So you’ve rendered all the fat one duck can pack. You’ve got a few cups of the stuff in the fridge, and you made yourself a mighty nice salad with some cracklings on top. The breasts, legs, and thighs (not to mention the wings and the carcass!) await their delicious fates. Why yes: it’s cook-a-duck week here on NDP. Today’s lesson: making duck confit.

Among the many things about duck confit that thrill me are a) that making it was, no joke, a cinch; b) that my house smelled like an honest French bistro as I made it; and c) that the process makes duck taste like someone rubbed its body with butter each day and sang it to sleep every night. There simply is no better treatment for duck legs than a slow, gentle cooking bath of its own fat. If that sounds gross to you, I don’t know what to say. If you’re salivating right now, step into my office.

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Among my mildest marital disputes is a debate over poultry of choice. She likes chicken; I like duck. I suppose that’s not surprising, since m’lady loves straightforward food that doesn’t keep me in the kitchen for long hours, and I…well, I love long hours in the kitchen. For months, I’ve been all talk about making duck. Not least because it’s on my kitchen resolutions list, I thought it’d finally be nice to learn how to make duck confit, which I love; duck fat, which makes french fries sing; duck cracklings, which transform a salad or a lazy afternoon; and duck prosciutto, which remains on my list of to-dos, but will have to wait for another time.

A few stars aligned that pushed me to do this, and do it now. First, my friend Cathy has launched Charcutepalooza, and I had to join the fun. Be sure to check it out. Second, the kind folks at KOL Foods sent over a beautiful, pasture-raised duck, so I knew it was time to put my knife skills where my mouth is.

That’s when the fear set in. What if I mess up? What if all the wonderful duck meat and fat and skin and bones don’t wind up in all sorts of deliciousness? I needed to start small.

They say start with the outside and work your way in. So that’s exactly what I did. I started on the outside — literally: with the skin.

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This past weekend, I an invigorating, inspiring Sunday in Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen. In five hours’ time, we blanched, shocked, peeled, and squished tomatoes for canned crushed tomatoes. We roasted the heck out of tomatoes, carrots, garlic, and onion for roasted tomato-vegetable soup. We charred, peeled, and chopped peppers for roasted poblano salsa. We chatted all things food over salad greens, fig vinegar, pistachio oil, cheese and baguette, and brownies, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the pressure-canner. We dunked big jars of tomato mush into a boiling water bath, then listened to the music of “ping! pop!” as the lids snapped into place. We perused cookbooks and canning guides, gushed over Dorie Greenspan’s lemon cream tart and Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s own tamari almonds. We got giddy about dishes we love, laughed about Food52 cooks we stalk, and commiserated about recipes that had unexpectedly let us down. I left feeling a renewed sense of kitchen productivity, and — more importantly for you, dear readers — a renewed drive to share what I’d learned, share the things I’ve been thinking about.

It starts here, today.

I’ve always had a list of kitchen aspirations: dishes I’d like to learn to make, techniques I’d like to master, skills I’d like to acquire. For too long, that list has been relegated to the back bit of my brain. No longer. This is the year to learn those skills, conquer those fears, make those delicious things.

Today, I’m launching a new feature: Kitchen Resolutions. You’ll see it on the left side bar. It’s a short-but-growing list of things I’d like to accomplish this year. Yes, it’s a bit random — everything from “sharpen knives” to “confit a duck” and more — but that’s the idea. They’re here, and they’re public — now I’ve gotta do’em.

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It’s officially sour cherry season! I got my first quart at the market today, and I simply can’t wait to turn them into this lovely aperitif. Originally posted last July, sour cherry liqueur is back!

Want to do something awesomely cool and really flippin’ easy along with me? Make sour cherry liqueur. It’s the height of sour cherry season, and markets are bursting with those tart little bubbles of juice. The season’s pretty short: I was thinking of hitting up a u-pick next week to get some sour cherries out in the countryside for cheap, but they said they’ll be gone by Sunday. So grab some now, like, now now, and put them to use in a way that’ll keep well into the fall.

