The ideas started flying. I'd seen the french issue of Gourmet Traveller with the feature on soufflés. Despite never having made them before i'd seem them made enough times for me to thinks why not. However i wasn't certain that we would have a decent electric beater available and we sure as heck weren't going to be egg whites for 10 by hand. Crab omelet was also bandied about and with a new spiffy fry pan he was keen to make the most of it. This idea was nixed due to his pregnant sister's allergy crabs. Damn shame as he is a master at the crab & the omelet.
Thoughts turned to duck, we still had some duck breasts (peking & smoked) that i scored from the luv-a-duck stand at the good food show as well as a bushel of apples from my last trip to Blackheath. A simultaneous idea of franco-peking duck pancakes began to emerge. The desire for pancakes was strong with him, However after much discussion we couldn't really think of a way to make the apple work in a suitable sauce. Plus my usual google recipe search wasn't coming up with the goods.
Then we hit on the classics, duck l'orange & crepe suzette. Another Good Food Show score, an eggplant & orange marmalade from Bendigo was to provide the base to the sauce. We grabbed a few oranges from the farmers market and used the zest & juice from them to fill the marmalade out, that and some seeded mustard did the trick.
Some spring onions cut into batons from the growers markets were to be flambed in a wee bottle of grand marnier. We were also able to use the little jar of duck fat we'd rendered down from a previous meal and was waiting in the freezer for this moment. Instead of using melted butter for our crepe batter we used melted duck fat. Oh so very decadent but it did something magic to the crepes.
The smoked duck from the orange grove farmers markets was actually a bit over cured so that was chopped up and became part of the sauce. The luv-a-duck breasts were tender and moist as duck should be so we kept them seperate to slice on serving..
After the mushroom soup course we stepped up and went to work. The shallots we flambeed with great flare & flame. Although the crepes were more pancake than crepe they were the most perfect golden pancakes i had seen. A production line was in place, plate, pancake, slices of duck, flambeed spring onions, a couple of spoons of the orange & duck sauce. Rolled up and the final touch was a slice of candied orange (a quick garnish i baked up in an hour on a low oven).
The winner wasn't officially proclaimed but from response alone ours was best on the night for sure.
hey you lied you did post more.
Hmmm duck. How long did you cook the duck for and was it roasted or seared?
well 2 of the duck breasts just needed warming through as they were already cooked. The smoked ones from the market were a bit tough so we had them in the sauce absorbing all the orange juicy flavours and imparting their smokiness to the sauce.
hmmmm smokey duck