Mustard and corned beef sandwiches.

That's what Mannie made today.
Thank you to Sassy for the silver napkin ring (and box to keep it in) and blue scarf.
She feels cherished.

Duck and Prawn in Tamarind Curry Sauce with Saffron Rice.

Zil is coming over tomorrow night to join us for the last of the duck dishes. She knows about us. On the phone, when we invited her, she spoke to Calypso, and said when Calypso told her all about the duck extravaganza of this weekend - so Mannie has been very busy then! And yes, Mannie has, but this dish has some very strong influences from Hinchinbrook - from some of the vegan inspired cooking styles of Angelata and Francis.

And from dishes Francis made Francesca when she first came here to this body - the spicy fish soups that Francesca longed for - indeed I (shell) can see an image of Francis making fish head soup for Francesca, justifying the use of fish from the fact that in Australia the fish heads are often thrown away anyway, and that we knew how this particular fish died, and that it had died well. I see also the day that Francis watched a man (how fascinated the men in our system are by manliness, how drawn they are to men who can, for example, catch and kill and cook a fish) make this soup for us. He was making it for Leafy Jo, for Just Jo, for Thea. Though really, he was making it for his platonic friend "Jo", and of course, did not see us as ourselves. Perhaps he was making it for Pia. I'm just being delivered this memory now, a sense memory of aroma. Perhaps that's why so many of us are drawn to food, to recreating dishes from our past - to capture the memory again, to live through it again. And perhaps one of us was doing just what I have done now, back then, breathing in Pia's recollections of street vendors. Re-remembering.

In any case, this dish was a heady brew of nostalgia.

I believ it was also inspired by the aromas of a Heart Town resturaunt Satay Mas (the indonesian/malaysian resturaurant mentioned briefly last post) and perhaps also for our home, Heart Town where Tamarind trees are very common and produce an abundance of the sharply sour sticky paste that surrounds the tamarind seeds in their pods.

So here's how we did it.

We clarified the duck stock as described earlier and brought the stock to gentle simmer.

In the big pot we sauteed a sliced onion in a little olive oil at low heat. I would have much preferred to use grapeseed oil if Bigsplat Supermarket hadn't decided to discontinue the line in favour of yet more canola brands.

The other vegetables we prepared were spring onion sliced into two inch stalks, a couple of big fat roughly chopped garlic cloves and some leftover silverbeat stalks sliced across the grain so that they don't get irritating with their long fibres. We chopped up the leftover potato (baked in duck fat) and in a seperate bowl (the to-be-added last bowl) we put a cup of frozen peas and about the same of fresh cherry tomato.

We took the translucent onion pieces out of the pan and set them aside with the onion, garlic, silverbeat and potato, and turned the heat up. When the pan was very hot we added the duck meat (thighs, lower wings and the flesh) to the pan to fry, and two big tablespoons of tamarind paste, two teapsoons of chilli paste and a teaspoon of a ground spice mix - fennel, cumin, corriander, aniseed, cloves, chilli, black pepper, cardomom, and mustard.

Then we added the onion, garlic, silverbeat and potato. As soon as it was hot again we added the simmering stock, and let it all simmer for about ten minutes. We turned up the heat until it was boiling rapidly for a bit and then added the prawns, peas and cherry tomato and after a minute removed the whole dish to cool.

It's in the fridge now steeping overnight. The peas are still bright green as are the spring onion stalks and the sauce is a beautiful colour - terracotta. The saffron is soaking (for the saffron rice tomorrow) in a whiskey glass full of water, staining the liquid gradually, like a sunset in Bangkok.

Angelata waxes nostalgic about a peanut she once knew.

In our seventeenth year, when we were in our last year at Heart Town High School, we went out to dinner with a bright young lawyer who claimed that his ambition in life was to run an opera company. He had already loaned us a beautiful handcover copy of the works of George Sand and taped for us the complete works of Stravinsky.

It was a gorgeous winter evening the night he took us to a restuarant in Heart-town, the softly lit, exotic "Satay Ma" on Cleveland Avenue just up from Dugong Sound. The young man's name I can't recall but I do remember the peanut sauce.

Fourth dish!

