duck, duck, goose

Well, okay, no actual goose. But duck! It was the best dish, so I’m giv­ing you the “recipe”, although the salad base can be what­ever you wish.

Pan-seared Duck with Crunchy Salad
(serves four easily)

2 bone­less duck breasts (these usu­ally come vacuum-packed)
sea salt
2 cups tightly packed baby spinach leaves
1 small pur­ple cab­bage
1 small white cab­bage
2 red bell pep­pers
1 avo­cado
1 dozen small toma­toes
hand­ful chives
dress­ing: juice and pulp of a lemon, 1 clove gar­lic, finely chopped, 1/4 cup olive oil, dah bal­samic vine­gar, tasp Dijon mus­tard, sea salt

Place the duck breasts on a cut­ting board (NOT the one you will later use for prepar­ing the salad; always use sep­a­rate boards for raw meat and veg­gies). Score the skin in four hor­i­zon­tal slices, till you can just see the meat beneath. Sprin­kle the skin with sea salt.

Heat a large skil­let till nearly smok­ing, then put in duck breasts skin side down and sprin­kle with sea salt. You would be wise at this point to cover the skil­let with one of those grease screens, since duck is very fatty and you (and your price­less Armani jacket) will get splat­tered. Turn heat down to medium and let duck cook for 8 min­utes. Resist the temp­ta­tion to play with it, poke it, and above all DO NOT pierce it.

Mean­while, pile the spinach on a large plat­ter. Shred the cab­bages finely (I cut them in quar­ters first to make small shreds) and slice the red pep­per into small strips. Halve the toma­toes. Chop the chives. Scat­ter all this over the spinach. It will be so pretty you’ll be tempted to take a picture.

Now, lift the grease screen and turn over the duck breasts. They will siz­zle madly, so quickly put the screen back on, and pre­pare to wait another 8 min­utes. Com­bine all dress­ing ingre­di­ents and whisk enthus­ti­as­ti­cally, but know that you will have to whisk again just before dress­ing the salad.

Remove the skil­let from the heat and, using tongs so as not to pierce the meat, lift the duck breasts from the skil­let and place on a plate. Pour off the fat and reserve in case you plan to fry eggs or hash browns any time soon (you can always throw it away later if you don’t use it). Wipe the skil­let with paper tow­els and place the duck breasts back in skin side down, then return to heat. Let the breasts siz­zle for about two min­utes, then lift them out of the fat and remove them to a fresh cut­ting board, where they can rest while you pour wine (or in our case, milk) and whisk the dress­ing one more time.

Now, you have a choice to make. Are you going to eat the delec­table skin and com­pletely ruin your res­o­lu­tion to eat less fat, or are you going to remove the skin and have a truly guilt-free din­ner? Your choice. I did remove the skin, and let me tell you, we didn’t feel deprived. Slice the duck thinly or thickly, whichever you like, and lay the slices over the salad. Whisk the dress­ing one more time and pour over the duck.

There is some­thing about the rich, ten­der, pink duck with a bite of crunchy, tangy cab­bage and tomato, and silky avo­cado, and vir­tu­ous spinach, that makes this dish just deli­cious. And so good for you!

Then, the next night we had com­pletely bor­ing, for­get­table fancy fresh ravi­oli from Sel­f­ridges. How­ever. With it I made an acci­den­tal sauce that turned out to be sub­lime. It hap­pened out of sheer neglect.

Sage and But­ter Sauce
(good for any pasta, but also pork chops, veal scallopini?)

1 stick but­ter
12 sage leaves
1 tsp sea salt
1 clove gar­lic, finely chopped

Melt the but­ter in a small skil­let and then add the sage, salt and gar­lic. Shake till nicely dis­persed over low-medium heat, then walk away, check your email, fold the laun­dry, what­ever. The point is, totally for­get about the fact that you have melted but­ter sit­ting over heat. Come back in five min­utes or so and find that you have slightly browned but­ter, and CRISPY sage leaves! I had been plan­ning to lift the leaves out, and have just fla­vored but­ter, but no! They were crispy, like potato chips, and so good. The ravi­oli were just vehi­cles for the sauce. Some warm baguette rounds were per­fect to soak it up.

OK, enough about food. How about that Thai mil­i­tary rev­o­lu­tion? I swear, the lead­ers gave a press con­fer­ence that the BBC broad­cast and trans­lated, and the head guy said, “We apol­o­gize for any incon­ve­nience this coup may have caused you.” What? I love that. Coups can be so annoy­ing.

Avery’s rid­ing is going from strength to strength. Here is her lit­tle back, rid­ing away on Sir­ius, the star pony belong­ing to Ross Nye’s daugh­ter Kirsty, who runs the sta­ble. I love this shot for the per­fect Eng­lish­ness of the set­ting. She has a new babysit­ter pick­ing her up today, a girl called Chrisa who stayed here with our hous­esit­ter over the sum­mer. I’ll be at the first meet­ing of my screen­writ­ing class, which should be great fun. In a minute I’m going to lie down on the sofa and read “Screen­play: The Foun­da­tions of Screen­writ­ing” by Syd Field, which is said to be the bible for this sort of thing. There are sev­eral nov­els, both for chil­dren and for adults, that I think would make excel­lent movies, and I’d like to get my feet wet fig­ur­ing out how one does that. How does one get the rights to the novel, and then what are the mechan­ics of turn­ing writ­ing into speak­ing? I find that often the weak­est part of a movie made from a book is the part where the writer had just been exposit­ing about some­thing in omni­scient writer-voice, but not hav­ing a char­ac­ter speak the words. Then when it’s a movie script, where do you put that infor­ma­tion? The writer hasn’t given you any direc­tion about who could speak it. This is true espe­cially of Jane Austen, I think, whose “Pride and Prej­u­dice” is filled with page after page of nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion about how the char­ac­ters feel, yet no one speaks it, it’s merely given to you by the author. So when it’s made into a movie, all that expos­i­tory con­tent gets lost and you end up watch­ing the char­ac­ters do things that aren’t shored up by dia­logue explain­ing why they feel the way they feel. I’d like to explore how to do that better.

Then I’ll meet up with the babysit­ter and Avery at rid­ing, and then I have a rare din­ner out, all by myself, at the house of a lady inter­ested in art his­tory. Either I will be com­pletely intim­i­dated by all these arty peo­ple she has invited, and their rich phil­an­thropist hus­bands, or I won’t.

Oh, and a huge tri­umph for Avery! She got 96 out of 100 spelling words right, on a ter­rif­i­cally impor­tant spelling test at school yes­ter­day. She was sim­ply beam­ing from ear to ear with pride when I picked her up yes­ter­day. “That’s never hap­pened before,” Mrs D told her. “Appar­ently I’m an aver­age 14 1/2 year old,” Avery told me, try­ing for non­cha­lance but not get­ting any­where near it. She’s so proud of her­self, and so are we. Now if she can just get that sev­ens times table down…