The Case of the Missing Duck Bones

The biggest scandal in the neighborhood of my youth concerned a duck carcass. My sister Anna, then a teenager, had prepared canard a l’orange for a potluck held at the home of a neighbor: the dish was exquisite, and with it she cemented her reputation as the finest cook on the block.

Once the party was over and we began gathering our serving dishes, our family discovered the duck carcass missing. We had anticipated a rich stock from the meat and bones, knowing it would add complexity to cassoulet or soften the bite of asparagus soup. But the serving dish on which my dad had carved Anna's culinary masterpiece was empty. Puzzled and disappointed, we carried it home.

The Berkeley, California, neighborhood where we grew up lies a few blocks from Chez Panisse and the specialty food shops surrounding Alice Waters' restaurant. Over the years, the influence of the Gourmet Ghetto permeated the surrounding neighborhood, and many of us became fanatical about food.

In our family of six, with two working parents, my siblings and I each cooked one night a week. We four kids were unabashed disciples of the culinary craze and attempted, with varying success, such dishes as bacon-wrapped grilled sweetbreads, handmade pasta, and squid and leeks in red wine. During dinner, the chef would face a critique from siblings and parents on how better to cut up a chicken or when to add garlic to a stir-fry. Learning to cook a sumptuous dish was nearly as valued as bringing home a good report card.

While our household carried the gastronomical torch (prompting one visitor to remark, the morning before a party, "The Ericksons are cooking, and all is well with the world"), our neighbors vied for runner-up, and dinner parties were a competitive business. Every Sunday morning, up and down the street, aspiring chefs were poring over the food sections of The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle and stashing recipes for future parties. At block parties we dined on coq au vin, wild mushroom ragout, and home-baked sourdough bread.

Naturally, much of the neighborhood gossip concerned cooking and food, and soon after the duck party, the grapevine told us where the carcass had gone. Another neighbor at the potluck had bagged it while the rest of us were finishing a chocolate hazelnut torte. He spirited it home and prepared the stock, which now filled his freezer.

My father confronted him. Our neighbor admitted taking the carcass but asserted that, as a leftover, the spent duck was as much his as anyone's. The two of them, both lawyers, argued about it for months. The stock, alas, is long gone.

* * *

Duck a l'orange is a surprisingly simple dish. It consists of a duck, roasted, and a sugary orange sauce. The fatty, gamy meat balances the sweetness of the sauce, and the entire dish is a guilty pleasure.

The most difficult part of the dish is handling the duck -- both roasting and carving it. While roast duck is the most tempting meat I have encountered, I rarely cook it. The bird is so fatty, and cooked at such high heat, that the duck fat liquefies and ascends to coat the walls and ceiling of the kitchen. If you don't have a well-ventilated stove (which I don't), make sure to crank up a fan and open all the windows. It also helps to trim as much fat as possible from the duck before consigning it to the oven.

When it comes time to carve the bird, you'll find that although it has already given its life, the duck doesn't easily give in to the cook. The joints stick together stubbornly, and tendons pull the meat tight against the bone. Use patience, a very sharp carving knife, and lots of red wine for your guests.

Duck a l'Orange

Adapted from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking

-4 oranges

-1 5-pound duck

-3 tablespoons sugar

-1/4 cup red wine vinegar

-2 cups duck stock

-2 tablespoons arrowroot blended with 3 tablespoons port

-1/2 cup port

-2 or 3 tablespoons orange liqueur

-lemon juice

-2 tablespoons softened butter

Remove the peel from the oranges and julienne; simmer the orange peels in a quart of water for 15 minutes.

Wash the duck inside and out and season with salt and pepper. Place 1/3 of the orange peels in the cavity of the duck and truss it.

Set the duck on a rack and in an oven preheated to 425 degrees. Roast for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 350. The duck should take about 1-1/2 hours; you'll know it's done when you prick the thigh and the juices that run out are faintly pink.

While the duck is roasting, boil the sugar and vinegar until they form a dark brown syrup -- this will take several minutes. Remove the syrup from the heat and add 1/2 cup of duck stock. Place it back on the heat, on simmer, stirring while adding the rest of the stock. Whisk in the arrowroot mixture and stir in the remaining orange peels. Simmer 3 to 4 minutes.

Cut the peeled oranges into segments.

When the duck is finished, remove it from the rack and set it on a platter. Return it to the oven (but leave the heat off).

Drain nearly all the fat from the roasting pan; add the port and boil the liquid down until it is 2 to 3 tablespoons. Strain port into the simmering stock mixture. Stir in the liqueur and add lemon juice if needed to cut the sweetness. Whisk in the butter.

