Monthly Archives: October 2008

Tonight I made Duck A L’Orange, I was inspired by Top Chef. I remember the last season the first big challenge was to cook the classics, and duck a l’orange was one of the options. I was wondering what duck a l’orange is. Admittedly I have never herd of duck a l’orange, so when I herd about it I was interested. I got a recipe off of epicurious.com it was a simplified recipe and I followed some suggestions from form the reviews related to cooking the duck. Unfortunately I didn’t have a duck, but a water duck. I don’t know if they are the same or not, but it seems a lot smaller then a regular duck breast. I followed the recipe pretty much to the T, but I eyeballed some of the measurements, orange juice, and chicken broth specifically. Overall I was satisfied with the result, sadly the duck breast was overcooked, at least to my tastes. The orange sauce was great, despite my apprehensions that I added too much shallots into the mix. I also added some watercress to a salad. I also had some Bordeaux, in fact I am still drinking it, almost done with the bottle. It it s a pretty decent bottle of wine. Its definitely not as good as a Cheteau Mutton Rothschild or any first growth Bordeaux, but it is a good table wine to give to people who don’t have as refined of a pallet.

Sometimes ya never know what new products your going to find a Nijiya. I was there today and noticed they seemed to have some special croquettes today. The ones I picked up (pictured below) are some curry croquettes there was another kind, but I couldnt tell what the mixture was in side. They look really similar to ones I would see a combini in Japan. Since I cant read japanese all too well I am guessing possibly a company here is making them. The filling in side was quite pleasant had chunks of veggies in there, which leads me to believe they are not frozen ones, and if they are they are good quality frozen croquette. I am really impressed Nijiya is stepping up and providing some really good new products recently. The fish from tsukiji and also saw some matsutake mushrooms so it must be that time of year again. I hope they can beef up their drink selection and include some House Lemon water.

Tonight a made a vegitable and tofu stir fry. I also made chili prawns. These are dishes I have made numerous times before and they are kind of some of my toto dishes when I wanted something tasty and didn’t want to think about it too much. The main thing that was different with my chili prawns this time was that I fried them with a little oil rather then a deep fry. I found this way is just as effective and uses less oil. The quality of the shrimp was questionable but overall I thought they tasted alright. Definatly not the best shrimp that I have used.

Here is what I made last Friday. It’s a duet of pork. On the left it’s a roasted pork tenderloin with a morel mushroom sauce on a bed of pureed mash potatoes, bacon corn and shallots. On the right is a braised pork kakuni with daikon and edamame.