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I don’t eat a lot of salads. In order for me to enjoy a salad, it has to have lots of good stuff in it. I can’t stand the thought of eating a plate of lettuce with some vinegar and oil on it with a stray cucumber here and there.

However, when you start adding things like grilled flank steak to a salad, I am interested. And this salad was really good. The steak is marinated in a mixture of lime juice, soy sauce, canola oil, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, and red curry paste or chili garlic sauce. Yum!!! I was really impressed with this marinade and will definitely use it again.

For the salad part of this salad I used a spring greens mix and then added sliced shallots, basil, and some shaved parmigianno cheese for garnish. When you make the marinade the recipe says to reserve about half as a salad dressing. We thought we may not have enough dressing left over so I added some more lime juice, and that really mellowed out the dressing a little and it gave the salad a wonderful light flavor.

This was an awesome Craving Ellie in My Belly pick by Jen B.. You can find the recipe for this salad at the Food Network or on page 107 of The Food you Crave by Elie Krieger.

(Look at how perfectly my fabulous boyfriend grilled the steak while I was on my way home from a late night at work):

Perfection. Some people would be surprised to find out that within a 100 mile radius (or less) of most major cities one can find the absolute highest quality produce and meats, for the best prices around, directly from the farm. The above picture is a testament to the craftsmanship of what a small, local producer is capable of providing: perfection.

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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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In this installment of Getting To Know Your Meat (GTKYM) we will be tackling one of my favorite meals to prepare - duck. In the United States, duck is an often a neglected bird for many home cooks who find the task daunting. As I can attest to from experience, cooking a duck is a luxurious alternative to your usual chicken that only requires minimal additional effort and cost.

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A few days ago, I found myself preparing to do some research for an upcoming post featuring a recipe for egg pasta. As a true American I headed forthwith to the most convenient source possible to perform some "research" without all the hassle of going to a library, opening up a book, using reading comprehension skills or exercising any critical thinking of any kind, Wikipedia. A quick search brought up the main page on pasta. Upon glossing over the post I discovered immediately that I was already aware of most of the "facts" therein contained, but my attention was caught by an interesting word in the print - funistrada - a pasta dish I've never tasted, seen or even heard of before? Astounding. Luckily, in preservation of my intended purpose of doing little-to-no actual research, there was a link to a Wikipedia entry on funistrada. I followed the link henceforth, without even checking its context within the paragraph, and was greeted with rather unexpected, if not amusing information:

"Funistrada is a fictitious food item."

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Behold, one of my greatest comfort foods. Who doesn't love a hunk of red meat braised for hours in a mixture of tomato products and onions? Well, I guess there are a lot of people who don't, but if you don't eat meat this is probably not the blog for you.

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An ongoing feature here at imafoodblog.com is our "Getting to know your meat" series. This series will entail both an "all you need to know" post, and a post of us applying that to a finished meal. Since this is our first post of this series, we thought we would make things simple and start at the front of a cattle- hence, the brisket.

For general information about what to look for and where to purchase your meat please see The Meat Rules.

Most of us have encountered brisket in one form of another - usually at the deli counter (as corned beef) or from the pit of our favorite BBQ joint (my personal favorite application of brisket, but we'll get to that another time.) Brisket is largely neglected by the home cook for a number of reasons, and this is a shame. Cooked properly, a brisket is a tender, flavorful cut of meat that will yield enough food to feed even the hungriest families, and still have leftovers for lunch the next day.

To see an example of how we usually prepare our brisket, please see Sara's post My Grandma's Brisket.

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Many of my posts are going to revolve around one topic: the purchase, preparation and consumption of meat. To save myself the hassle of re-typing the same things over and over again in every post, I thought it prudent to jot down some simple rules for buying and preparing meat. If you're a protein enthusiast like me, I implore you to go out and pick up:

The River Cottage Meat Book

by British chef/author/farmer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. "The Meat book" as it is referred to around my house is a great resource for all things meat - from feed to farming to butchering practices, packing and cooking techniques. (Also, the recipes are amazing.)

There are a few rules that apply to any meat. Follow them and you are well on your way to preparing an excellent meal:

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