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Sunday dinner. Hopefully the one night where dinner tables around the country and world are filled with families sitting down to a nice meal before everyone heads their separate ways and begins their busy work/school week. Here at imafoodblog, we appreciate Sunday’s for another reason: time. I had written the Getting to Know Your Meat post on duck and wanted to create a meal that would best showcase the variety of flavor the duck has to offer, and having an entire weekend to complete the meal certainly afforded me more options than you would have on a Wednesday.

I decided to keep the preparation of the duck simple. A simple sear of the skin, followed by a couple minutes in the oven is more than enough to crisp up the skin, while keeping the meat medium rare. Since dinner was for four people, the process started by quartering two whole, thawed ducks. Click here for my step-by-step tutorial of that process.

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This week’s Craving Ellie in my Belly is Sage rubbed Pork Chops with Warm Apple Slaw. The recipe was chosen by Jen of Jen B’s Cooking Carveout Breach of the Recipeace

I have often leafed through Ellie’s book and contemplated making these. However, for the longest time Nick would not eat pork chops. I think he was traumatized by the tasteless rubbery pork chops he ate as a child. However, we have recently begun buying excellent pork chops so he is happy to eat them now. I was pleased to see this recipe chosen.

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Now, on to the issue of the consommé. A consommé is nothing more than a soup made from clarified stock. It sounds fancy and daunting, but it is really quite a simple process if you remember some basics about stock making.

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So I’m hoping that my Getting to Know Your Meat series post on the duck has piqued your interest enough to go out and actually pick up a whole bird from your grocery store. Once you’ve got it home, there is the small task of quartering the duck to prepare it for cooking. OK, I know what you are thinking: “Why are we going through the trouble of quartering the duck? It looks just like the chicken I roasted whole last week.” Well, it’s an excellent question, and there are a couple of reasons. First, as you are about to see, it really isn’t much trouble. Second, the dark meat (legs, thighs) and the “white” meat (breasts) take an entirely different amount of time to cook, and separating them from the carcass is the only way that we can cook them both appropriately. Finally, even if you are only interested in cooking the breasts, buying a whole duck will be basically the same price as buying breasts alone that have been removed for you - so why not freeze the wings, legs and thighs for a later preparation, and use the body, neck and giblets to make a wonderful stock?

First, thaw your duck if frozen and remove from the package. Reach into the body cavity and remove the neck and giblets. Set these aside (not in the garbage!) Thoroughly rinse the duck under cold running water and dry with paper towels. Once you have the duck nice and dry, place it on your cutting board. It will look something like this:

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Attention Ask.com User:

You were brought to this site yesterday through a web search at ask.com. The exact query was: “how many pounds of brisket to feed 75.” I sincerely hope that you found Geoff’s “Getting to Know Your Meat” post on brisket helpful - please see his post for specifics. You should require between 1 and 1.5 pounds (per adult) of pre-cooked brisket if serving as an entrée.

Please forward the following information to us at your earliest convenience:

1. What is the closest airport to this festival of brisket?
2. How soon do I need to make my travel arrangements?
3. Do you need me to bring anything?

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie is Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread and was chosen by Heather of Sherry Trifle.

I was a little skeptical about this week’s recipe, since I do not really love ginger. I did not use the ginger in syrup, nor did I use any fresh ginger. I intended to use the fresh ginger, but when I cut open my root, it was rotten. Oh well, I just added an extra teaspoon of ground ginger.

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