Making the curry this afternoon I clarified the duck stock, not with any fancy eggwhite binding process, but by a method I invented myself - putting the stock in a container into the freezer, and taking it out when the top, edges and bottom have frozen, skimming the sheets of frozen fat off the top in big sheets (with an egg flip) and then pouring the liquid out into a vessel.

To make the curry part of the process includes bringing the stock to near boil.
But, I'll tell you about the curry later.

The unexpected fourth dish shall be called: Clear Duck Broth with Crusty White Bread.

Vegetarians might wish to duck out.

Duck, three ways.

1. Last Night's Dinner : Roast Duck & Vegetables with Orange Sauce.

2. Today's Lunch: Crispy Duck Skin Rice Paper Rolls.

3. Tomorrow's Dinner: Duck Curry.

Day before yesterday - out of the freezer - a 2kg "duckling".

Yesterday in the early afternoon the duck was prepared for baking.

We stuffed the cavity with small mandarins (they have lots of zest that way), garlic cloves, onion slices, corriander seeds, cloves, star anise, cardomon pods and sticks of rosemary. Duck skin does not need basting with oil, so we just rubbed salt and pepper into the skin. We baked the duck on a tray that was fortuitously too large for the pan meaning it was on a lean - ideal for harvesting duck fat. We baked it on it's back for an hour, then covered the wings with alfoil to prevent them overcooking and drying and turned the bird over for another hour of baking. Done! Once the pan had cooled a little, but before the duck fat had time to set we poured all the beautiful dark caramel coloured duck fat that had collected in the pan into a large cup. Then we let the bird cool completely on the tray it had been baked in. Once it was cold we very carefully seperated the various pieces for the duck orange - the boneless upperbreast - just the inch closest to the skin, not the long thin pinkish fillet underneath, with skin, cut into four square pieces, the legs (not thighs) and the drumstick-like part of the wings.

We carefully stripped the remains of the bird for skin - setting that aside. Then we took the meat, thigh bones and lower wing and set that aside for the duck curry. The rest of the carcass we stocked for two hours on the stovetop (skimming once at the beginning and then letting it simmer) for the duck stock. We added a carrot and the carcass stuffing sans mandarins (spices, garlic, rosemary, onion).

When that was simmering away, we basted the (Roast Duck & Vegetables with Orange Sauce) vegetables - parsnip, carrot and potato - in the duck fat and set them baking for fifty minutes.

To make the Orange Sauce we used a little duck fat and a teaspoon of olive oil to fry the flesh from the mandarins (from the stuffing) and some freshly zested orange skin with a tablespoon of cornflour. Then we added some sweet white wine and a teaspoon of lime marmalade. Then we added a cup of the stock (which we took early on in the stocking process, just scooping in out with a ladle and straining it seperately) and some chilli, rosemary and pepper.

When the vegetables were done, we took the out and rested them and turned the grill on to grill the duck pieces arranged on a pan with the skin up. They were grilled for about five - ten minutes to really crisp up the skin and at some point we put the vegetables back in (our grill and oven are, annoyingly, not seperate - you may not have to do so much juggling if your grill is seperate) - then we served the vegetables and duck pieces with the orange sauce.

For lunch today we made Crispy Duck Skin Rice Paper Rolls inspired by Beijing Duck or Peking Duck, which we once ate in Beijing and loved. First we prepared a small bowl of thinly sliced cherry tomato and spring onions and mixed them with a teaspoon of ginger cordial and a teaspoon of hot chilli. Then a small bowl of slivered silverbeat (could use lettuce, cabbage, sprouts) and the small bowl of slivered duck skin. The duck skin we grilled at high heat - laying out the skin flat on the pan and grilling it for five to ten minutes until it was really crispy and then slivered it thin. We made a dozen of the rice paper rolls, using the very small rice papers rounds. We softened the rice paper in steaming water on the stovetop (in a fry pan) for a few minutes and then cooled them for a moment on a plate (by this time the next rice paper round is in - it gets quite methodical after a while) and then made the roll - about a teapoon from each of the three bowls (saucy tomato and spring onion; slivered silverbeat; crispy duck skin) and then roll.

We made six for us, six for Gray, and served them with individual dipping dishes of soy sauce

Now it's Sunday afternoon and I'm going to make the Duck Curry. I'll make it today, but we won't eat it until tomorrow night. I think it is better the second day.

Time for tea.

Put the kettle on. It's time for tea.