{"id":16839,"date":"2018-05-01T01:21:22","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T01:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=16839"},"modified":"2018-05-01T01:21:22","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T01:21:22","slug":"duck-breast-sweet-potatoes-mustard-radish-greens-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=16839","title":{"rendered":"duck breast; sweet potatoes; mustard, radish greens; etc."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16841\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/duck_sweets_mustard.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There were a number of intersections in this meal, and I thought about them only once the cooking was well underway. Although the word is inexact, and probably inapposite here, by &#8216;intersections&#8217; I mean that there were some close relationships and repeats among its ingredients: There were 2 kinds of fresh greens, and 2 kinds of sweet potato.\u00a0There were 3 members of the family<em> brassicaceae (<\/em>red mustard, radish greens, and micro red radish); each of the 3 main players, the duck, the potatoes, and the greens, was enhanced by a different allium (spring garlic for the mix of the 2 greens,\u00a0dry garlic for the 2 potatoes, and micro scallion for the duck); 2 of these 3 parts were finished with a bit of both lemon and olive oil (the greens and the duck); and the cooking of a different combination began with some olive oil (the greens and the potatoes).<\/p>\n<p>All of this is probably totally irrelevant to either the dinner&#8217;s appearance or its taste, but I like thinking about how it was somehow tied together in ways that were totally unplanned, or at least totally unconscious.<\/p>\n<p>The most interesting intersection was that of Vincenzo Bellini and RIchard Wagner, in the music that we listened to during the meal. I had absolutely nothing to do with that one, as Barry was the DJ. Also, both composers have been dead for well over a hundred years.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>one\u00a014-ounce\u00a0duck breast from Hudson River Duck Farm,\u00a0the\u00a0fatty side scored in tight cross hatching with\u00a0a very sharp knife, the entire breast then rubbed,\u00a0top and bottom, with a mixture of sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper,\u00a0and a little turbinado sugar, left standing, first inside the refrigerator then on the counter, for about\u00a0an hour altogether, before it was pan-fried, fatty side down first, inside a small oval enameled cast iron pan over medium heat for a total of about 9 minutes, turning once, draining the oil\u00a0after the first few minutes (the fat to be strained and used in cooking later, if desired), removed when medium rare (cut crosswise into 2\u00a0portions to check that the center\u00a0was of the right doneness, which means definitely no more than medium rare), left to sit for several minutes before it was finished\u00a0with a drizzle of the juice of an organic lemon from Whole Foods Market, a little Portuguese house olive oil from Whole Foods Market, some chopped lovage from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twoguysfromwoodbridge.com\/\">Two Guys from Woodbridge<\/a>, and then garnished with micro scallion, also from Two Guys.<\/li>\n<li>four sweet potatoes, or just under a pound, half of them &#8216;Japanese&#8217; from Lani&#8217;s Farm, the other half &#8216;Carolina Ruby&#8217; from Samascott Orchards, left\u00a0unpeeled, but washed thoroughly, cut as for short french fries, tossed inside a bowl with olive oil, sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, two large unpeeled cloves of garlic from John D. Madura Farm, and a pinch of crushed dark dried habanada pepper, than roasted in a 400\u00ba oven in my faithful, large well-seasoned\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pamperedchef.com\/shop\/Stoneware\/Stoneware+Large+Bar+Pan\/1445\">Pampered Chef<\/a>\u00a0unglazed ceramic oven pan for about 35 minutes, or until crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and a little chewy on the edges, garnished with micro red mustard from, once again, Two Guys from Woodbridge<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16850\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/red_mustard_greens.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the last little bunch of red mustard greens\u00a0from Norwich Meadows Farm, together with the leaves of a bunch of French breakfast radishes from Eckerton Hill Farm, wilted in a little olive oil in which 2 garlic cloves from Foragers Market had been allowed to sweat, seasoned with salt and pepper and finished on the plates with a drizzle of olive oil<\/li>\n<li>the wine was an Austrian (Burgenland) red,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.astorwines.com\/SearchResultsSingle.aspx?p=1&amp;search=33921&amp;searchtype=Contains\">St. Laurent vom Kiesel, Strehn 2013<\/a>, from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.astorwines.com\/SearchResultsSingle.aspx?p=1&amp;search=33921&amp;searchtype=Contains\">Astor Wines<\/a>the music was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arkivmusic.com\/classical\/album.jsp?album_id=944054\">Bellini&#8217;s 1831 opera, &#8216;Norma&#8217;,\u00a0Giovanni Antonini conducting the Orchestra La Scintilla and the International Chamber Vocalists, with\u00a0Sumi Jo, John Osborn, Reinaldo Macias, Liliana Nikiteanu, Michele Pertusi, and Cecilia Bartoli<\/a>; until I started writing this post I didn&#8217;t know much about Wagner&#8217;s attitude toward Bellini, or to this <em>bel canto<\/em> opera specifically, other than the fact that he had conducted it, while music director of the Riga Opera House, only 6 years after its unsuccessful London premiere (he was not yet 25); I had a vague recollection of reading once that he respected Bellini, but I still was astonished to occasionally hear bits throughout the opera that sounded like what the much younger German would write years later, and most remarkably in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4XfxgiUpNxM\">the Introduction to Act II<\/a> (more on Wagner&#8217;s respect for Bellini <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2016\/feb\/16\/bellini-norma-eno-coliseum-london-translator-george-hall\">here<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There were a number of intersections in this meal, and I thought about them only once the cooking was well underway. Although the word is inexact, and probably inapposite here, by &#8216;intersections&#8217; I mean that there were some close relationships and repeats among its ingredients: There were 2 kinds of fresh greens, and 2 kinds &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meals-at-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}