Magret de canard au miel

I made Magret de canard au miel dijonnaise tonight. The actual magret I got from Jean-Talon market, at a game store (gibier). I ended up being slightly disappointed, because it was nowhere near as sleek as the one I made in France; still, it beat a filet mignon hands down.

You want to brine the duck breast in a mixture of sugar and salt for about an hour before cooking. When it’s time to cook, sprinkle the non-fat side with salt and pepper generously and cook from a cold pan to medium temperature. The fat is going to render; dump off but save! Duck fat is sooo tasty.

Cook for about ten minutes on the fat side, then turn over and cook for ten more. Place on a plate and foil-tent. Put in oven at around 200 degrees while you do the sauce.



Sauce
3 tablespoons clear honey
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
1/2 cup of chicken broth
1/2 a cup of chardonnay
Salt, pepper

Reduce all for about six minutes on medium. Pour over sliced magret. Serve with petite pommes de terres and haricots fins.

Pizzafolies

Blork was more prescient than is possible in his comment when he recommended going back to his regular pizza peel. Trouble is, I can’t. See, when I have my dough laden with its ingredients (pictured below) it is almost impossible to get it off the peel and onto the pizza stone (hot! hot! Close oven door RIGHT NOW!) without something going into freefall, be it the dough scrunching, cheese falling off, what have you . . . at least with the traditional peel, even with corn meal.

He might beg to differ, but for years I wrestled with pre-baking the dough for a few minutes so it was hard enough to slide on and off the traditional peel, and it just never came out right . . . it wasn’t until I started using the slide-off peel that I could assemble everything on the dough and expect it to still exist in its format when it came to sliding it onto the stone. (Why does this sound so sexual?)

So, conditions were ripe last night for disaster. Thing is, I had forgotten just how to slide the pizza off the Super Peel . . . instead, I assembled it on the peel on the SLIDE-ON position, so when I went to slide it onto the red-hot stone, I realised it was the opposite and I could not get it off the peel, it being sloppy and not inclined to slide in one piece (see doomed pizza, assembled, last photo). Trust me, with two other pizzas and all the ingredients and a dinner date waiting in the wings, I was not in the mood for this to happen.

I tried to spade it off onto the traditional peel. It went, sloppily, but as predicted, that was about that. When I tried to get it onto the stone, it fell apart. Literally. Cheese, mushrooms, peppers, all over my 550-degree oven, all over the pizza stone.

Fire, fire about to happen, thought I, and desperately tried to rescue the situation. Luckily, my neurons, dendrites and axons decided to get together and finally have a party and cooperate after months of feuding and I was able to rescue the situation. The one disaster-pizza I had to toss, but the other two were awesome.

Below is pictured the roasted cherry-tomato-red-pepper-sun-dried tomato-prosciutto-mozzarella di bufala concoction that I came up with. The other pizza had no sauce, just truffle oil, goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, Kalamata olives, basil and arugula.

Roasted Cherry Tomato pizza sauce

Ingredients
A bunch of cherry tomatoes — doesn’t matter how many. Lots. Little buds removed, quartered
Two large cloves garlic, diced
Sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, drained and finely chopped
Roasted red peppers, also out of the jar, patted dry and finely chopped
Good olive oil
Fresh oregano
Chicken broth

Method
Assemble all ingredients in a casserole. Mix well. Roast on about 500 degrees for about 45 minutes, observing often and stirring about every 15 minutes. When done, let cool at least to room temperature.

Purée sauce with hand mixer or food processor, adding chicken broth if too thick. Spread on dough.

Kitchen Gadgets Part 19

As noted in this post I do like my little toys. But over the years I've become more discriminating. I don't want to "simplify" my kitchen experience. Ergo: get a food processor. I don't want to process food (at least like that). I want to spend the time chopping and dicing. Obviously the only things I'd want to process would be meat for grinding and pasta for flattening. The things I can do myself I want to do myself.

Blork pointed out that "highly specialized tools are for the birds." Quite correct, but only for the Geospiza fortis family of finches.

I, on the other hand, am a crow. And I like my highly specialized tools. Specifically, I like them because they are highly specialized.

But to clarify, I don't like useless so-called time-saving devices; rather, devices that (insert "heh-heh" here) make me look more professional than I really am.

A garlic press is an example of a so-called time-saving device; however, even though I possess one, I would only use it in a bare minimum of cases, because I simply enjoy chopping garlic. It is my hobby to see how finely I can chop it (indulge me!) and squeezing the fuckers into paste is not enjoyable to me unless I'm in a particular mood.

But the finer things, as Blork mentions: a Microplane grater is something I can no longer do without. An amazing chef's knife is something I can no longer do without, and the amazing stone sharpener that complements it.

Other Stuff I Have Gone Through And Discarded: several garlic choppers, a useless and dangerous "food flipper", and many other "As Seen On TV" items that usually belong to Starfrit.