My dear friend Dellie had D and me over for an early Thanksgiving dinner last November, and her mother served this liqueur as an aperitif. I was totally blown away: it was sweet, very sweet, but also tart and zingy. It tasted strongly and distinctly of sour cherries, and sipping it sent waves of summer nostalgia down my spine. I sauntered into the kitchen where I found the always-graceful Mrs. S pulling a whole turkey out of the oven to rest. What better time to bother someone for a recipe? She said to come knocking again when it was sour cherry season, and she’d give me the rundown. Unlike most other things, I didn’t forget this promise, and last week, I emailed Mrs. S begging her recipe. She graciously obliged, and her instructions were so thorough that I can easily share them with you. Granted, you won’t be tasting the fruits of your labor until the fall — but if you feel like preserving some of summer’s bounty in this unusual way, I can promise that your patience will be well-rewarded.

That's a knife jutting out of the pitcher -- I used it to stir the stuff, and I did fill it to the top after taking the pic.

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I like sour things. I don’t mean tart or citrusy or with a faint hint of brightness; everyone likes that. I mean sharply, brightly, eye-squintingly mouth-puckeringly sour. I’ve been known to suck on the end of a lemon wedge on occasion. I love lemon-based vinaigrettes. Basically, if something’s a bit on the tart side, squeeze that lemon a couple more times, — op, maybe once more — give it one last little shake, yep just like that, and I’ll take it, thankyouverymuch.

But lemons aren’t the one-note that my sour obsession might suggest. They’re among the more versatile ingredients in your fridge, actually. In fact, when the kind folks at Washingtonian asked me if I had any advice for new cooks, I suggested keeping fresh lemons on hand, because they very often end up being the finishing touch to whatever it is I’m making. You’ve got the juice, fruity and sour and just a bit sweet at times; then there’s the zest, more mellow in tartness but fully present in aroma and flavor; and if that’s not enough dimension, there are endless things you can do to lemons to radically change the flavors they bring to the table, such as grill them, braise them, candy them, or….preserve them.

So what are preserved lemons, you ask? I’ll tell you this: their name is quite deceiving. If you’re thinking preserves, think again. This ain’t no jam. It’s not even sweet. It’s completely and utterly savory, in the most wonderful sense. Instead of preserving lemons with sugar as in marmalade, here you’re preserving them in salt. The lemons are either sliced, quartered, or packed whole into jars layered with plenty of salt and enough lemon juice to fill the jars, then allowed to sit about on the countertop for several days (or weeks) until the salt and lemon and time work together to do their magic. The result is at once vigorously tart and deeply aromatic. It hits sour and sweet and salty, yes salty, and then it opens up and hits you with floral, spicy notes. If fresh lemons are the finishing touch to many recipes, preserved lemons are the cornerstone to some truly spectacular food.

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It always takes me a while to get over the end of summer’s abundance; I spend a good part of September missing peak tomatoes and fretting about corn’s impending end. But once October comes around, I’m fully ready for fall, which brings pleasure of a different sort.

Once I’ve left summer behind, I’m ready for the reds, oranges, and deep golden yellows of the leaves in Rock Creek Park. I’m ready to put on one of those big, chunky sweaters, a pair of my favorite jeans, and my steadfastly loyal black riding boots, and take a walk through the park. I love the crunch of those leaves beneath my feet. the crisp chill of the air that sneaks between my scarf and the neck of my sweater, the smell of my favorite lip balm that makes its annual debut this time of year. It’s fall, people.

When the air is as crisp as the leaves, I often find myself standing over the stove, watching walnuts toast and inhaling that intoxicating smell, and occasionally sneaking my hands out of my sweater sleeves for a quick toasting of their own over the hot pan.

Fall is the perfect time for all things toasted. Toasting can intensify the flavors of nuts and spices, caramelize the natural sugars in fruits and even some vegetables (like onions), and bring out rich, nutty undertones that might otherwise remain dormant in the food we eat.

