Showing posts with label duck. Show all posts

Ginger Duck/Chicken

Posted by: anna* in asian, chicken, cilantro, duck, ginger, noodles, ricenoodles, summer

It is too hot. And yes, I get to complain because I always liked spring better and never, ever asked: "Where is summer? When is it getting really warm?" I did not wait for you, summer! I don´t look good in shorts!>_<

Luckily I finished my Bachelor Thesis and handed it in before it got so warm. I would have never managed to write anything at 30°C+... I am still awaiting my final grade but I feel like an expert on Japanese Food now. I could have written my PhD thesis about the food alone. If you´re wondering: I wrote about the function of food in japanese television series (dorama).
Right now I´m enjoying life, awaiting my grade and answers concerning my masters applications... I also had two lovely japanese girls from Tokyo over last week and I´m looking forward to spending more time with them in the next two months. Erisa, I missed you!<3
How is everyone else doing?

Short update on the pear tree in our backyard: Pears!!

I might be able to make a nice pear tart a few weeks from now.

Now for food: There is this shop called Kochhaus in Hamburg and in Berlin where they sell ... well, meals actually. Just not cooked yet. You go in, choose from what they offer that week and then get a bag full of groceries, exactly the kind and amount you need to cook whatever you chose, along with a pictured sheet that tells you how to do it.
This is a pretty nice way to cook stuff you´ve never tried before without having to buy everything needed in the big boxes and packages it comes in at the supermarket. Or a nice way to impress someone with a high class meal even though you can´t cook. Or a nice way to bring everything you need over to cook at someone else`s house. Or or or. I like it, it´s not cheap but it´s good.

So what I saw and was inspired by was Ginger Duck. Even though I´m not sure why they called it Ginger Duck since I guess it´s more of a cilantro or lime duck in the end...It is very good. Unfortunately, duck is expensive so when I made it a few days ago, I decided to use chicken instead. Just as good.

Anyways. It´s good, it´s easy and here we go:

Ingredients (serves two):

2 Chickenbreastsbreasts
Rice noodles (one small packet)

Cilantro
(Peanuts (if you`re not allergic, that is))
1 Lime
Dried Apricots
Ginger
2 cloves of Garlic

1 red Chilli
Soysauce
Sugar

Honey
Salt/Pepper

There is so much wrong for me with this recipe in terms of allergies... And yet it´s too good to pass.

How to:

Cut four to six dried apricots (depending on how much you like them) in super thin stripes or dice them. Anyways: Make them small.

Mmmmh, apricots.

Chop up the cilantro real good. I love the smell (and taste) of it so that part is always pure pleasure for me.

From this...

...to this.

Grate the ginger. I like ginger. A lot. So I tend to use a lot. For non-ginger-obsessed people a piece about the size of an average thumb or a little less should suffice.

Ginger.

If you can do peanuts, you lucky bastard, then chop them too.
Same goes for the chilli and the garlic. Chop it really fine. Be sure to remove the hot hot hot seeds if you don´t like your food to burn your intestines.

Red chilli.

Put all that finely chopped and grated stuff in a bowl, add a big tablespoon of soysauce.
Wash the lime reallllyy good (and buy a chemical free one to begin with if you can), then scrap of some of it´s peel, add that to our yummy smelling bowl of good things.
Then add the juice of half of that lime, too. I squeezed it out with my hand because I didn´t want everything to be too limey.

You handsome lime, you!

Add a tablespoon of sugar.
Mix well.
Set the bowl aside and let it rest for half an hour. It will tempt you with it´s lovely smell but be strong, resist!

Makes a great Salsa for any of your Salsa-needs, I guess...

In the meantime:
Cut the chickenbreast in strips and fry them. To make it a bit more interesting, I salt-and-peppered very lightly, then let the chicken simmer in honey a bit. Goes very well with the other ingredients.

Chicken in a pan.

Put the Ricenoodles in hot water. It doesn´t matter whether you bring it to a boil, my theory is that they only need to see water to get soft.

When the ricenoodles are done, remove them from the water and put them into the pan with the chicken. Stir well and let them soak up the juice from frying. This works way better with duck because then you will have all the access fat from under the skin to soak your noodles in.
Add the bowl of goods, mix well, put on plates, eat.

Be happy.

It really is that good.
And so easy. I dare you to try it.Summer cuisine deluxe, sure to impress all your friends.

Thanks for reading.
Love,
a*

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Crispy Duck Breast

Posted by: anna* in chestnuts, duck, duck breast, gravy, potatoes

Instead of studying like I should I´ll tell you what we had for dinner last night:

Crispy Duck Breast

We wanted to make this for christmas but then we changed our plans and had my mom cook instead but we still had everything for it here and in the end we ate it on a regular monday which made the day still seem special. Nice.

Ingrediences:

2 Duck breasts

Potatoes

Sugar

Chestnuts

Salt & Pepper

Butter

Flour

Cream (or a subsitute)

Water

First things first: Cut crosses in the chestnutpeel and put them in the oven at a very high temperature. I used 250°C and let them in for about half an hour (the oven was not preheated). Keep an eye on them, you don´t want them all hardened and burnt. Let them cool, then peel them. Set aside for later. ( I actually made them in the afternoon because peeling hot roasted chestnuts is only fun when you´re outside in the snow and your hands are frozen anyways...)

Cook the potatoes in water, don´t salt them. Once they´re halfway done you can start with the duck.

I used frozen duck breasts because they are cheaper so I guess if you don´t have the time to breed and raise, then shoot and prepare your own duck, any kind of store bought is fine.

I rinsed the blood off, dried them, them cleaned the skin from any remains of the feathers.

Then cut little diamonds into the fatty skin. Be careful not to cut into the meat.

(Why diamonds? Why not into the meat? Diamonds because they´re pretty... No really, the fat will melt and tighten when heated and unless you want the whole thing to curl up you better cut into it so that only the little diamonds will get smaller. And the meat will bleed out and loose precious meatjuice if cut.)

Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 350°F.

Now heat up a pan but no oil, fat, grease whatsoever. Once it´s hot, place the chicken breasts with the skinside down into it and let it fry for 5 minutes. You´ll be amazed how much fat gets out! Well, I sure was.
Then turn around and fry (Deep fry, really. There´s so much fat!) the skinless side for 2 minutes.
Now place the duck breasts into little tinfoil boats. Well, just make sure you wrap them into tinfoil so that only the skin looks out, everything else must be wrapped. This makes the skin extra crispy.

Put them into the oven for 10 Minutes then turn off the heat and let them sit inside the oven for another 5 Minutes.

Meanwhile:

I used the leftover fat from the pan for a extra good gravy. I just threw some spoonfulls of flour on it, mixed that well, then added cream (a fat reduced subsitute, really...) and then some water. Stir, add salt and pepper, let sit.

Get rid of the potato water.

Cut chestnuts. I cut them into four pieces each but go with how small you like them.

Dissolve butter in the pot you boiled the potatoes in. Add Sugar. I used about 50g butter(?) and 5 TS Sugar but it depends on how sweet you like it, on how many potatoes you have and on how strict your diet is, I guess.

Let sugar and butter melt together, when it starts to get brownish take it off the heat and throw potatoes and chestnuts in. Make sure every potato gets some sugarbutter.
Take the ducks out of the oven and cut them into strips, bite size pieces, whatever you like.
There´s gonna be quite some meatjuice inside the little tinfoil boats and I just added that into the gravy.
Put on plate, serve to someone you like. Way too good to waste on people you don´t.

Looks long, is not. Took me about half an hour, maybe a little longer counting in the chestnuts.