Putting the Cooking Skills to the Test
So I was going through one of our recent cookbook acquisitions, Paley's Place
Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Pacific Northwest (Hardcover), last week and saw a number of recipes that piqued my interest. One of them, in particular, stood out - Duck Wellington with Mole Sauce.
Some background - this cookbook has some significance to us because on a trip to Portland, we checked out Paley's Place for dinner. It ended up being one of the best meals I ever had in terms of the quality of the food and the service. Yep, it is actually in my "Top 5".
As I started going through the recipe, I was thinking that this was
going to be as complicated of a recipe as I have tried in a long time. Lots of ingredients, lots of steps, lots of things coming together at the end - all of the makings of either a culinary success or disaster. I figured I would attempt this on Saturday where I had plenty of time to make a "go" at this insanity.
First I dragged Marc around Green Lake somewhat kicking and screaming. I knew this meal was going to be decadent, plus he was doing something fu
n (read: fattening) for dessert. I clocked in one of my fastest times ever (29 minutes) around the outer loop of the lake, which is 3.2 miles. That's about a 9 minute pace, which is fast for me. I'm hoping that I can build on that as I ramp up for the 1/2 marathon season.
Anyway back to the Duck Wellington with Mole Sauce. I did the sauce first and it wasn't hard to make, but it took a bit of time and consisted of a fair amount of ingredients. I would make it again, and maybe to make my life easier, I'd do it the day before serving. The rest of the recipe is where this gets challenging because you're thinly slicing potatoes so that can for
m a "wrapping around the duck, minced vegetables, black currants, and duck skin mixture. Then that is wrapped in puff pastry.
I've included some pictures that Marc took in terms of getting this all together. I also made some sauteed vegetables with a persillade, which was very easy in comparison. Fortunately everything came out pretty tasty as this recipe took me a LONG time to pull it all together. I'd probably eliminate a couple of things to make this less labor intensive, and also use less bowls and cooking utensils. Marc was holding back his horror at the mess being made in the kitchen, even as I was doing my best to clean as I went.
As for wine, the book recommended a Rockblock Syrah
(made by
Domaine Serene) from Oregon and fortunately we had one ('04) on hand. We also thought it would be fun to pair a Petite Sirah since the flavors seemed to be complimentary, so we brought up an '03 Selby Russian River Valley Petite Sirah. The book's recommendation was pretty spot-on in terms of being a stellar match.
So all in all, it ended up being a great meal and then Marc made an awesome "moon pie" for dessert. No beverage pairing needed - the yum factor was in full effect.
Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Pacific Northwest (Hardcover), last week and saw a number of recipes that piqued my interest. One of them, in particular, stood out - Duck Wellington with Mole Sauce.Some background - this cookbook has some significance to us because on a trip to Portland, we checked out Paley's Place for dinner. It ended up being one of the best meals I ever had in terms of the quality of the food and the service. Yep, it is actually in my "Top 5".
As I started going through the recipe, I was thinking that this was
going to be as complicated of a recipe as I have tried in a long time. Lots of ingredients, lots of steps, lots of things coming together at the end - all of the makings of either a culinary success or disaster. I figured I would attempt this on Saturday where I had plenty of time to make a "go" at this insanity.First I dragged Marc around Green Lake somewhat kicking and screaming. I knew this meal was going to be decadent, plus he was doing something fu
n (read: fattening) for dessert. I clocked in one of my fastest times ever (29 minutes) around the outer loop of the lake, which is 3.2 miles. That's about a 9 minute pace, which is fast for me. I'm hoping that I can build on that as I ramp up for the 1/2 marathon season.
Anyway back to the Duck Wellington with Mole Sauce. I did the sauce first and it wasn't hard to make, but it took a bit of time and consisted of a fair amount of ingredients. I would make it again, and maybe to make my life easier, I'd do it the day before serving. The rest of the recipe is where this gets challenging because you're thinly slicing potatoes so that can for
m a "wrapping around the duck, minced vegetables, black currants, and duck skin mixture. Then that is wrapped in puff pastry.I've included some pictures that Marc took in terms of getting this all together. I also made some sauteed vegetables with a persillade, which was very easy in comparison. Fortunately everything came out pretty tasty as this recipe took me a LONG time to pull it all together. I'd probably eliminate a couple of things to make this less labor intensive, and also use less bowls and cooking utensils. Marc was holding back his horror at the mess being made in the kitchen, even as I was doing my best to clean as I went.
As for wine, the book recommended a Rockblock Syrah
(made by
Domaine Serene) from Oregon and fortunately we had one ('04) on hand. We also thought it would be fun to pair a Petite Sirah since the flavors seemed to be complimentary, so we brought up an '03 Selby Russian River Valley Petite Sirah. The book's recommendation was pretty spot-on in terms of being a stellar match.So all in all, it ended up being a great meal and then Marc made an awesome "moon pie" for dessert. No beverage pairing needed - the yum factor was in full effect.