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The single best thing (the single good thing, actually) about pulling late nights at work is ordering Indian on the firm’s tab. The office coordinates with one of those online delivery systems where you can order dinner and have the bill automatically charged to the company, but frankly, the pickins are slim and they charge you a delivery fee which really cuts into your allotted budget. I almost never order off the site, opting instead to be my own middle man. A bunch of us go in on a big order from Heritage India up the street, and I usually volunteer to take care of ordering and submitting receipts for reimbursement. My colleagues seem to think it’s because I embody the spirit of generosity; the truth? I like to ask for lots of extra tamarind chutney.

You’ll rarely find my fridge without tamarind concentrate. Tamarind is slightly sweet, but it’s the zippy tang that elevates the flavor of meats, pad thai, and even tomato sauce. It’s used in many Indian and Thai dishes, and you’ll often get some as a dipping sauce for samosa. Perhaps lesser known, tamarind is a key ingredient in Syrian cuisine. Ever since snagging an invite to a dinner party at a Syrian friend’s place while I was in college, I’ve been fascinated by Syrian food. For starters, there’s so damn much of it! I ate until I was stuffed at that dinner, and just as the food coma set in, out came the main course. But beyond the copious quantities, I just can’t get enough of the interplay between sour and sweet that’s fundamental to Syrian cooking. We’re talking tamarind-laced tomato sauce, or meatballs cooked in a sweet-tart cherry sauce. It’s some pretty good stuff.

I bought my first jar of tamarind concentrate at an Indian grocer near my old office, and it lasted me for nearly a year. It was good, but its texture was similar to pomegranate syrup, and its flavor was somewhat harsher than the tamarind chutney I’m used to eating with my samosas. I thought to get more, but since I no longer work out in the boonies and also don’t have a car, Indian groceries aren’t exactly accessible. So this fearless blogger decided to make her own.

I didn’t go it alone, though: I took on tamarind puree armed with Aromas of Aleppo, one of my new favorite cookbooks to read and ogle over. It’s a tall, heavy book, written by a woman named Poopa Dweck (Poopa! What a name!), and it’s all about the food of the Syrian Jews. (The book really is stunning, and would make an amazing gift – Julia, who lent it to me, got it for her wedding.) The emphasis is on meat, and when I say emphasis, I mean there is nary a recipe for vegetables on their own; every last one is stuffed with the classic Syrian meat-and-rice filling. Not that I’m complaining. In addition to meat, every single recipe calls for tamarind puree. I’ve been planning to make something from the cookbook for a while, but until last week, I hadn’t gotten past the ogling stage. They just all look very complicated. So imagine my surprise, when I finally bit the bullet and made my own tamarind puree, that the process was really much more painless than I’d anticipated.

Tamarind is relatively hard when it’s dry, the pulp having gathered and solidified around those smooth, center seeds — but let it soak in water overnight, and it becomes as soft as applesauce. At that point, you can easily separate out the seeds and fibrous membranes from the pulp. After a good strain or two through some cheesecloth, all you need to do is boil the puree down and add some sugar, and that’s it. Plus, once the puree is made, it’ll keep in a jar at room temperature for upto a year. If it lasts that long.

Tamarind Puree
Adapted from Aromas of Aleppo

3 pounds tamarind or tamarind pulp (sold in a hard block)
1 1/2 pounds sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly-squeezed lemon juice
2 Tbsp. citric acid

If using whole tamarind, peel the hard outer shell away. Submerge tamarind (or tamarind pulp block) in about 6 cups of water, and let sit about 8 hours, until pulp has the texture of applesauce and is easily separated from seeds and membranes.

Line a colander with cheesecloth, and set over a large mixing bowl. Pour tamarind mixture into colander, and press firmly against the sides of the colander to extract the tamarind liquid and leave behind the seeds and membranes, as well as any pieces of shell.

