grits I've ever eaten!
On the duck, I was really afraid the cherry jam and cassis might end up too sweet but it was puhhhrrr-fect! My only complaint was that I didn't render the duck quite long enough. The skin could have used a bit more crispiness - maybe another minute. It creates a texture issue when there is too much fat and it's not crispy enough on top. But the flavor was spot on!
And how pretty does this plate look? I am a seriously harsh critic of my own food but this may be my favorite thing I've ever made. Delicious!
We even sat in our beautiful new dining room. And I pulled the crystal out of boxes where they've been for at least two years. They still had the tags on them.
In case you didn't notice... I haven't mentioned dessert. That's because while the main course may have been my best ever, dessert was easily the worst. I decided to do a soufflé. I did it last year, but it's not like you make soufflé all the time so it's still something special. I'm not sure what happened. Soufflé is a very delicate thing and I don't have the most delicate touch. I used a different recipe but it could have been some other horrific mistake that caused the death of my soufflé. It never rose properly and I think I over-cooked it. Terrible. Just awful.
Thankfully, our dinner was lovely enough to stand on it's own. And we had plenty of wine and champagne left. The soufflé didn't destroy the evening.
It was a wonderful celebration of our marriage!
Now to figure out what to do with the rest of that duck. No seriously. What do I do with this?
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