But I must say that I still use my Hearthkit and I particularly enjoy my pizza peel (one of which I personally had sent to Blork).

And now I have two more tools that make my caw a little more raucous: witness the Benriner Turning Slicer. I've always wondered how those sushi places got those little carroty curls and radish hairs onto my plate and now I know.

And how those little cucumber slices have those tiny notches in them (specialized cucumber notcher, not pictured). But just look at the results! (Guaranteed not Photoshopped!)





And spy this fine colander I got at the kitchen supply store . . .



keeps your pasta out of the soapy dishwater that you clean your serving bowl with!

So, time will tell whether these things will ultimately be consigned to the back shelf of the dark cupboard but for now I'm a sucker for that kitchen gadget . . .

No Future

No iPhone For Moi.

Fuck, if an iPhone is as bad as an iPod Touch, adding on the absurdly high goddamn Rogers monthly fees here in Canada, it ain’t happening around these here parts.

Sorry, Jim, that you just got one (an iPod Touch). I’m sorry I have to chop, slice and dice it. But I have to.

Bill Gates must have had a hand in its creation, because it’s just frustration. Dig: there are no games included with it, as far as I can see. I went on dozens of sites with the keywords “free ipod touch games” on my McBook but hey, I can’t download them onto my McBook and then transfer them because they’re in some bizarre format that my computer doesn’t recognize.

Then I try to download them using the maddeningly tiny screen on the uPod and I get informed that my software isn’t current. Damn. I thought I just updated it the OTHER FUCKING DAY. WHICH I DID.

But just try finding “update uPod software to current version” anywhere on Apple’s site. All this for one cheesy game?

Fuck. I think I’ll just stick to using it as a glorified jukebox, which it does very well, but any dreams of using it as a phone when it can barely function as what it advertises is simply a fantasy.

I reiterate: the future is not here yet. Sorry, Jim. This thing is going straight to my seven-year-old son. That’s who it was designed for.

Must-have Kitchen Gadgets

My laptop battery is almost to zero but I was wondering what you would consider must-have kitchen gadgets. I just bought one I think now is indispensable (and I'll post about it soon) but I'm looking for things that would make things look more restaurant-like, not just something like fancy egg-beaters.

So go to it, my fellow wannabe chefs . . . eBay is waiting impatiently (and so is the new restaurant supply place I found).

On Food And Being Bribed

Blork just posted something about something I’ve been a bit conflicted about for years.

I know the feeling about requests for links blah blah blah. Running montrealfood has really been a glimpse into the almost "black-market" world of "I scratch . . ." in which legitimate (but bribable) people want to get you, in my case someone who has a website about food in Montreal, to somehow further their cause.

A guy from Mess Hall, in NDG, once wrote me an impassioned email about something I'd written about my dinner there -- and it wasn't even in a review! I'd just been mentioning my night with my friends (this is before blogs became what they have and it was on the front page of montrealfood.com). I'd obviously trashed it in passing, not in a detailed way, but he offered to host me for dinner! For free, obviously.

I was so perturbed that I wrote to a fine-dining critic we all know and asked her jokingly what I should do, knowing what I wouldn't.

Of course she agreed. But then the guy somehow found my PayPal address and sent me $100! I actually had to refuse the request.

In the end I never made it to Mess Hall, but I’m sure it’s really good and the guy was just disappointed to find something bad that had written about it.

But I’m not really a real food critic and if favors came up these days, I’d probably say to Hell with it. However, if they officially asked me to review them, I’d pay for it, accept the lavish service, and then maybe write something nice . . . or not.

So, people, invite me to dinner, send me your books, but don’t send me $100 via PayPal . . . because these days I’m just liable to take it and go to L’Express.

iPod Touch

I bought one because I wanted to see what all the hype was about it without the hassle of having to sign up to some phone service for twenty-five years at $100 cents a minute.

But my overall impression is:

Disclaimer: I am a Macintosh diehard and have been on the platform since 1984. I despise Windows and will never make a secret of it.

But this little fucker is a challenge. Usually the Mac OS is very intuitive, but with this thing I found myself having to point and shoot a lot more than I bargained for.

It's a toy. Please don't glorify it as a "mobile interactive device" or anything else resembling that. Sure, you can get on the Web. Sure, you can check email. Sure, you can wipe your ass with a Zig-Zag rolling paper. Get my drift?

To check email or surf the Net you will have to be one desperate individual.

The sound quality, once you go through the Byzantine process of actually getting sound on the box, is, as usual, very, very good (but ditch the Apple headphones pronto and get something like those Sonys I had for a while that broke in three months but only because I listened to them for three months).

Bottom line: My MacBook is going to be my mobile device. It does everything the iPod Touch does except better. And I never have to turn it upside down to see a better picture!

We're almost there, the world of the flying cars and George Jetson, but we're NOT THERE YET.