Transfer the strained pulp from the colander into a clean mixing bowl, and submerge in more fresh water (about 3 cups). Work to pull it apart again, releasing any remaining pulp, then strain again and transfer the extracted liquid into the bowl that holds the liquid from the first straining.

Pour the reserved liquid through the cheese cloth one last time, wringing out cheesecloth to extract as much liquid as possible.

Pour the tamarind liquid into a large saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer liquid until reduced by half. Then add sugar, lemon juice, and sour salt to the tamarind liquid.

Increase heat to medium and boil slowly until the mixture develops a silky, almost shiny consistency. Let the mixture cool some, then transfer to a large glass jar. Puree will keep several months — refrigerate after opening.

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When summer rolls around, the heat in Washington DC can be rather prohibitive. Almost nothing is worth touching that oven dial, especially in our loft apartment that gets a whole lot of hot air and nary a breeze. Dinner most frequently comprises an easy salad like this broccoli slaw or this Mediterranean orzo salad, or maybe even a cold soup like this quick-and-easy zucchini number I made last summer. Tie that all together with some crusty bread and I’ve got an easy supper.

Salads and cold soups are definitely an antidote to the heat and humidity, but when the weather is so debilitating that I want to just crash when I get home, a cheeseplate is really the way to go. Cheeseplates are easy to assemble but elegant enough for company, and while people seem to think they go best with red wine, I’ve found (and had more authoritative sources corroborate) that a chilled (but not too chilled) glass of white wine makes even better company.

Recently, I was reading a great post from Mr. Amateur Gourmet, Adam Roberts, about his trip to the famed Murray’s Cheese in Greenwich Village and his quest for the perfect cheese plate. He asked the man behind the counter for help selecting his cheeses, and the man gave him a mild but interesting goat cheese, a sharper cow-and-sheep cheese, and a stinky washed rind cheese. Lost yet? Don’t despair. You can do as Adam did — and as I often do — and ask the advice of the person behind the counter. My favorite cheese spots here in DC are the wonderful Cowgirl Creamery, where cheese nerds come to play, and Calvert Woodley, which has a great selection and some really helpful folks behind the counter. That said, even the folks at Whole Foods can help steer you in the right direction. Meanwhile, whether you’re enlisting a team of advisers or going at this alone, there are a few basic things that are helpful to know before embarking on your cheeseplate expedition. This post will shed some light on how to build a cheese plate, how to cut and serve each of the cheeses, and what sorts of breads and spreads make the best vehicles and complements for enjoying the cheese.
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I dunno about you, but I’m feeling more and more compelled to get a composter. It seems ridiculous that I throw away several pounds of biodegradable stems, peelings, cores, pits, seeds, skins, and rinds, when I could compost them instead. I know that composting in urban environments can be challenging: living as we do in the heart of DC, our access to yard space is limited nonexistent, and we aren’t exactly teeming with the space (or money, for that matter) to install one of those large, expensive all-in-one electric composters. That said, the amount of waste that my one household — a household of two — can produce in one week is kind of mindblowing. So I’m considering getting a compost tub, just a little guy for the house. One of the biggest lobbyists for this purchase is our friend Matt, who lives with his wife Bryce around the corner from us, and has kindly volunteered to take our compost if we’ll drop it off (right, Matt?). I figure, I’ve got someone to take the stuff, and I’ve definitely got room for a little bin in my kitchen: now is as good a time as any to stop wasting and start composting. Huzzah!

Composter in hand, I’ll stop throwing away the bits of produce that I tend not to use in cooking. But there’s another way to think about limiting waste, one that’s near and dear to me as a food blogger, and that’s making sure to extract as much flavor as possible from the ingredients we buy. Not only is this best practice for maximizing use of the food we buy, it’s also a way to ensure that we make the most of our purchases, which in turn can save all of us a little hard-earned dough.

