(going out of order, part 3 of piggly wiggly hunt will come later)
It was clear to me by the demeanor of the racist tow yard supervisor that he was either constipated or eats bad food daily. Certainly both. Though the theme of my weekend was CARS – many on the road, taking me 4 ½ hours to drive 40 miles, the highlight of the weekend was that it was bookended by great people and food. My parents drove over an hour to hand deliver me oranges from our tree and grab some lunch in Thai Town. Over the steamed mussels & crispy morning glory salad w/ slightly cooked shrimp, my mom glistened as she told me she’s now growing Romaine in the pots I bought her for Christmas. She’s excited and part of the True Organic Movement now, too… 🙂
If you don’t know the reference to the title, I pity you for your pickup line naïveté. Just change one letter to “pizza and a duck”. If you get slapped, it’s time to find a nice bridge or a noose. There’s no hope pal! just kidding…
I almost cried this weekend– not because more people are starting to enjoy growing their own plants or desiring to catch their own food. Not even because of the tow yard dude, but because the homemade pizza dough I had at Ori’s was so stupidly good, it reminded me of this singular piece of fish I will remember for the rest of my life…At Yasuda. As my brother and I bit our incisors into the fish, we looked at each other and laughed like friggen idiots, realizing we could have lost all our teeth to gummi bears and still enjoyed the O-Toro with perfect granules of rice. Not exactly the perfect analogy or even a good one, but it’s my blog & I’ll do what I want. You could tell the dough was a work of art because it welled up when being worked with, had bubbles in the crust, and also wouldn’t go limp like so many pizzas disintegrate with toppings. Of course, I couldn’t tell Ori the pizza was GREAT, I would prefer to tell him it’s pretty good but you can try again ;). I’m glad my stomach hasn’t learned to smile yet, so he could continue to experiment with doughs as he has for the past 10 months. But really, the dough is amazing and will be used in his restaurant and it will no doubt be a major hit especially with the added dimension of the wood burning oven being imported from Italy.
the 4 pizzas for 3 people were:
- Margherita
- Broccoli rabe w/ anchovies(the best jarred available in the world), and capers
- Black cabbage & Burrata
- Another Margherita.
wells
chef boyardee at work
saucy
broccoli rabe, caper, anchovy pizza
black cabbage, red onion, burrata
Margherita#2.
fatty experiment: Yesterday when my parents came, I cut out a duck breast, the wings, and some of the fat so they could make a meal, and today I bought another duck. Why not? Confit stores beautifully for up to 6 months, and though I’ve been keeping duck fat on hand lately, I didn’t have enough to fully cover 8 legs. I wanted to do an experiment on this 4.85 pound duck(including neck, liver, heart, kidneys) to see how much fat this duck actually had without taking fatty portions off of the key edible parts: breasts, wings, legs. The fat was solely from the back where there’s little usable meat, the lower portion by the tail, and some trimmings of excess fat around the legs. The carcass was roasted and made into a duck stock, and the meat on the two necks I had were shredded. Crostini +neck meat+ duck stock + port/reduced = duck neck crostini 🙂 
From a 4.85 pound dressed duck (kidney, liver, neck included in weight) 484 grams or 1.068 pounds
484 grams rendered 297 grams of usable fat (or 10.5 oz) for a ~ 60% yield. Whole foods wanted $9 for 7 oz of rendered duck fat. Here is 10.5 oz of fat + all the duck for $25 at full retail price.
Garlic is one of my favorite ingredients to work with and I think it’s one of the universal ingredients for a reason. I was in the mood for Confit so I used a makeshift diffuser. Garlic Confit.
clockwise top left: duck parts roasted and shredded, garlic confit, DUCK CONFIT WHAT WHAT ^^
I think the term “fabricating” (insert animal here) a duck to mean breaking it down into its usable parts is really a misnomer, because it’s not “manufacturing something”. But yeah, that’s what I’m doing. I’m fabricating the duck. Cutting out the Duck breasts, duck wings, removing the extra bone in the leg to make it easier to eat.
Looking at the sheen of the fat makes me so happy.
I’d imagine the fat percentage of the duck if I were to use my OMRON fat analyzer would be around 35-40%. 21.8%(body fat by weight) excess fat was just from trimmings…you’re obese Daffy, and need some P90x or Linsanity workouts.
I’m going to go be healthy tomorrow and swim in the ocean for 10 hours. night!
-E