What are you Cooking the Week of September 19, 2021?

[chocomouse]

This morning I froze 6.5 quarts of tomatoes, mostly Romas and a few Celebrities. I think I'll get another batch of around 6 quarts, plus a few BLTs and maybe another tomato tart. But that will be it for this season. I have not kept track, But I think the total is around 25-30 quarts, which is plenty of soups and pastas for the two of us.

[chocomouse]

Dinner tonight was sausages and blueberry pancakes, with maple syrup, of course!

[Joan Simpson]

Tonight we had chili from the freezer,ladeled that over a hotdog with cheese and onion my husband had fries with his too.

[BakerAunt]

Leftover split pea soup and freshly baked rolls was our Friday dinner.

[RiversideLen]

Yesterday I made KAF's Ultra- Thin Pizza Crust. I cut the yeast in half, reduced the salt and cut the olive oil in half. The dough rolled out incredibly easy. I let it rise a bit after I rolled it out so it wasn't so thin. The recipe makes 2 pies and I think for tonight's I won't let it rest after I roll it out, I want to see just how thin it's supposed to be. I topped it with leftover pieces of pork roast and thin sliced onion. It was pretty good.

[Janiebakes]

This week has been an adventure in cooking duck. There is a national shortage of cat food especially the prescription sort. One of my cats has terrible food allergies and has been on a diet of only one meat source: in her case duck blended with peas. I can't find it anywhere so decided to cook some up myself. Bought two ducks, one labelled mature and the other a young one. Cooked the mature duck with just water in the crock pot. Got a lot of broth and about a pound of duck fat along with a good amount of shredded duck. The whole bird is so different from chicken. It looks like the ducks are not bred for the ginormous breast that chickens now sport. For all I read about how fatty duck is, it did not seem more fatty than a chicken to me. Of course the cat won't touch it but turns out she has a kidney issue and her food has been changed and this on is available soooo I had cooked shredded duck meat and a young duck to roast. Not much meat on the bird. I followed a recipe from Epicurious and roasted it for about three and half hours turning it breast up, breast down as directed. Surprisingly not overcooked or dry but the skin never did get crispy. It was golden brown but tough. We ate the breast and picked off the rest of the meat for another stir fry. It was pretty good with a hoisin based sauce. Made broth from the bones. The whole anatomy of the duck is so different. The wishbone is more u shaped than the v shaped chicken wishbone. No keel bone in the breast, instead a sheet of cartilage. The mature duck was not butchered completely either. I found the lungs, esophagus and gizzard still attached. The gizzard and a pebble were wrapped together with a membrane. OK for an experiment but I think my duck cooking days are over.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for the duck details, Janiebakes. I've never tried to cook duck, and after reading your post, I do not think that I ever will.

Saturday night dinner was salmon and couscous with Penzey’s Greek seasoning, accompanied by microwaved fresh broccoli.

[Mike Nolan]

I deboned a duck once, to make turducken. The breast isn't that big, but the wings are huge, because ducks need strong wings to fly. The leg bones are bigger too, because they use them for swimming. It took a lot longer to debone than a chicken does.

[Janiebakes]

I don't think these ducks ever flew or swam Mike. They were underwhelming in both wing and drumsticks.Brave man making turducken. I remember from the movie Julie/Julia the main character cooked the entire Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her capstone project was a deboned duck wrapped in pastry.

[Mike Nolan]

Probably doesn't make much difference if they ever swam or flew, their bodies are still engineered for that.

[Mike Nolan]

Prepping the turducken was interesting, you fully debone the chicken and the duck and partially debone the turkey (not the legs or wings, but you remove the breastbone and back.) I prepped it on Christmas eve and we cooked it on Christmas, but several of us came down with some kind of cold or flu starting around noon on Christmas, while the turducken was in the oven, and we only picked at the turducken a bit.

Would I do it again? Probably not. I've done a deboned chicken a few times, it is fun to fill it with stuffing, roast it, and then slice it at the table, so each slice has white meat, dark meat and stuffing it it.

The stores sometimes have a turducken in the freezer section at the holidays but it is usually prepared Cajun style and that's too spicy for us.

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