Meat Fest '08: Part 3 - Duck and Fig Pizza

Sunday morning, we awoke to another beautiful day in the Slope and headed back over to Union Market. Huevos rancheros and bellinis were on the menu for brunch but Paul, MB and I hadn't come to any conclusion as to what we should do for dinner. We knew we were going to use the duck, we just weren't sure how we should prepare it.

The bellinis didn't work out quite the way we intended. I guess I should say we didn't end up making bellinis at all. There were a few extra grill-roasted peaches from the night before and I was hoping to puree them and add a little champagne to the mix but no dice; the liquor store was closed. Instead, I ended up pureeing the peaches with a mix of rums - Goslings Dark and Captain Morgan's Spiced - and peach juice and then topped it off with Sprite. The end result? A foamy, sweet brunch cocktail with just a hint of the roasted flavor from the night before. As for the huevos rancheros, we did them on the grill, the same way we did them back in June.

Any ideas for a good name for this rum/peach concoction?

Chefs Mary and Paul

As for dinner, we came up with something on the fly. And by "something" I mean the most decadent meal of all time. It all started as we were tossing ideas around about how to use the duck when we passed Pizza Plus, the joint where we grab dough for our grill pizzas. I half-jokingly said, "What about duck pizza?" and the next thing I knew, we were listing off ingredients that would work with the duck. In the end, we decided on a mix of dates, figs, pecans, black truffles and chevre.

Earlier in the afternoon, I marinated the duck breast in some Stonewall Kitchen Fig & Vidalia Onion Sauce. Once the duck was on the grill, I cut the dates, figs and black truffles while Paul smashed the pecans and MB separated the chevre into small chunks. When the duck was a nice medium rare, I pulled it off the grill, sliced it into bite-sized pieces and tossed it with the date/fig/truffle/pecan mixture and a little black truffle oil. This mix went on top of the dough which I'd coated with more of the Fig & Vidalia Onion sauce. As you can imagine, the meal was extremely rich...but that didn't stop us from having 3 pieces each. We paired the pizza with some Blue Point Summer Ale; weird that the first time I sampled their summer brew was on the last day of summer.

Yum

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Meat Fest '08: Part 2 - Ribeye Steak, Saucisson and Andouille

Paul and I spent most of the afternoon contemplating song ideas and concept albums. All the while, we continued our Festival of Meats with a platter of meat (saucisson and the leftover andouille from the day before), cheese (Guinness cheddar, Brie de Meaux and havarti) and fresh bread from Balthazar by way of Union Market. Paired with the platter, we had a duo of West Coast beers - Stone IPA, brewed in North Country San Diego, and Anchor Steam Beer from San Francisco.

Meat and Cheese Platter

Buy local? Try "buy"-coastal.

For the main course, it was on to the ribeyes...

As the grill was heating up, I finely diced some shallots and coarsely chopped a white onion. When the shallots were sweating in two separate skillets, I ran outside and tossed halved red and yellow peppers on the grill. Then it was back inside to add port to shallots in one saucepan and veggies to the other. The veggie dish is something I came up with back in July for my mom's birthday; MB has been raving about ever since. It's simple enough - spinach, onions, shallots, roasted peppers and grilled corn - but there's something about the mix that works really well.

As for the steaks, I seasoned them, got the grill super hot and threw them on for about a minute and a half per side. Once they rested off the grill for a little while, I topped them with some port sauce and served them with the vegetables.

The main course

For dessert, I went back to the summer playbook one more time for another crowd pleaser. Earlier in the summer, we were up in Argyle, NY to see MB's family. When we were there, I tried a dish my sister and brother-in-law turned me onto - grilled peaches. Here's the recipe:

Take ripe peaches, halve them and remove the pits. Put them in a container with some brown sugar (between 1/2 and a 1 full cup) and rum (you can use any type but I would recommend Gosling's dark rum - it makes a beautiful sauce). If the mixture doesn't cover the peaches, add a little water. After marinating the peaches for several hours in the sugar/rum mix, throw them on the grill. The grill should be as hot as possible in order to get some nice grill marks on the peaches but once you've flipped them over, pull back the heat to make sure they heat evenly throughout.

Once the peaches are on the grill, take the rum/sugar mixture and put them in a skillet. Reduce the mixture just like you were making a caramel (if you've never down that before, watch this video). You'll know it's ready once it coats the back of the spoon. To serve, put the peaches in a small dish and top with a scoop of ice cream and, finally, the sauce.

More grilled peaches than we could eat. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post to see how we used the leftovers.

Blurry, but delicious

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