12 November Tuesday

Hail, hail Freedonia, Land of the Brave and Free! Oh that Groucho would come back and make mockery of international diplomacy. Anyway, here we are. What does a man do? Well, last night we celebrated a friend’s birthday. Roast Five-Spice Honey glazed duck. It was lovely, with stir-fried vegetables and a less than perfect but tolerable fried rice. With what remained of the carcass and neck, carrots, spring onion, ginger, garlic, star anise, cinnamon, cloves, and 12 hours of cooking- a deep golden brown broth, glistening with tiny quivering bubbles of nutrient rich fat. It is so delicious, I will probably enjoy it alone in a mug. Just drink it. Something so delicious should not be wasted on others.

It also might be really nice to clarify it, a consomme, and put some very thinly sliced spring onion and carrot. How lovely can that be?

OK, now it’s time to talk about cakes. I made a beauty of a cake. In what has become an unintended, emergent theme of this season’s deserts, I made another cake with crumble topping. What made this cake so special? Some of it is technique-the butter must be well whipped and the sugar must be thoroughly dissolved in the butter. The eggs are added one at a time and whipped thoroughly into the butter. It should have a certain sound, I think. I’ve called it the clabberclabber. Once you hear that special clabberclabber, fold the flour and liquid in very gently, you’re done with the whipping.

I might have mentioned a moment ago that this is an improvised recipe, and I used yogurt as the liquid. When I added the last of the flour, it was too dry to be a batter. I paused and had a thought. WWJD? What would Julia do? Well, I have no clue. But, I remembered an old trick from a recipe for chocolate mousse. I mixed in three tablespoons of water, and whipped it on high speed for twenty seconds. It produced fluffy clouds of beautiful whipped batter. I tossed in many chunks of apples, poured it into the pan, baked it, and oh. Oh so lovely. A moist texture, a gentle crumb, a little cinnamon and the crunch of toasted pecans.

It’s time to move on. It’s time to dream of what may be. You know the iconic scene, where Groucho is not sure if he is looking a mirror or not, and Harpo is dressed just like him, mirroring his actions. It takes him awhile to figure out that it is indeed another person and not a mirror. Sometimes we look at things and can’t tell if they are real or not. This scene reminds us that everything is real, including the imagined. This will be important to remember in the coming months. In the meantime, Duck Soup.