Cooking from "Sunday Suppers at Lucques" by Suzanne Goin

[FrogPrincesse]

42 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Okay, you've convinced me that this book belongs in my library! I went back to the original posts, and those links indicated that there was no Kindle version. There is now: Sunday Suppers at Lucques, by Suzanne Goin (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). However, I think I'll want the hard-copy version. If my library doesn't carry it, I'll be picking up a used copy!

Excellent!   I have made a very large portion of the recipes in the book, and have never been disappointed. It is in my top 5 of most used cookbooks.

[FrogPrincesse]

For the main course for Mother's Day, I picked another dish from the book, the duck braised in Banyuls which I had last made a while back but not documented here. It's more involved than the asparagus dish but all the steps are easy. The most complicated step is probably finding the wine, which is more or less the French equivalent of port (but less sweet and more subtle, less heavy). Luckily a local wine shop happened to have it.

 

It started with duck legs from Mary's (I picked large ones as recommended in the book). They get sprinkled with thyme leaves, orange zest, black pepper and go in the fridge for a few hours (overnight preferably). The next day you dice some onions, carrots, fennel. Meanwhile the duck gets sprinkled with salt and sauteed until brown and crispy. It's set aside, and the vegetables (+thyme sprigs, bay leaf) are cooked in a couple of spoonfuls of the duck fat. The pot is deglazed with balsamic and the Banyuls wine. The liquid is boiled, reduced by half, and then stock is added (I used duck stock because I happened to have some in my freezer from a previous cooking project). The duck legs are added back, and off they go to the 325F for 2.5 hours. The next day, the sauce is defatted (you are also supposed to remove the vegetables but I always leave them in), reduced as needed, and the duck is browned in a 400F oven. In the book she serves it with a turnip-parsnip gratin. I went with a traditional gratin dauphinois (Les Halles / Bourdain style) and served it with a bottle of rustic mourvedre. Everyone seemed happy.

 

 

 

 

 

Going into the oven

 

 

After 2.5 hours in the oven

 

Plated

 

[rotuts]

@FrogPrincesse

 

outstanding.  love that plying , w its and lots of sauce//gravy