Duck + Tweezers

Let's pretend it's Thursday!

Also, if you're vegan: LOOK AWAY NOW!

Last week was "Asian week" in Lidl. There were colourful dips and friable bits, coconut ice cream and unripe mangos. Of course, whenever there's a "special" week, people swarm down like locusts and consume the things I like. In this case a set of multi-use chopsticks. But plenty had been left over and I started browsing. Slowly, like a meet-cute in a romcom, I saw it: Duck! Asian Week Special! 2.99euros/kilo! I didn't give it a second thought. Into my basket the duck went and I happily skipped to my car, looking forward preparing this for the first time. Not once did I think about why it would be so cheap. Even chicken is more expensive, though far more common in these parts. No, no, I was in a duck-haze, floating on cloud duck, or really any other expression I can maul by using the word "duck" in it.

Came home, started browsing. Some recipes were simple: Pop duck in oven, bake 20 minutes per pound plus additional 20 minutes. Nah, that can't be right. It can't be that simple! If it were that simple it wouldn't be duck, it would be chicken! I found one I liked finally. It was fairly long and I followed the logic of "If it sucked, nobody would put this much time into it, so it must be good!" I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jessie Cross (aka TheHungryMouse) for the amazing roasted duck recipe. But more on that later.

I was about to find out why my duck had come to me so cheaply.

FEATHERS! EFFING FEATHERS EVERYWHERE!

property of http://fernbank.edu/

More precisely, quills. The long, fluffy bits of feather had been removed and the strong, sharp bases remained. I couldn't just shave the duck, like you would a pig (or so I hear), since the quills went about a centimetre or even more under the skin. That would make the skin kind of gross to eat, wouldn't it? Crunchy, but gross. I stared at them. Defiantly, they stared back. Should I throw it away? No, that would be wasteful. There aren't just kids starving in Africa, there are kids starving everywhere. We don't throw food away. Okay, okay, just breathe. I really wanted to ragequit this whole duck adventure. But the Scrooge in me would not let this bird go to waste. After a few futile attempts at removing the quills by hand, I decided that my tweezers would have to be sacrificed to the hairy duck gods. 

And so I set to work.

After three hours of this mind numbing work, I could swear the damn duck was alive and growing extra quills just to mess with me. The work was never-ending. Also, word of warning: If you happen to have severe trypophobia, this is not work for you. Especially around the tail. I have it mild, so I could just suck it up, but seriously, don't do this if you have a problem with holes.

My mum would occasionally stroll by, giggle unhelpfully, ask me why I don't just give up. I do not give up! I will not be bested by a dead duck! THIS IS WAR, WOMAN! Don't you see?!

Yeah, I get ridiculously intense about weird things.

After three hours, I was exhausted and cross-eyed from plucking. I had about enough quills that, had they been whole feathers, I could have stuffed a decent pillow. Here's some advice: If you, like I, fall for the cheap duck ploy and need to do your own bit of plucking, have a bowl of water close. It's much easier dunking the tweezers into water as a means of removing quills than trying to do it with your fingers.

Another two hours on the next day and my duck was now as smooth as a smooth duck should be. HungryMouse's recipe, though in theory simple, required a lot of time. Four and a half hours, to be exact. In the end: Worth it. It was everything it promised. Crispy skin, beautiful, tasty meat. And duck fat from the extra skin! Who knew you could do that. If you, like me, are not a native speaker, the process is called rendering. Here's a nice recipe on how to do it by TheBittenWord.

Waste not want not, right? I felt bad about wasting the duck innards, so after some searching, I came to Hank Shaw's page, Honest Food and found a recipe for dirty rice, a dish unknown to me until that point. It turned out amazingly well and I can suggest that, if you make this, you put in both the green and jalapeno peppers. Gizzards turned out not to be my thing - too firm and too chewy, but the rest: heart, liver and unidentified darker organ (I used the neck for soup), were simply delicious and went well with the texture of the rice. Turns out, my mum loves gizzards and here's why: She grew up in the country and whenever they were good, they would get gizzards as a prize! In those days, you weren't picky about your food and getting extra meat was next to being declared a saint.

And that is all! My duck was roasted and then decimated in two days, I still have some dirty rice and a cup of lovely duck fat, which people keep telling me I should use for roasting potatoes. Once again, tweezers save the day!

Until next time!

Love,
LaDIY Tasha

P.S: Did I mention I was humming the Ducktales theme song the entire time I was preparing this bird?

The white no-bake cake of doom

Everybody in my family likes the white cake and it is the go-to cake for marking any occasion. It's quick and easy and people tell me it's delicious. Frankly, I've made it so many times, it lost all appeal to me, but since I'm strapped for a topic to write about, and late to boot, here's how the white cake is made.

First you will need a lot of very yummy ingredients: 

• 1 liter of whipped cream
• about 1 liter of sour cream
• 1 kilo of defrosted frozen fruit (I used cherries and raspberries)
• 3 layers of cake (store-bought)
• around 200g of sugar

You will also need a huge-ass bowl, like the yellow one in the picture. Why, you ask? Because no mere mortal bowl can take this much stuff without spilling! (does that sound a little bit pervy?)

See, what did I tell you? That's what one liter of whipped cream looks like. It took me 20 minutes to make that sucker stiff (I'm turning into Nigella with the food porn). It made me long for a nice KitchenAid mixer that mixes stuff for me and that I don't have to put any effort into. Until the day that happens though, it's the elbow-grease path for me.

After that is done, in another much smaller bowl, we mix the sour cream and the sugar, then add this mixture to the whipped cream. Folding this is a bit tricky because the whipped cream moves out of the way for the sour cream and sometimes you are left with a bunch of sour cream on the bottom, which, though making for a good dirty joke, isn't much good for a cake, because it will just spill out. So take your spatula, mixer, hamster wheel or whatever you like to stir with and patiently even out the mixture.

And you're done! That's all the preparation you need to do.

 
 

So what you do next is you separate your cake layers and place one on the serving dish. Cover it with the cream mixture, leaving about 1cm of the edges free, so when you press down, the filling won't spill over. Then put the berries over the cream and add another layer of cream. Cover all this with the next cake layer and press down gently.

You should end up with something like this. The top layer doesn't have any berries, except the ones that will be used for decorating. Now all you have to do is put the remaining cream mixture onto the sides of the cake and it's done!

This, in total, took a half hour to make, despite the horrid cream whipping session. The cake is really easy to make, but it isn't for the faint of heart or the lactose intolerant. I usually have some cream mix left over and I combine it with the juice that came from defrosting the berries. It makes for a simple and yummy ice-cream.

Oh, and finally, don't forget to do the little lad dance if you want your cake piece!