April 4th - April 10th
One exciting announcement: Our Korean spice viburnum bloomed this week. Our "shrub" is huge and we think it was planted by the original owners many many years ago. They are slow growers with a mature size of about 6 feet tall and 6 feet wide but when we moved in ours was bigger than that and was so bushy and wild that we had to give it a trim. The shrub lives right outside our bathroom window along the pathway to our front door. Marco and I have a rule that we have to sniff the flowers every single time we walk by since it is only in bloom for about two weeks. Now it is so fragrant that you don't have to stop and sniff. The aroma has taken over the area. If I had to compare it to something I would say its fragrance is similar to jasmine but uniquely intoxicating with sweetness and spice. I have a clipping on my side of the bed and my days are better waking up to its smell.
Inside the kitchen this week I have had a wonderful week of cooking with major kitchen successes. I tackled a new Onion Dip recipe, the first round of testing for Salted Hazelnut Brownies, a whole Roast Duck, Duck Udon, and I made homemade yogurt for the first time. I am incredibly proud of what I accomplished in a single week. The downside is that "the algorithm" decided to stop working for me this week and my posts have stopped reaching new people.
I shared Rachel Karten's newsletter a few weeks ago, Link In Bio, which tackles all things social media. She was a social media director at Bon Appetit during their enormous rise. The specific newsletter I shared was about "The Algorithm" from a former Instagram employee. If you use social media for work I highly recommend subscribing. Anywho, Instagram decides who to show my content to next. My following is small and I rely on location tags, hashtags, reposts, and shares to reach new accounts. My numbers are not astronomical but I usually reach a few thousands of new people with each post. Well, this week my posts have been reaching an average of four new people. F O U R PEOPLE!!! It is a little soul-crushing to put in hours of work and have close to no visibility when it is shared. After being frustrated all week, I logged off completely for a few days to focus on real life. We will see what next week brings.
On the other hand, my followers have been engaged, and even with less exposure, I am still growing. My goal in this newly vaccinated world we are entering is to take part of my work offline, don't worry Marcella Cooking Stuff isn't going anywhere, and start connecting with people in person via cooking classes. That way I can have an IRL community and my focus won't be solely on likes, shares, comments, and followers. I don't think a digital-focused life is good for anyone.
One last thing before we jump into this week's recipes, if you make one of my recipes I want to hear about it!! It makes my day to see photos and hear how things turned out. Plus your feedback can help improve a recipe. I want it all, good and bad!
I'm throwing a warm-weather staple recipe at you this week, Onion Dip. Everyone loves a good dip but this one is not your average onion dip. Onion, shallot, scallions, and garlic are submerged in olive oil and cooked low and slow until golden. This is a classic technique known as confit. Duck and garlic confit are probably the two things that come to mind first but you can confit anything. Just submerge the item in your fat of choice and cook low and slow. In this recipe, we use olive oil to cook our allium mix. You may be turned off at the thought of "wasting" that much olive oil but there is no waste involved. In fact, we are actually infusing that olive oil with all the amazing allium flavors and after it is strained it can be saved and used anywhere you would use olive oil. Think salad dressings, scrambling eggs, drizzling over a dish...anywhere you want a little flavor, use the olive oil!
This low and slow cooking will take you about 40 minutes. So make sure you have the time to check on it regularly. I also want to note that I slice the onions and shallots very thinly. Larger slices will take longer to cook and uneven slices will cause the alliums to cook unevenly. If having even thin slices seems challenging to you, use a mandolin! No shame in the mandolin game. After the alliums are deeply golden brown, they are strained from the oil and reserved.
You get to choose your own destiny with the next step. Sour cream, greek yogurt, or labneh is spread on your serving plate. All three work but bring different flavors and textures to the dip. Drizzle that allium flavored oil all over the dairy of your choice, spread your cooked alliums over the top, and finish with Aleppo pepper, lemon zest, lemon juice, and a generous amount of salt and pepper. Aleppo pepper brings moderate fruity flavored heat and the acid from the lemon balances it out. As you start dipping things mix together in a beautiful way. A lot of love goes into this Onion Dip and I guarantee this will be in your rotation during the upcoming warmer months.
