sweets

 

This is supposed to be a plate of savories, and I definitely don’t have a sugar tooth, but, when it comes out of the ingredients naturally, I get ‘sweet’. The dry marinade for the duck, which is itself inherently sweet, included just a pinch of natural sugar, the greens may have been the sweetest I’ve ever tasted, and the potatoes were (at least partly), well, sweet potatoes, and the micro greens were amazingly sweet.

Yum.

• one 14-ounce duck breast from Hudson Valley Duck Farm, its fatty side scored by a very sharp knife with cross-hatching, sprinkled with a mixture of salt, crushed telicherry peppercorns, and a bit of turbinado sugar (which had been infused in over time with a vanilla bean), the breast left standing for about an hour before it was pan-fried over medium heat with a very small amount of fat which had been rendered by thick bacon from Millport Dairy, removed when medium rare (cutting it into the two portions at that time to be certain) finished with a squeeze of organic lemon, sprinkled with scissored wild garlic from Lani’s Farm, chopped lovage from Two Guys from Woodbridge, and drizzled with a bit of olive oil
• Japanese sweet potatoes from Race Farm and russet potatoes from Keith’s Farm, about one pound altogether, all cut as frites, tossed with olive oil, salt, and a dozen rinsed and dried sage leaves from Eataly, arranged without crowding in a large pan, and roasted (no turning necessary, since it was a well-seasoned, unglazed Pampered Chef pan) at about 400º for about 25 minutes, finished with a sprinkling of some purple radish micro greens from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• about half of the small store of tender collard greens I had picked up from Norwich Meadows Farm, washed, drained, then braised very lightly (they were very tender) in a heavy pot in which one halved garlic clove from Norwich Meadows Farm had been allowed to sweat in some olive oil, the dish finished with salt, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil
• the wine was a French (Languedoc) red, Domaine Ledogar La Mariole Carignan Corbières 2013 (produced by Les frères Xavier et Mathieu Ledogar)
• the music was Yle Klassinen, streaming