Duck à l'orange

conception: Perle Feldman
réalisation: David Glaser

Soon after we started cooking together, we started labelling recipes that way, since Perle is the more creative and can come up with a new concept, while I would put it all together. Of course, it's not that clear a division. In this case Perle made the sauce, the critical part.

This is a dinner for two. You will need:

one duck breast with skin on
salt and pepper
thyme and rosemary
2 oranges
Grand Marnier
butter
3 Tbsp sugar

prep work

cut the peel of one orange into thin strips, avoiding taking the white pith
simmer orange peel in some water to soften, about 10 minutes
add sugar and continue to cook until liquid is almost absorbed

cut off all the pith and membranes of the orange and reserve the chunks of pulp

squeeze the juice from the other orange

score the duck skin and sprinkle with salt and pepper


cook the duck

in a medium-hot skillet, sear the duck skin side down for 5 minutes, until skin is crispy
turn and continue to cook on medium-low heat for another 10 minutes
remove and place duck under a foil tent

make the sauce

drain the duck fat from the skillet
deglaze with Grand Marnier, then with orange juice
add herbs and orange pulp
reduce the sauce, add some butter

serve

We served the duck with quinoa and steamed asparagus
spoon the sauce over the duck
add the candied orange peel

Cold Combat Potion

I'm sick. I'm stuck at home with a sore throat and an inability to speak more then a sentence. But I'm a witch (kind of) and we don't let colds get us down! So it's time for a potion I've made up with some help from my witchy friends.

This potion doesn't actually rely so much on magick as it does on the actual medicinal properties of certain herbs. Most of the following are anti-septic or anti-bacterial.

You will need:

- A small sized ginger root
- 3 tbsp of honey (preferably unpasteurized wild honey if you can)
- 4 Cinnamon sticks (you can use a couple of teaspoons of ground cinnamon but it makes a really gross slime)
- 2 tsp whole cloves
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 cups of water.

Peel and slice up the ginger. Put all the herbal ingredients into the pot with the water and set to boil with the lid on for 15 minutes minimum. Strain and drink. ADD THE HONEY LAST after it has boiled.

Feel free to mess around with the proportions to taste but you want the potion to be very well infused with all the ingredients. I suggest not skimping on the fresh ginger and the honey.

Disgustingly Rich Cupcakes

Hey everyone! Sorry for the long awaited update but it's been busy.

So, for Ali's baby shower there was a theme of foods we liked when we were young. I decided to use a slightly modified recipe from a children's cookbook we had when we were young. The recipe was originally for brownies but as you may have guessed by my dad's entry on brownies they didn't quite make the cut but they make really tasty cupcakes!

DISGUSTINGLY RICH CUPCAKES

- 2 cups Sugar
- 1 ¼ cups Flour
- 4 Eggs
- ¾ cups Cocoa
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- 1 cup Butter


Preheat oven to 400° and fill the cupcake moulds with paper cups.

Melt butter. Mix cocoa, sugar and butter.

Add eggs and vanilla. Stir.

Add flour and mix until smooth.

Pour mix equally into moulds.

Bake at 400° for 15 min (approx) or until cupcakes pull away from the sides of the mold.

Phil's Cider Bunny

Upon request from my father, my little sister's boyfriend has sent me the recipe for his apple cider rabbit. he made it for us a few months ago when my parents were in town and it was absolutely phenomenal. This recipe belongs in a fancy restaurant, it's so succulent and the blend of flavors is just perfect.

Here is the recipe, told in classic Phil style. The bacon is in bold because really, who doesn't get excited about bacon?

Cider-Bunny

Ingredients for the Bunny:
- Whole rabbit (like Bugs Bunny "That wascaly wabbit").
- 3/4 bottle of Cider (http://www.lafacecachee.com/bulle_en/).
- 5 Golden Apple.
- Some Butter

Ingredients for the Cider veggies.
- Some carrots.
- Some turnips.
- 1/4 bottle of Cider (the same one).
- 1/2 cup of chicken or vegetable or beef broth.