Place the orange sections around the duck, pour the sauce over all, and serve.

This piece first appeared in the Daily Gullet on May 14, 2004 http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=home

Unhappy Breakup, Joyous Reunion

After many years as my faithful companion, chocolate betrayed me. I first suspected it while visiting friends in Ashland, Oregon. I had eaten a large slice of fudge pie soon before bedtime and remained awake for hours. Camped in their son’s room, I spent the night reading novels written for prepubescent boys, nodding off only after sunrise.

I had been suffering from intermittent insomnia for about a year and had finally hit on the cause. In college I had given up coffee and tea after too many restless nights. Now, apparently, my system had grown so sensitive that the minute amounts of caffeine in chocolate kept me awake. Letting go of coffee and tea had been easy—good herbal blends satisfied the need for a hot drink. But chocolate? What substitute could there possibly be for hot fudge, truffles, and Droste?

I tested my theory. For two weeks, I ate no chocolate—and slept soundly every night. I then ate a brownie at lunchtime and stayed awake until 3 a.m. After a month of blissful sleep I tried again, this time with a package of M&Ms. Up until 3 again, watching Twilight Zone reruns.

I had to face the facts: I could no longer eat chocolate. I avoided its bittersweet embrace the way an alcoholic shuns liquor, fearing that one taste would send me into a downward spiral of insomnia and eventual insanity.

It’s not easy, living chocolate-free. I once asked a waiter to recommend a non-chocolate dessert and was served a chocolate-banana pudding drizzled with fudge sauce and decorated with chocolate curls. Another time, I futilely chewed out a stony-faced teenager behind an ice cream counter, frustrated that the only choice available to me was vanilla.

I tried carob, but I wouldn’t recommend it. One bar cookie recipe with a fudge topping was passable when I substituted carob chips for the real stuff, but carob brownies were dreadful. And, save for hard, stale cookies and bars in health food stores, carob was scarce outside my own kitchen. As I had suspected, there is no substitute for chocolate. I accepted my fate and moved on to other desserts.

Then, seven years after our unhappy breakup, chocolate returned to me. I discovered this after making a pot of herbal tea in a hotel coffee maker by running water through the maker and onto tea bags in the pot. The next morning my husband asked, “How did you sleep?” “Great,” I said, reflecting on nine hours of uninterrupted, dreamless slumber. He then told me that he had forgotten to remove the coffee grounds from the maker before I brewed my tea.

I had drunk coffee—albeit weak coffee, but containing at least as much caffeine as chocolate—and slept as if I were drugged. Could this mean that I could eat chocolate again? I purchased a Snickers bar from the hotel snack machine and downed it after lunch. That night, I slipped into a sound sleep and woke late. The next day, I raised the bar and went for a fudge brownie with chocolate chips. Once again sleep was my friend.

The famine was over, and it was time to feast. I devoured the remainder of my son’s Halloween candy, finished off my husband’s Swedish Christmas chocolates (a gift from me), and purchased a bag of organic chocolate chips, which I ate by the handful. The Girl Scouts were selling their cookies, and I bought four boxes of thin mints, hoarding them in my office so I wouldn’t have to share them with my son.

My senses have since returned, and I now eat chocolate like a normal person—that is, almost daily. I still sleep well. So, what happened? I asked Dr. Allyson Tevrizian, an allergist at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. She noted that caffeine intolerance is not an allergy but said that “There are a number of cellular receptors that caffeine works on, and it is possible that over time, either the number of these receptors or their activity may have diminished.”

Then she referred me to Dr. Robert Simon at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego. She noted that Dr. Simon has researched food additive intolerance, so he might better understand what had happened. Simon was not impressed by my story. Side effects from drugs are inconsistent, he said simply, and can vary, especially over a span of several years.

In other words, bodies change over time. And once in a great while, it’s for the better.

This piece first appeared in the Daily Gullet on November 3, 2003.

Photo by Simon Howden, FreeDigitalPhoto.net

Breakfast de Reyes

I was about 11 years old when my parents decided our family would celebrate Christmas in Loreto, Baja California. We drove down from Berkeley in a VW bus, spending our days traveling first along crowded, fast-moving California highways, then, south of the border, along desolate roads filled with potholes.

One morning after sleeping on the soft sand of the Baja desert, we drove to a breakfast spot that someone had read about in a guidebook. We ordered huevos rancheros from a shack that stood by itself among the cacti and rocks, and ate them at a table in the crystalline sunlight.