Within the past two days, I’ve made broth out of the stems of asparagus, cooked a mint-infused simple syrup with the stems and some leaves of a massive mint harvest that the Masseys gave me as a gift, and made an herb pesto with leftover walnuts, going-going-cilantro, and — you guessed right — more of those mint leaves. What’ll I do with each of these things? I’m not 100% sure, but if you hear that I served herb-encrusted salmon and mint spritzers for Friday night dinner, don’t be surprised.
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For all those anticipating Passover, these meringues are the perfect Passover dessert. They require no flour or leavening, but actually taste good. I simply can’t go the week without them.

I was looking through my archived photos today and discovered something utterly shocking: I’ve had a website for…how long now? a year and a half?…and somehow escaped until today without posting a recipe for one of my most reliable, fool-proof, standby, can’t-live-without desserts. I make them all all all the time, especially when I have leftover egg whites. On top of being nearly effortless to make, they achieve one of the rare feat of being both non-dairy and delicious. Like I said, rare.

Meringues, my friends, meringues. They are a fundamental part of my dessert repertoire, and the basis for many other desserts (including, among others, this crazy buche de noel, and the ultimate meringue-based dessert, Macarons.

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Winter has no better antidote than a hearty bowl of soup. On nights when all I want to do is cuddle under a blanket with tea, I often fill a bowl with soup and slurp it instead of chai. The choice there is easy: soup warms your insides and double-serves as dinner.

I’ve been intently focused on perfecting my soup technique. As you can probably tell, I’ve been eating a mostly vegetarian diet lately, and when you don’t have meat or poultry broth to work with, building layers of flavor becomes much more important. I’ve found that my best soups are the ones where I really think hard about flavor combinations before starting, and where I ensure that every layer of flavor gets substantial attention, so that it can make as full a contribution to the overall flavor as possible.
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Forget Rachael Ray, with her hoarse voice and her annoying little mannerisms. I’ll show you a 30 minute meal — better yet, a 15-minute meal — that’ll have you at the table before you can say “EVOO“. It’s called polenta, and it’s really flippin’ easy. You can actually make it more quickly than I can write this post. And while I’ve included the recipe for polenta with tomatoes, shallots, and goat cheese, you can easily make it with something else. As always, I’ve listed several variations.

Polenta is basically poor man’s food: it’s simple, it’s cheap, it’s sustaining, and it’s dead-easy to make. All you need is cornmeal, salt, and water — ohh, and a fair amount of muscle for all the stirring you’ll be doing.
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File this under “things I’ve always wanted to make but thought I needed an excuse.” Not that they’re actually so hard, but let’s face it — nothing is easier than simple chocolate chip cookies, or my go-to dessert of late, chocolate pudding. It’s just that the recipe is very specific, and one must strictly adhere to it, or else the resulting cookie will be dense and tough. But follow the instructions, and your afternoon tea date will thank you. These cookies are the height of elegance, with their flaky texture and caramelized-sugar crust. They’re just the right amount sweet, and very crispy. They might be small and light, but I dare you to eat just one.

As you know, I’m always on the lookout for excuses to tackle culinary challenges. Bryce’s PhD soiree gave me one such excuse, so thank you, Dr. J!

On another note, looking at the recipe just now, I realized that it essentially calls for an easy puff-pastry dough layered with cinnamon sugar. Now I’ve never made my own puff pastry, but I think this is a very user-friendly way to fake it — so I’ll be filing this under techniques; the next time I need puff pastry, I may just make this dough.

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If there is an ultimate test for baking aficionados, it is the very delicate, very complex, and oh-so-French macaron. If you’ve never had them, here’s the best description I can muster: two thin almond-flour-meringue cookies sandwich a restrained but sumptuous layer of cream. The flavor possibilities and combinations are endless. There’s something irresistable — something almost addictive — about these delicate little cookies, not least of which is the challenge of making them properly. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never bothered to try. Instead, I just take the occasional stroll to Leopold’s during my lunch hour, and buy a triple threat — one chocolate, one pistachio, and one raspberry. Why bother to make’em when they’re available down the block?