Ingredients for the very healthy side of mushroom and BACON! (optional)
- BACON (one pack)!
- Mushroom.
- Butter.

1 - Kill the rabbit. If it's already dead, just cut it into pieces (http://honest-food.net/2010/05/19/how-to-cut-up-a-rabbit/).
2 - Brown the rabbit with butter in a large pot.
3 - If you want to put some spices, now would be the time.
4 - Put the apple (that you have peeled, cored and cut into quarters) for about two minutes.
5 - Put the cider (3/4 of the bottle) in the pot. Wait about 5 minutes, cover and lower the heat to medium-low.
6 - Let it cook for about 45 minutes "can be a little bit more".

7 - Cut the carrots and the turnip in cubes.
8 - Let them cook in a pan or a pot with the broth on high for 5 minutes.
9 - Put the rest of the cider and lower the heat.
7 - Let them cook for about 30 minutes (or until they taste good).

8 - Put the BACON! to cook in a pan with the butter on medium-high for a couple of minutes.
9 - Put the mushroom.
10 - Let this cook until the BACON is done.

11 - Take out the rabbit and with a hand blender, blend the apples in the cider sauce (you can keep some apples for the presentation).
12 - Put back the bunny to cook for some extra minutes.

13 - Serve and eat (you can take a picture with your Iphone before eating).

Fridge cleaning frittata

So, while my parents and sister were cooking up a huge feast, my husband and I decided we needed to clean out a bunch of stuff in our fridge, so we made a simple frittata for dinner. The beauty of the frittata is that you need eggs and potatoes, but after that anything really goes! We used ginger beef sausages from Stairsholme Farms but any type of meat will do (or no meat necessary if you want to go veggie).

Frittata

Ingredients:

6-8 eggs

some milk

potatoes, thinly sliced and slightly boiled (I steamed them in the microwave for a few minutes)

mushrooms

spinach

onion, diced

tomatoes

cheese

sausages, cut into bite sized chunks

Preheat the oven to 350. Saute the onions and then whatever veggies you feel like putting in (I used spinach and mushrooms since that's what we had) in a heavy bottomed pan that can go in the oven. Remove the veggies and cook the sausage pieces until done. Remove the sausages and put the potatoes in. Brown them slightly, then add the veggies and sausage back in. Cover the whole thing with a mixture of eggs and milk. Allow to cook on the stove for a few minutes, then layer tomatoes and cheese on top (I used buffalo mozzarella, but anything will do. I love this with goat's cheese in particular!) Put the pan in the oven and bake until it is firm and set (not runny). You may want to broil it for a minute or two to get the cheese nice and brown. Serve immediately.

Fudge Brownies

After I met Perle in 1975 and started cooking for real, I decided there were 3 recipes which needed perfecting: chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake and brownies. The cookies were easy, it's in Joy of Cooking (chocolate chip drop cookies). The cake was my mother in law's variation of her friend's recipe which substituted orange juice for milk (thereby making it parve), but not baked as long so it stays moist. It is still the cake of choice for anyone's birthday.

The brownie recipe, however, took a long time to find. Many people and books and magazines promised the ultimate brownies, but they were inevitably too cakey for my taste. Then, when my childhood friend Paul Harris was visiting and I mentioned the brownies, he said "My wife Kathy makes the best brownies". I said, sure send me the recipe, skeptically. They were exactly what I was looking for! Chewy in the middle and crispy on the edges, they are great fudge brownies. Make sure they are completely chilled before serving. They are much more like fudge than cake.

Kathy's Brownies:

¼ pound soft butter (1/2 cup)
1 ½ cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla or liqueur
2 eggs
4 oz. Unsweetened chocolate, melted
2 Tbsp hot water
1/3 cup flour

preheat over to 350
cream butter and sugar
add vanilla
add eggs
add chocolate
add hot water
add flour – beat only until smooth
put in 9x9 greased pan
bake at 350 for 35 minutes

let cool completely, refrigerate

Eri's visit: meat & vegetarian

I don't know why when Eri comes to visit I feel the need to cook copious amounts of red meat! Maybe because I know about her anemia, or just that her general "delicate flower" persona brings out the Jewish mother in me, however here we are eating great wads of meat - just when I really should be thinking about low-cal high veggie meals...oh well blame the Berry.

