Duck Week: Duck Soup with Rice Noodles

Duck week item three: a cure for whatever ails you. Intensely rewarding rice noodles swimming in happy, healthy hot broth of homemade stock and ginger, with cabbage and slices of salty ham. As my mother would say, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this soup. Plus, there is an intensely satisfying feeling of being able to use every part of an animal (in this case, the duck carcass for the broth) to its fullest extent.

Duck Week: Pan-Roasted Duck Breast With Apple and Caraway

Duck week, volume two! Continuing my obsession with any and all things Canal House Cookbook, I used this recipe straight from its hallowed pages for the duck breasts I harvested. I've tried a bunch of different methods cooking duck breast, usually pan-seared with some sort of berry or fruit reduction to offset the meaty flavor of the duck, but I have to say that this one turned out to be one of my favorites.

Duck Week: Duck Confit with Spicy Pickled Raisins

Item one of duck week: duck confit. I know that duck confit has been blown up in our cultural psyche to rather ridiculous proportions--the oh-so-French decadence of eating something that has been packed in fat, but sometimes I feel like you have to just gird your loins and go for it.

And boy, was I glad I did. 

Duck Week!

 Dear reader, I am pleased to announce the first annual Duck Week! In this week, I shall take a duck, take it apart and make stuff with all its bits. I'm hoping that this will become a tradition come November of every year.