I’ll tell you why. Having read enough posts from other bloggers who make macarons successfully, I’ve come to understand that there’s no greater accomplishment in the baking world than a tray full of perfect macarons. If I’m to consider myself worth my salt, I’ve got to master macarons.
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When we cook, we use ingredients and we employ techniques. There is an abundance of information about these ingredients and techniques; some of it we know, some we could really stand to learn. When does an ingredient perform best? How does it behave in different combinations and conditions? When is a given technique best employed? Which steps are absolutely necessary and which can be skipped in a pinch?

We know much of this information already. To give a few examples:

1. Eggs make dishes lighter. Whipping the egg whites? Even more so.
2. Onions and garlic contain a lot of natural sugar that will caramelize and mellow when heated.
3. Applesauce and yogurt are viable alternatives to the fatty liquids in baked goods.

There’s a lot of other information we could really stand to learn. Here are some things I’m thankful to have learned from cookbooks, food articles, and plain old trial-and-error:

1. a good dish balances the five dimensions of taste: sweet, sour, salty, hot, and umami (i.e. glutamate, which rounds out the other flavors)
2. baking powder contains its own acidic agent; baking soda needs some sort of acid to be activated.
3. Lots of time, little yeast, and no kneading can produce one of the best loaves of bread ever invented.

So you see, there’s a lot of knowledge floating around out there about what we eat and how we make it. Recipes can be useful in providing bite-sized chunks of information in digestible form (no more food metaphors). But here’s the thing about recipes: they transmit that information so absolutely, so authoritatively, that the cook feels reluctant, even scared, to change anything. Recipes are what make you stand by the oven, wiping your brow, because your quiche didn’t cook in the half-hour promised. They’re what make you think twice about even making a quiche, if you don’t have the requisite amount of mushrooms for the mushroom one, cheddar for the cheddar one, etc. You could run to the grocery store at the last minute and buy exactly 2 1/2 cups of mushrooms, a mix of button, cremini and portabello as called for. Alternatively, you could save yourself the headache and improvise.

Improvisation: friend, not foe.

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If I had my way, I’d have many more dinners like Thursday night’s feast at Minibar; that said, it’s safe to assume that food that memorable won’t pass my lips again for quite a long time. I know it’s not my usual tune to do restaurant reviews, but Thursday night was truly revolutionary, and I’d be remiss not to share it with my readers, who surely appreciate the value of a spectacular meal.

Two friends, E and J, recently celebrated their birthdays; E impressively convinced J and four other rational people to shell out an arm and a few legs to eat what rarely consisted in things we’d call “food.” Main ingredients in many of the dishes included liquid nitrogen; agar agar; sodium alginate; calcium chloride; and other lip-smacking ingredients. Odd chemicals notwithstanding, each course was both tasty and fun to eat. In fact, fun was pretty much the theme of Thursday night’s feast. Minibar is a restaurant that doesn’t take itself too seriously; there’s a fair amount of silliness involved when you’re eating things that make you exhale smoke.
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D and I were both very excited at the thought of turkey burgers, but you can’t make turkey burgers when the grocery store is out of turkey. hmm.

After a few moments’ hesitation about what to make my very hungry and over-studied cohabiter, I settled on mexican. Now, before you get too excited, this isn’t Diana Kennedy, from-under-the-adobe-flap Mexican (though I love Kennedy’s cookbooks, especially this one, and need to make some of her recipes soon!). This is Americanized Mexican food with just a few twists to make it more authentic. And you know what? It’s pretty damn good. Because we’re kosher, we do either the meat inside or the cheese on top. But please, don’t hold back. A little cotija cheese and sour cream never hurt anyone.

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People, I couldn’t have said this better myself. Watch this video on Chowhound for thorough and user-friendly instructions on how to achieve that glossy coat of chocolate deliciousness that hugs strawberries, almonds, candybars and more. Then go out and buy yourself a candy thermometer: I did this last week, and it cost me a grand total of…3 bucks. Do it! Precision is key in tempering chocolate, and you can’t be precise without a thermometer. The results, which I will post as soon as I temper some chocolate, are well worth the effort.

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