We had already decided to feed her cravings with a nice lamb tagine with Persian rice (recipes to follow) when she expressed a desire to see Sandy and Bubbie for dinner. So here we are with a lamb tagine and a california kosher ( no red meat) person and a kosher style person,( no milk & meat person). What to do? Okay, we are going to make a veggie version of the tagine - basically a Tsimmes plus some lentils or chick peas. Should work.

LAMB TAGINE

-3 lbs. lamb shoulder cut into 1" pieces

-2 onions diced

-4 cloves garlic diced

-root veggies cut into 1" pieces: I used - 2 giant parsnips, 2 white turnips, 3 giant carrots - 1 red, 1 orange, 1 purple

-handful of prunes

-handful of dried apricots

-2 cups of our just made veal stock

-2 cups water

-oil

-about 2 tbsp cinnamon

-2 tbsp cumin

-1 tbsp paprica

Brown meat with oil and remove from pot.

Brown onions and garlic in oil & drippings.

Add spices and stir with onions and garlic.

Put back the meat, add the veggies and dried fruit, stir up then add stock and water. Bring to boil and simmer.

***THINGS I LEARNED FROM COOKING SHOWS;

1. when browning meat, leave the pieces alone and don't move them around too much until they loosen, then turn them with tongs - that way they will brown better.

Steak and Potatoes and Mushrooms: Oh My!

To celebrate my coming to Toronto to visit the parents we went to the market to buy some good food for dinner. At the butcher's we picked up these incredible thick juicy looking rib steaks and some delicious looking mushrooms at one of the vegetable stores. The St-Laurence market is huge and has an enormous amount of variety. Of course it helps that my mother has an amazing eye for good quality, fresh and tasty produce. We came home with the spoils and got cooking right away. On the menu for the night was rib steaks with spice rub, mashed potatoes with sauteed garlic scapes (which are basically the buds and stems of sprouted garlic) and a mushroom Marsala sauce:


Rib Steaks With Spice Rub:
The delectable steaks we'd picked up at the butcher's got rubbed with the following then seared in a pan and cooked in the oven at 350 degrees until they were cooked to medium-rare (my dad can't remember for how long):
- Shwartzes' Steak Spice
- Smoked Paprika
- Chili powder
- Cumin

Garlic Scape Mashed Potatoes:
The mashed potatoes were pretty simple: just boil the potatoes, drain them, mash them with butter and add the scapes which have also been sauteed in butter and olive oil. Simple but tasty!
- Large Potatoes
- Sauteed Garlic Scapes (buds)

Mushroom Sauce
The mushroom sauce was by far the most complicated of the dishes but it was still pretty simple. First we sauteed the shallots in butter (you might notice a theme here. We like butter). Then we sauteed the mushrooms. The oyster mushrooms were huge and watery so in ten minutes or so we had a goodly amount of mushroom juices in the pan. We then added a mix of garlic, course salt, fresh rosemary and fresh thyme which I had mushed up with the mortar and pestle to get the flavors really going. After that we added a few ice cubes of demi-glace (my mom makes her own veal demi-glace then freezes it in ice-cube trays; very convenient!) and about a quarter bottle of  Marsala red wine. After that we let the whole thing simmer and reduce while we waited on the potatoes and steak, then we added a big chunk of butter at the end. It turned out amazingly! I love mushrooms!

- Shallots
- Oyster Mushrooms
- Hedgehog Chanterelle Mushrooms
- Black Trumpet Mushrooms
- Marsala Red Wine
- Garlic
- Rosemary
- Thyme
- Course Salt
- Veal Demi-glace
- Butter

And: Steamed Broccoli!

A tasty hardy meal which actually wasn't nearly as difficult to cook as it would seem. All you need is some good ingredients and family to help!

I wonder what the Sibs are doing for their dinners while I'm here?