willsfamilyacres

Twice a month we play cards with some friends of ours. We take turns making dinner and dessert. They are foodies like we are, so everybody wins!

Tonight I busted out the prime cut of Venison, backstrap. I marinated 2 backstraps in bourbon,  honey, canola oil (olive oil would have had too much flavor), salt, pepper, and crushed reds. I then precooked the bacon in the oven for 10 mins so it wouldn’t be too soggy. I wrapped three slices of bacon around each backstrap and put them in the oven at 350 for about 25 mins.  I should have done 20 as it came out medium, and I would have preferred medium-rare. It was still delicious though.

I roasted some potatoes, coated with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and fresh rosemary from the front garden bed. I also steamed some asparagus with lemon, and finished it off with butter, salt, pepper, and a little more lemon juice.

I got 3 meyer lemons from my tree this year. All that effort for three lemons, you have to do something special. I made lemon curd tart. I got the recipe from Alice Waters’ “The Art of Simple Food”, pages 183 and 199. I highly recommend it. I had to add a little more moisture to the tart dough, but other than that, worked really smoothly.

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This past year we added Muscovy ducks to our existing flock. Muscovy’s are known to be great meat and laying ducks, along with excellent insect eaters, especially flies.

My first attempt at cooking Muscovy didn’t turn out too well. The Muscovy is actually a very different breed than your typical domestic ducks.

The huge layer of fat that you find on a Peking, does not exist on the Muscovy. I tried cooking it low and slow, which you typically due to render the fat. Instead it ended up being overcooked and a little dry.

This time, Eric found me a great website www.honest-food.net

Here is the specific link to the roasting wild water fowl. I roasted mine at about 500 degrees for around 30 mins until it reached just over 140 degrees internally.

http://honest-food.net/2013/12/24/roast-wild-duck-recipe/

While the duck cooked, I grabbed some fresh kale from the garden and cooked it up with olive oil, onions, garlic, salt, pepper, and crushed reds.

I also cooked up a 50/50 mix of yukon golds and russets. I mixed in some butter, fresh goat milk (from a friend of mine), salt and pepper.

Although there wasn’t a huge amount of leftover fat, there was enough to make a quick gravy. I used duck fat, beef stock, salt, pepper, and a generous squeeze of lemon. The duck fat made it so rich.

Dinner is served! I love Sundays, which we have turned into “Comfort Food Day”.

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I came up with this easy tomatillo sauce, which is very versatile, you can use it as a salsa, enchilada sauce, on eggs, or over chicken breast — whatever you can think of.

Chop up Tomatillos, onion, garlic, and jalapeno. Add jalapeno depending on your liking. For this recipe I did 3, but removed all seeds and membrane. You can do a rough chop, since they will be blended later.

Saute in a pan with olive oil, salt, and pepper until softened.

Add chicken stock and simmer for 15 minutes or so (not an exact science)

Put in blender or food processor and blend until smooth. At this point you are either done, or if it’s a little thin for your liking, put it back in the pan and cook some more (like I did) or too thick just add some more stock. That’s it, you’re done, a great tomatillo sauce in under 30 minutes.

On Saturday I used the sauce for Stacked Enchiladas.

I cooked up a pork roast with hickory smoked salt and pepper.

I chopped up avocados, and grated some oaxaca cheese.

I also served this with a fresh chopped garden salad of tomatoes, corn, charred okra, and red onion dressed with olive oil and lemon.

Here’s the finished product, topped with fresh duck eggs. I was pretty proud of how it turned out.

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