I was sent a whole duck from La Bella Farms and finally decided to pull it out of the freezer. Last time, on Christmas, I prepared my duck in my Big Green Egg (indirect heat accessory used) and followed a recipe that seasoned it with orange and ginger. We had a wonderful dinner with our only complaint being that skin wasn't super crispy. The fat was rendered but the skin wasn't crisp. I tested a Mark Bittman recipe this time and roasted the duck in my oven. I made a few adjustments:
I seasoned the duck with kosher salt and 5-spice the morning of cooking and left it uncovered in the fridge. I wish I did this even earlier.
Instead of adding water to the bottom of my pan to collect the fat drippings, I added carrots, onions, garlic, and potatoes. This way the vegetables still collected the fat and prevented scorching and splattering but they were also then cooked in duck fat...need I say more?
Instead of using a roasting pan with high sides, I used a sheet tray with a rack. This allowed the duck to have hot air hitting all sides of it which in theory should lead to crisper skin.
The duck and vegetables were delicious but the skin wasn't super crisp. There is another technique where boiling water is poured all over the duck before roasting. This is supposed to render some fat and tighten the skin to help with crispiness and is often used when making Pekin Duck. I think I am going to have to give it a try next time. Scoring the skin in a crosshatch pattern is also a common technique but I find it doesn't look as attractive. There is a baking powder technique that promises to crisp any poultry skin perfectly. I am going to need a handful of ducks to complete all these tests.
Leftover bones always means broth! After dinner, I threw the carcass in a pot with carrots, celery, allium scraps I had been saving in the freezer, and black peppercorns to make duck broth. The next day I simmered the duck broth with ginger, garlic, scallions, shiitake stems I had been hoarding in the freezer, dried chilis, and star anise. After 30 minutes I added some tamari and fish sauce. โฃThat broth was then ladled into a bowl with udon noodles, bok choy, enoki mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, and carrots. I finished the bowl with scallions, sesame seeds, jammy marinated eggs, chili sauce, and shredded duck meat that had been crisped up in duck fat. โฃ
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I am not knowledgeable enough to write a recipe for any Asian noodle soup but I have been working on this duck broth soup and this is where I have landed.
8 cups duck broth
3 garlic cloves, sliced
2-inch piece of ginger, sliced
6 scallions, cut into two-inch pieces
2 dried chilis
2 whole star anise
*Optional handful of shiitake mushroom stems
Simmer for 30 minutes then add 1T tamari and 1T fish sauce. Taste and adjust.
Marinated eggs are 6-minute jammy eggs, peeled, and marinated in equal parts tamari and mirin. The longer they sit the more flavor they have. Crispy shredded duck is just...crispy shredded duck. I took leftover duck meat shredded it and then crisped it up in a pan with a bit of duck fat. Give the veggies a quick blanch or saute to soften and throw everything in a bowl.
I'm on the hunt for a noodle cookbook to cook through one of these months!
My first test of Salted Hazelnut Brownies surpassed my expectations. I thought about sending out the recipe this week but I need to confirm it is foolproof before I release it to the world.
Friday I made yogurt for the first time! I'm not ready to dive into my experience with you guys yet because...I need to dive into the experience more!! But I will say I successfully made yogurt. I tested two different ways to make yogurt, freeze-dried active cultures and introducing yogurt with active cultures to milk, and both produced excellent results. Why don't more people make yogurt?!
Recipes From This Week:
Restaurants From This Week:
One of the best things about KC is the abundance of speakeasies. We stumbled upon Panthers Place this Friday. You enter from a parking lot and walk through a shipping container into a plant-filled greenhouse with warm weather drinks. It's an experience.
Thing Everybody Needs:
These come up all the time and I find myself using them more than ever, Nut Milk Bags. They are just reusable cheesecloth and are handy for any time you need to strain something. Less waste for our planet and you'll save money over time.
Animal Cuteness:
Lazy Saturday.
Random Thing From This Week:
Our Korean spice viburnum!
Book I'm Cooking Through This Month:
Flavor, Ottolenghi
Recap + review 4/30
What are some other dips in your rotation for warm weather hosting?!
See you next week,
Marcella
Ways to support this artist in residence: