Quiet Weekend

[callistra]

It's been really quiet around here, which is great after last week! Just trying to settle a bit, relax a bit, and cook a bit!

Yesterday, I made vegetarian lasange, which resulted in four more single servings leftover, plus a three personish pasta bake, and the lasagne was fantastic! Served with a nice salad of english spinach leaves, artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes and fetta.

Today, we got enthused and made our own pasta! Sarah made a comment the other day that basically it was one egg per 100gs of flour, and I thought she meant that for one person, so I made two eggs and 200gs of flour into pasta... there was a lot of pasta! We were using Matt and Karen's pasta machine, which I borrowed before they went to china and did not use the entire time they were gone! This is also the first time we have made pasta without someone around who had done it before. Yay us!

I decided to make the pasta because I was making a big pile of chicken stock, and I remember reading americans on food_porn saying how yummy it was to have chicken noodle soup with fresh pasta and stock.. and it was indeed lovely. The noodles swelled up so much! I thought they had done swelling, but they were hot so we left the soup for a bit and when we came back they were even plumper! So... next question is, what do you do with the leftover dried noodles hanging over the drying rack?
:-)

I think the soup might have needed a bit more salt though. I added lots of soy sauce, but i think it might have enjoyed more. So now I have two large bowls (probably about 4 litres) of stock in the fridge cooling for skimming and tomorrow turning into 1/2 cup sized frozen muffin shaped blocks. Vinnie ate all of his noodles with great delight, chewing them into halves and then slurping them down. He got covered in soup, but loved it.

And in my oven right now is a duck, roasting away, the first time I have tried to cook with anything I have grown. (Other than veg, I should say. I used to grow a lot of tomatoes at my parent's place.) :-) I'm very unsure about the gravy; I expect that with the strong flavour of the meat, something with a sharper tang might be good, so I was thinking dry sherry (my current sub for xiao xingh wine) in a standard roux style gravy made with a few table spoons of the dripping. If the potatoes, carrots and sweet potatoes don't absorb all the oil first of course. Suggestions in this area are welcome, and we have at least an hour or two before I need to have a clue.

So, a lovely weekend of cooking. I've been meaning to make lasagne for ages so I could do some up for Fe and Shay, so now I have some more I can give them when Bilby comes, but maybe I should do one more... :-)

Thanks to every one who did my poll. You'll just have to wait to see what we do! LOL!
:-)

Comments

[livelurker.livejournal.com]

Duck is usually pretty rich, fatty, and strongly flavoured but hopefully the skin will be crisp. I think that's a'l'orange is a good pairing because the citrus cuts through the fattiness a bit. I seem to recall cherry might be an option too. Not that there are any around :) The dry sherry is probably worth a try.

I seem to recall at some stage we did Duck with 5 spice in the wok, but my memory is hazy as to how it turned out (obviously I need to do more blogging about what we eat :)

If you're not scared of the evil long chain chemicals resulting from reheating used fat, goose fat is meant to be great for browning potatoes, not sure if the same holds for duck :)

BTW, does that mean you killed and plucked it yourself?

[fe2h2o.livejournal.com]

Duck fat is great for potatoes! We had some down south a couple of years ago that accy did... _really_ good!

[callistra.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's one of the duckies. :-)
Unfortunately, due to lack of skill in the plucking phase, the skin was unsalvagable, and Matt and Karen suggested roasting first and then skinning before serving. We have had some more info on the plucking thing, so I am quite willing to give it another go. Once we have a chicken coop. And duckies or chickens that need plucking. :-)

It was nicely firm but not tough, and it was also not as gamey as I was worried it would be. I think they were at peak time for culling though; six monthsish I think, which from all I could find on the internet was a good time for muscovies to discover god.

My plan is for tomorrow night we have duck and pineapple red curry, however there is a lack of pineapple here right now. Not bad, since in the end we had Mum and Dad here for dinner too, and there's still ducky leftovers!

[redbraids.livejournal.com]

Oohhh! I have only made pasta once using my pasta machine and it was not a sucess.... odd flour or some such. I want to try again but am feeling intimidated. Maybe soon :-)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

Just do it!
:-)
We actually had a pasta maker at Femmeconne but unfortunately we didn't get a chance to use it.
:-)

Maybe next time.