Dish 15: Crispy Skin Duck with Witlof

The dish

I have wanted to make this dish since I first got the book for several reasons. 

Firstly, because it is duck and I have never ever ever prepared anything with duck, although I have eaten it upon occasion and really like it.

 Secondly, because it has witlof. Now, for those of you who aren't Australian, witlof is known in most English-speaking countries as chicory or endive. But guess what? In my little country with its little but complicated language, witlof is known as... witlof. Can you even imagine how thrilled I am to see a word for a vegetable in this cookbook that I don't need to translate? For the record, "wit" means white and "lof" is another word for chicory (it also means praise in a completely different context).

I wandered off there, sorry. Finally, I have been wanting to make it, because it seems like a challenge. For once you can't just read the recipe and follow it from top to bottom. Instead, this dish is made up out of 4 different components, and you need to time them just right in order to serve your diners a warm meal.

The preparation

The four different components of this dish are:

1) Duck breasts

2) Witlof

3) Orange sauce

4) Roasted onions

In total this dish does not take a lot of prepping time at all, but you do need to make sure you time it well.

I started out by preparing my roasting tin (in my case: glass baking dish) with the onions and their seasoning. As they had to be in the oven for approximately 15 minutes, I needed to make sure they had been prepped and ready to hit the oven the moment time called for it.

Next were the duck breasts.  

Follow Andy's instructions when it comes to these. Score them properly and add the salt flakes. I found that since this was my second time ever scoring any kind of meat (the first time was the pork belly), I have yet to find out exactly how to score skin and get a perfect result. I can tell you, however, that I'm getting better at it already.

I cooked the duck in a pan until the skin was indeed golden and pretty crisp, then transferred it to the oven, together with my roasting tin with onions.The duck breasts only needed a short while, whereas the onions were allowed to stay in there for 15 minutes, so I set the timer for the duck.

I then started on the orange sauce. Thanks to a visit to the market I had all necessary spices (and even managed to get the allspice berries that I needed for the lamb curry - next time I'll be prepared!) for it. This sauce takes quite some timing, as you add its ingredients in three batches, each with a different amount of time that you allow it to simmer or infuse.

While the sauce was simmering away, I pulled the duck breasts from the oven and covered them with foil. 

I also put on a pan for the witlof, that my lovely best friend had already cut up for me before. Once again you will need a pan with a lid for this, and once again I had used the wrong pan, but this time I was aware of the leaking water/steam, so I could save it in time. Not that it needed saving this time!

I also added the final ingredient to the orange sauce, which, very surprisingly, were sliced oranges.

Approximately ten minutes later, all of my components were done, and I was ready to plate.

Before I move on the result, I would like to share the following with you. With this dish, the trickiest thing definitely lies in the planning of every component. This took the most time to figure out. In the end I managed a time schedule in my head not unlike any Christmas dinner I plan, when I only have one oven and approximately four dishes that require oven time.

In case you are bad at this, I'll narrow it down for you:

Prepare your onions first, so that the roasting tin is ready to go into the oven. Turn the oven on and let it preheat.

Prep your duck and bake it in your pan.

After the required cooking time for the duck, put both the pan with the duck and roasting tin with the onions in the oven. Set a timer to the duck time as indicated in the cookbook.

Start on your orange sauce, and after adding the second batch of ingredients to the pan, pull out the duck and cover it with foil.

Put a frying pan on and start on the witlof. 

Continue with the sauce while keeping an eye on your onions and witlof.

If you managed to do this, by the time the duck breasts have rested for 10 minutes, all other items should be ready as well. It's not hard, but if you start preparing this dish from the top (= the orange sauce), you might run into trouble. 

The result

What can I say? "Please sir, I want some more!"

This dish. Oh my. This sauce! As my best friend put it, "If I had a spoon, I would eat this as soup." The duck, the witlof, the onion, the orange and the sauce together, this was more than a match made in heaven. This was the perfect combination and one I am definitely going to make this again and again and again. I literally had to stop myself from running my finger through the bowl after finishing, just so I could lap up a little more of that sauce.

Andy, I take my hat off to you. Delicious.

And dear reader, if by now you still have not bought this cookbook, you are nuts. Get it here!

Next time

Next time it is Easter. This means that I am meeting my loveliest friends for an extravagant brunch. I will be providing Scones (p. 77), with cream and probably some lemon curd. Because why not? If we're having mimosas at 11 in the morning, we are having scones.

I might also attempt Ben's White Chocolate Mojito Cheesecake with Rhubarb (p. 202), but I can't make any promises.

But still, I really do hope to see you at our next elemental meal... :)

Dish 12: Popcorn Chicken with Lime Mayo

The dish

If you are a normal human being, you probably sometimes have those "I need to have some fried right now" cravings.

This dish, Popcorn Chicken with Lime Mayo (p. 106) is the perfect solution to that. Want to eat chicken fillet but are sick of preparing it the same way you always do? Fry it, Andy says. And whenever Andy says something, we listen. (Except when he says, "gracias señoritas".)

The preparation

As you may have understood from its name, this dish has two components. One the one hand, we have our fried chicken, and on the other hand the lime mayo.

Let's start with the mayo, as once you've prepared this, you've got your hands free to get down and dirty with the chicken.

There. That's that done. Andy wants you to use Kewpie Mayo, but I don't think they sell that in the Netherlands, so I just used your ordinary every day mayonnaise. Add some lime juice and lime zest (see? told you he likes citrus) and mix it all together. Put it in the fridge while you work on the chicken, and send your best friend out to get some fries from the local cafeteria (the irony is not lost on me).

Fact is, I don't own a deep fryer and unless I inherit one or get one as a gift, I don't think I ever will own one. Frying stuff makes your house stink. Maybe if at some point I have a garage or barn or some kind of creepy filled-to-the-brim-with-spiders shed I will fry stuff there.

For now, I will suffer through the recipes that require deep frying, and once the weather allows, I will open up all windows when doing so.

But anyway, you get your chicken and you chop it into the most evenly sized cubes you can master.

I know. I'm kind of impressed, myself. 

Kiddink, kiddink.

But yes, you then get your conveyor belt style line-up ready:

1) a bowl with flour

2) a bowl with egg and milk

3) a bowl with breadcrumbs

Get this show on the road. After a while, you will end up with your chicken looking somewhat like this:

Brilliant! In the meantime you should have already got your sunflower oil going, so it's time to check the temperature. 

Get the oil up to 180 degrees Celsius and drop in some of your chicken pieces. I used a skimmer, because I wouldn't like getting hot oil splattered all over me. Naturally it depends on the size of the frying pan you use how many pieces you put in there together.

These little buggers brown up quickly, but don't pull them out until you've counted to 120 (or set a timer, what you will), because we don't want to give anyone salmonella. 

Don't they look delicious? It takes some time, and if you're on your own I'm not quite sure it's worth going through the trouble. On the other hand, if you want to satisfy your need for something fried, this isn't the worst thing you could do.

The result

Add two and two together, and you end up with a crunchy but tender bite of chicken, coated in fresh lime mayo. 

And my best friend's verdict? "De-li-cious."

I think that says it all.

Next time

Time to get back into the groove with a proper full fledged dinner dish: Indian Lamb Curry (p. 46). I would love for you to join me on this ride.

See you at our next elemental meal!