serinde

We got a whole duck from the duck farmers (yes) at the greenmarket today; and although doing Julia's standard recipe has always worked tolerably well, for some reason[1] I was seized with the idea of Doing Better. This led me to a Chowhound thread on the "five-hour duck", which is low-and-slow for four hours and then turn it up to 350 for the last hour. This is supposed to give you the perfect union of moist, not overcooked meat, and crispy skin. Sure, why not? since I had the time and all.

( Five-Hour Duck (In 3.5 Hours Actually) )

I've never had much luck with pan sauces, so I googled around and found a bit on Serious Eats that seemed to address my issues (tl;dr: restaurant stock has a lot more gelatin in it from the bones used to make it than storebought stock). Now, as it happened, I had boiled down the carcass from Thursday's turkey and it was right full of that stuff; and I thought maybe that would be enough to meet requirements.

( Basic Pan Sauce )

In other news, I am posting to the journaly things again. Sewing stuff will remain on my Actual Blog, but other medium-format gibbering will be here.