It was on that morning in the Baja desert that I first tasted white corn tortillas and grapefruit soda, and since then a meal of huevos rancheros has always felt like a celebration.  

I have eaten many variations of huevos rancheros: eggs poached in salsa or fried; with beans, without; with cheese or not; tortillas made of corn or flour, fried or heated. The only essential ingredients are tortillas, eggs, and salsa.

But the tortillas and eggs are merely the medium; like many Mexican dishes, the salsa makes the dish, so it must be muy sabrosa. I served huevos rancheros this morning because I had leftover corn tortillas, black beans, and queso fresco. The salsa was Casa Sanchez’s mildly spicy roasted tomato — an excellent, locally made salsa worthy of huevos rancheros.

In Defense of Root Beer

I took a rafting trip on the American River during the summer when wildfires raged over Northern California and smoke hung like a fog over half the state. We choked on the smoke all that 90-degree day down the river, with only warm, plastic-tasting water to quench our thirst.

So at the end of the trip, when one of the river guides produced a cooler filled with sodas on ice, I nearly cried with joy. I fished out a ginger ale to soothe my throat.

A group of Spaniards who had shared my raft were poring over the cooler. One picked out a root beer and brought it over to me. “Excuse me, is beer?” he asked. “Root beer,” I said, switching to Spanglish, “No es cerveza. Es soda — refresco.”

He opened it, took a sip, and made a face. His friends tried it and grimaced. “I think is for children, no?” he asked. “Of course not,” I said, starting to feel a little defensive. It was more soda than I wanted, but I grabbed a root beer just to show them. “Everyone drinks root beer.”

I then told them about root beer floats, trying to describe the glory of the classic American dessert-drink: the foam spilling over the top of the glass, the icy crunch that forms on the ball of vanilla ice cream, the creamy drink that remains once the ice cream is gone.

My adulations were lost on them. They looked at me blankly, then one blond Spaniard said that root beer tasted like “medicina del estómago” — stomach medicine — and the rest nodded.

But I had whetted my own appetite for root beer float. The last one I’d had was at a county fair, and it was a huge disappointment. The root beer had been warm, which caused the soft serve ice cream to melt immediately into a sickeningly sweet puddle.

So when I got home, I made up for it. I bought Dad’s root beer and Dreyer’s vanilla, chilling both well before joining them in float heaven. The root beer crust that formed on the vanilla ice cream ball had never been crunchier, the foam never so high. I showed those Spaniards.

Your Fig Bar Is So Stale...

My sister Anna recently turned me on to the Facebook group Your Mom Is So Berkeley. It includes a multitude of hilarious posts about the singular experience of growing up in Berkeley during the 1960s and 1970s. Reading it I learned that my family wasn’t the only one that tossed out its television, bought used clothes at Value Village, and spent summer vacations camping in a VW bus.

A surprising number of the posts are about food. My fellow citizens complain about brownies made with carob (considered more healthful than chocolate), powdered milk (it was cheap, because you can’t really be a hippie if you have money), and a ban on grapes (in support of the United Farm Workers boycott).

The food posts are notable, because long before the Gourmet Ghetto sprang up on its north side, Berkeley had a thing about food. This first food revolution wasn’t about taste, though. We ate as we did for spiritual, political, and health reasons: Eating flesh resulted in bad karma. Raising cattle for meat contributed to world hunger. White bread made you sluggish.

The Berkeley Co-op—a worker- and shopper-owned grocery store that opened in 1939 and lasted until 1988—became a center of this movement. The cooperative wasn’t just a politically correct concept, it also stocked politically correct food. The grocery chain lowered itself to carry such items as sugary cereals, but it marked them with a red tag noting their high sugar, salt, or fat content. The Co-op offered bulk food, of course; my dad never failed to stop at the bin filled with whole-wheat fig bars, the only store-bought cookies readily available in our house. We always shopped at the Co-op, and always gave our member number (21821), but never in my memory received a dividend.

The early food revolution spawned a couple of highly successful cookbooks, Laurel’s Kitchen and Diet for a Small Planet. Both books, born in Berkeley in the 1970s, offered a full suite of vegetarian recipes. But they were also, or even more so, about the authors’ political and spiritual journeys. Each book dedicates as least as much ink to personal growth and preaching as it does to cooking.

We have moved past those hippie days, but the 1970s food revolution never quite died. It simply acquired a sense of taste. Chez Panisse, the pre-eminent Berkeley restaurant that arguably launched the Gourmet Ghetto, features organic, locally produced foods not only because they taste better, but because it’s good for the environment. My hometown is still eating its way to a better world.