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…