Last night was Sunday and Peter’s birthday–a double call for dinner. Tamara’s sharp invitation to dinner at Peter’s new apartment (housewarming too: make that a triple call for dinner) reminded us it was his Jesus year, and that the birthday boy should be affectionately referred to as “you fucking fag.” (Wait, I thought that was my nickname, from when I missed the fried chicken on the Fourth? But I don’t like show tunes.) Also, he couldn’t be counted on for turning water into wine.
Anyway, good thing she put some thought into this, since I had just rolled in from Mexico the night before–straight from the airport to the Kabab Cafe, to be greeted by Jim (in from San Fran), Tamara, Peter and Ali, who, in a totally unrelated aside, revealed to us his obsession with Antiques Roadshow. Who knew?
On the menu, per Tamara: gorgeous organic beet greens, roasted lemons filled with an anchovy-olive tapenade, and duck in a fig sauce. When I went to buy the ducks at the poultry store (where Jim took lots of pics, in a way that I never would’ve had the nerve to…he promised he wasn’t a PETA agent, but you know how that Cali vibe can rub off on people), the guy suggested I boil them a little first, to soften them up. This jibed with a two-part steam-roast technique I’d read in Cook’s Illustrated. In hindsight, I should’ve followed more precisely the way of the uptight Vermonter instead of the tossed-off tip from the Egyptian dude in blood-covered galoshes (“Boil it for about 40 minutes, with, you know, some carrots and onions”), but I can never resist when the person selling me food gives me advice on how to prepare it. Some sweet indication that the shop-owner is dedicated to the customer being satisfied with the product.
Without the time pressure of watching TV at 9pm, as we usually do on Sunday, Tamara and I took our sweet time cooking, as everyone else drank on the back balcony. It’s easy to lose track of the guests when you’re languidly chopping and chit-chatting and rubbing things with five-spice powder. Peter, with his knack for precision volume assessment, had set the birds to boil in a just-the-right-size pot, and they looked naaasty, with their not-very-well-plucked skin poking out of the gray-brown broth. When I pulled them out, I saw that the top half-inch of the liquid was in fact duck fat, though there was still plenty left on the birds. Tamara went to work on the fig sauce: shallots, butter, red wine–the whole drill. I sliced up potatoes to catch the rest of the fat–a Cook’s trick that yields great results, especially when you ladle on a little of the broth and some more duck fat. By the time everything was done, we were both a little tipsy and very shiny and gamey-smelling. And the rest of the attendees were really drunk. Miraculously, eleven people fit (just barely) around the table. The duck was good enough, and I’m still not sure this is the fault of the preparation or of the ducks themselves–not crispy enough skin, not tender enough meat, but when doused with the winy figs, more than adequate, especially for people who’d been waiting for dinner for two and a half hours. The potatoes were the predictable hit, and the lemon-olive business was pretty intense, but cut through the sweet duck sauce.
Dessert was a perfect fruit pie (from Nicole), and tastefully tiny cookies–oatmeal-coconut and peanut butter. The latter were provided by Naomi, who uses her kitchen cabinets for shoe storage and offers to bring Tater Tots on pot-luck nights–turns out she’s a secret slave to rigid instructions, so takes very well to baking.
Deb cleared with professional aplomb, and Peter mopped down the counters. We looked at Jim’s pictures of the birds we’d eaten, from a few hours back when they were quacking in a red shopping cart. We broke open the port. Guests straggled out, and only the smell of duck lingered in the kitchen.
This account follows a now-familiar story line: logistical challenge–>prep–>dinner and drinking–>dessert–>contentment, but there were a lot of subplots: new guests, new romances, old feuds, new jobs, brunch plans, a toast to “realistic expectations,” and the all-too-catchy Bennigan’s birthday song. Every week, our social web gets re-knit in just a few hours. I’m glad to be back home.