Saturday, May 7, 2016 – I’ve already told you the story of the ingredient challenges, so I won’t go into that again. Today, I had my second dinner party with the dishes from the ingredient challenges.
Today’s menu was
And for dessert, blood orange sorbet. (This wasn’t an ingredient challenge, but it was thematic with the rest of the dinner.)
But before we get to the dinner, let’s talk about chicken stock. Chicken stock is a big ingredient in veloute sauce, and homemade stock is much better than store-bought stock. But homemade stock takes hours, and I don’t go through chicken stock fast enough to justify making a big batch.
So I decided to use a trick my cooking teachers taught me. Take store-bought stock and “doctor it up” by simmering it in some chicken bones and aromatics. This way, you don’t need to spend as much time or effort on it, but you still get something better than store-bought stock.
Or at least that’s the theory, anyway. In practice, doctored stock still tastes mostly the same as store-bought stock. It was a nice exercise, though. I’ll have to think of a way to deal with my stock situation…
The roasted veggies with veloute sauce was mostly the same as my practice run. I did swap out fresh fennel leaves for dried fennel seeds and used it in the sauce instead of as a garnish. (To be honest, I still don’t like fennel, but hey, it was part of the challenge.) I also noticed that there’s way too much sauce for the amount of veggies. (I’ve since updated the recipe in the original blog post.)
Also, I went through a lot of beets today. They really do turn everything red. My hands are red. The sauce was originally white, but now it’s red. Red red red red.
For the duck breast, I decided to make a “cabbage wrap”, and instead of roasting the walnuts with the duck, I’d just stuff it all in the cabbage wrap. Well, as it turns out, sticking a whole duck breast into a cabbage wrap doesn’t really work. Oops. I should have just made a slaw, like I suggested last time. Or maybe, since the duck breasts are so thick, I should pre-slice the duck and make a duck cabbage salad. Hmm…
This time around, blood oranges were in season. They made the sauce more red than brown and added a little extra something something to the sauce’s flavor. (Thought of the moment: If I made duck with an orange sauce, does that mean I made duck l’orange?)
For dessert, I made a blood orange sorbet. One, it fits the blood orange theme with the duck. Two, sorbet is simple yet delicious. I zested one of my blood oranges, then peeled 5 of them, tossed them in the blender with 1/4 cup white sugar, 2 Tbsp Triple Sec, and a pinch of salt. Then put it in the freezer in a shallow tupperware and stir every 30 minutes to get a texture like snow.
The only thing I’m not sure about is pureeing whole oranges or just squeezing for orange juice. I guess it depends on whether you like orange juice with or without pulp/
Bonus: A countertop full of ingredients, waiting to be assembled and plated. Not pictured: Stovetop with 2 pans, one with veloute sauce, one with orange sauce.