Christmas Dinner (Supper)
Due to complications beyond my control (Al didn’t arrive until 21:30) the original menu was changed just a little, it was now to be:
Starter: Lobster cocktail.
No Soup
Main: Slow roasted Wild Duck with a forced meat stuffing, sour black cherry sauce, confit potatoes, steamed Brussels and spiced red cabbage.
Dessert: Dickies Christmas pudding and Devon brandy clotted cream
Starter: Lobster cocktail
Buy yourself a fresh lobster and cook it,(I bought mine already cooked, as the lady at the Gosch fish counter said they had just been cooked fresh that morning).
Break off the claws, crack and remove the meat.
Remove the head and set aside (I was to be using this tomorrow for a lobster fish sauce)
Turn the Lobster body belly side up and cut along the inside where the swim legs are with a pair of kitchen scissors (both sides) turn back the resulting flap and remove the meat.
Cut the body meat into bite size pieces, remove the membrane from the claw meat and half each piece but leave it recognisable as it looks nice and proves your using real lobster, I mean if your spending this amount of time and effort (not to mention the money)on a starter you want it to be noticed. Cover and set aside.
Make yourself a nice pink cocktail sauce “Marie Rose type”
130g pot of crème fraiche
½ teaspoon of tomato puree
Pinch of smoked paprika
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Tomato seasoning salt
Juice of half a lime
Splash of fish sauce
Mix all the above together and test for seasoning, adjust as you wish.
Buy a bag of small leaf mixed salad leaves, wash and pick over (there are always a few that are not so fresh). Cut 3 cocktail (well it is a lobster cocktail) tomatoes in to ¼’s and de-seed. Peel a mandarin (or any other seasonal soft skinned orange) and break into segments, a small handful of walnut kernals.
Make a salad dressing (I just made a simple French one as the cocktail sauce was to dominate) chop the walnuts add to the leaves and mix.
Just before serving, add the dressing and mix well, place in a champagne glass, place the tomato and mandarin segments around the outside pile up the lobster meat on top and cover with the cocktail sauce.
Main: Two roast wild ducks stuffed with sage, onion, forced meat mixture.
Game birds can be a bit iffy, because unless you know how to select young ones, they are likely to be tough (for swimming waterfowl the colour of the skin tells you if it is young). Because of this I had decided to slow roast them when planning the menu.
Make your stuffing:
1 packet of sage and onion stuffing (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!)
50g of Zwiebel mett (buy it ready prepared or in the UK use 2 good quality sausages)
1 dessert spoon of chopped fresh sage
1 shallot
A knob of butter
150g of pork collar
150g of cured belly (bauch speck)
50g of pork fat (cut straight from the back speck diced fine)
First make up the packet of stuffing as per the instructions, now heat the butter in a frying pan and soften the diced shallot and garlic, add this to the mixture. Cut the pork collar into cubes and along with the diced bauch speck add to the blender and wizz or buzz or blitz, or whatever one of these things do (at home I would normally use a hand mincer, but being at Linda’s I was forced down the automation route). Add to the stuffing along with the met, now the fun part, hands are required, get them in amongst it and give it a good squidging ,there is no other term for this, squeeze it between your fingers so that you get a homogenous mass (you could use your wiz, buzz, blitzer, thingy-me-bob, but that is no fun at all). Taste, you could fry a small paté and adjust the seasoning if required, you shouldn’t need any salt, as the speck and Mett will contain sufficient, but a couple of twists of pepper or any other additional spices (nutmeg, ground mixed spices or even dried fruit). Now cover and set aside to allow to mature a bit (I made quite a bit as some was to be used in a hot water crust game pie that I was making (see the following episode).
Now the ducks, I find pintails have the finer tasting flesh, but mallard and pochard are not to be sniffed at.
2 wild ducks.
Stuffing from above
2 carrots roughly diced
1 piece of celeriac diced (or a couple of stalks of celery)
White of 1 small leek
1 diced onion
1ltr of good game stock (I had made this from the carcasses etc. from the game for the pies (see it from another episode).
The ducks are best shot about a week ago and hung in their feathers, pluck (or get some other daft ‘B’ to do it for you) and draw (remove the innards but keep the heart and liver). Wash inside and out, dry, pick all over to remove the last of the downy feathers and stubble (and any obvious shot) salt and pepper inside, stuff with the forced meat, add a sprig of rosemary at the vent end (Rear)and close it up using tooth picks and kitchen string or thread.
Now rub the outside with game spices, salt and pepper and cover with bacon or pig back fat.
Giblet gravy
Chop the necks, hearts and liver and place in a sauce pan with some game stock, pepper corns, a bay leaf pinned to a small onion with a couple of cloves, a table spoon of dried soup vegetables (Suppengrün), allow to simmer until ready to make, top up with stock if needed.
Place the vegetables in a roasting tray, cover with stock and place the ducks on the top and cover with foil and place in a moderate oven 180 degrees C, let this braise away, spooning over the stock now and again, if the stock is beginning to get a little low replenish. Remove the foil and increase the temperature to 190 for the last 30 minutes, test by picking the breasts, the juices should run just a little pink. 20 minutes before ready to serve, take the ducks out of the oven and place on a dish, cover and allow to rest.
Skim off the fat (this is from the pork fat not the duck) and pour the remains of the pan juices etc. through a sieve squeezing the veg to get the last bit of taste out of them into the giblet gravy stock, now boil up to reduce add a couple of knobs of maître butter to gloss and thicken, adjust seasoning, pour into a heated sauce boat .
When ready to serve cut in half and place on either a serving platter or as we did straight onto a warmed dinner plate.
Sour black cherry sauce.
This time of the year you will have to use either jars or frozen (or pay €16,- per kg for either Chilean or Aussi ones, needless to say mine where frozen, a sprig of rosemary, the peel of the non-waxed bio mandarin that you used for the lobster cocktail (waste not, want not). 5 large sage leaves, a piece of cinnamon, 5 cardamom pods, 2 cloves, place in a sauce pan and cover with cherry juice. Place on a very low heat and allow to infuse, add a couple of spoons of cherry jam to add a bit of sweetness (this can be made well in advance and reheated). Pour this also into a heated sauce boat or suitable serving dish.
Confit Potatoes
6 Large floury potatoes, peel, cut a disc out of the center of each, the thickness is what matters. Heat of butter in a frying pan and fry until golden brown, turn and repeat, transfer to roasting dish, add more butter and place a bay leaf between each and put in the oven at 180 degrees (notice the same as the ducks), the whole recipe is from the BBC webbsite
Spiced Red Cabbage.
The recipe for the red cabbage is from the Hairy Bikers and is one of the best I have tasted, this is Linda’s domain, as are the Brussels (I will not bother you with how to cook these).
Dessert: The Christmas pud
I had made this in November and it was reheated over a boiling water, place a chefs ring in the base of a large pot, Christmas pud into a tupperware type bowl with a lid on, place on top of the ring, pour boiling water into the pot until it comes halfway up the bowl steam for 3 hours. Serve with Devon clotted Brandy cream.
