Seared Duck and Chopped Pokemon

What do you do when you want to eat duck but have no idea how to cook one? You could go to a restaurant, but outside of the ultra-expensive Cavey's, I don't know if anyone serves it here in town. So the real option is acquire yourself some duck breasts and consult Lord Google for oracular advice on how to cook them.

Lord Google turned up a recipe for 'Seared Duck Breast with Cherries and Port Sauce.' I don't know anything about Diane Rossen Worthington, but doing this recipe meant I got to drink port, so I approved.

Also it went in the sauce.

Speaking of sauce, we doubled the recipe:

Two duck breasts

Four Tablespoons of Butter

Two Shallots (Half a Cup Chopped)

One Cup Chicken Stock

Sixteen Fresh Pitted Cherries. 

Four Tablespoons Port (we used Sandeman Tawny Port and it was awesome!)

Two Tablespoons Orange Blossom Honey

You get to begin this whole process by beating the crap out of some ducks, which was a novel concept for me, anyway. Natalie had some kind of spiked hammer thing, and I hit the meat until it was even.

After that you score the skin without cutting into the meat. Harrowing, but we pulled it off.

 Ms. Worthington says:

"Melt 1 tablespoon butter in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle duck with salt and pepper. Add duck, skin side down, to skillet and cook until skin is browned and crisp, about 5 minutes. Turn duck breasts over, reduce heat to medium, and cook until browned and cooked to desired doneness, about 4 minutes longer for small breasts and 8 minutes longer for large breast for medium-rare. Transfer to work surface, tent with foil to keep warm, and let rest 10 minutes."

For us that was two tablespoons of butter, but otherwise the timing was the same.

"Meanwhile, pour off all but 2 tablespoons drippings from skillet. Add shallot to skillet and stir over medium heat 30 seconds. Add broth, cherries, Port, and honey. Increase heat to high and boil until sauce is reduced to glaze, stirring often, about 3 minutes. Whisk in (two) tablespoons cold butter. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper."

After that whole process, you thinly slice the duck, arrange it into some kind of fancy fan on a plate, and spoon on the sauce. You do it right, it looks like this:

I'm going to go ahead and say we did it right, because it tasted awesome!

So, end result was very tasty, but not very experimental beyond not having made duck before.

Enter the Pattypan. Which is not something you call a vegetable. My best guess is it's a plant based Pokemon of some kind. Or was. We caught it in the Simsbury area, took it home, and put it under the knife. As you do.

Lord Google suggests stuffing it like a pepper, but it was decided that this was too much work. So we chopped up two of them and cooked them in a pan with shallots, oregano, salt, and pepper. End result, also pretty fantastic.

 So, there you have it. Fancy duck and chopped Pokemon. Next week, a new restaurant!

Shady Glen

If I'm going to write about food in Manchester, I have to start with Shady Glen. It's been here since the 40's and is diner fare like you used to be able to get, back in the day. It boasts milk shakes made like they're supposed to taste, fantastic secret-recipe cheeseburgers, and the best ice cream in town. Credit cards? Not here, pal. That's a product of a decade yet to happen. Be sure to bring cash or use the ATM, which is conveniently located in the corner of the building.

The restaurant is located at 840 East Middle Turnpike, right on the edge of the Bolton town line. There is another location in the Manchester Parkade, but it's not as as old and I remember as a kid considering it rather illegitimate. In order for the visit to 'count,' you had to go to the original. Good enough for James Cagney and Paul Newman, good enough for me.

Shady Glen is typically a 'seat yourself' type place, but it gets busy enough at certain times that you may find yourself waiting. To avoid the rush, my friend Natalie and I went a little after noon on a weekday. We both work in education and summers off are a beautiful thing.

Unlike many of the establishments I want to review for this blog, here I have an established routine. Things must be started with a milk shake.

At a guess, the milkshakes here are better than elsewhere because the ice cream is superior, but really I have no idea. It doesn't matter. Buy one. Drink one. You won't be disappointed.

Then, you order fried cheese. Which, yes, is a thing you can get in a lot of places, and none that look or taste like this. The milk shake and the fried cheese will keep you busy while you wait for cheeseburgers. There are hot dogs; you can order them and they're good. But don't. Get cheeseburgers.

This is the Bernice Original Cheeseburger, named after Bernice Rieg, one of the original owners. Nobody outside the restaurant knows quite how they do that folding the cheese bit, but its tasty as hell, and duplicated, as far as I know, nowhere else in the world. Typically, these things come with fries, and the fries, to be honest, are not much to write home about. They do give you more than enough ketchup to make this a nonissue, however.

When at Shady Glen, always, always finish your meal with ice cream. Natalie had a Sundae:

And I went with cookie dough:

One of the other nice things about Shady Glen is that their sizes make sense. When you order a small ice cream, you don't get some monolithic supersized portion of small. It's just the right size, and totally makes up for being watched by demonic, child-stealing elves in the corner.

Yeah, I don't know. Creepy. But the bottom line is that this place is totally worth the lack of credit cards and occasional theft of babies by the Unseelie Court. If you find yourself stuck in Manchester, and only have enough time to eat at one place, eat here.

City of Village...Something

I've had the dubious fortune of living in Manchester, Connecticut for most of my life. Like many blue collar New England towns, we're a place with a bit of a hangover. Prosperity and jobs were here in the 19th and 20th centuries provided by the Cheney Brothers and their silk mills. After the Depression, things went downhill, and we've been circling the drain ever since. The local government still clings to the 30's motto of 'A City of Village Charm' despite the difficulties of the town's heroin problem and all that that entails.

We've got crime, drugs, violence and rust. Also a very successful shopping mall area that provides us with the busiest intersection in the state. Despite all that, there's reasons to be here. We've got a beautiful collection of parks, two excellent libraries, decent schools, and a whole hell of a lot of good food.

I've spent the last year putting a concerted effort into learning to cook and appreciate food. In a lot of ways I still don't know what the hell I'm doing, but I've never minded falling on my ass while learning new things. I'm going to spend the next year falling on my ass some more, while trying food from local restaurants and recipes from where ever the hell peaks my interest. Only this time, I'll be writing about it.