Duck Tales: The Horror...The Tasty Horror!

I entertained both Briggi and Franny in Szeged last weekend. We cooked and ate wonderful dinners, had lots of farmer's market and flower shopping time, explored the city, and took a trip to the Pick Szeged Factory museum.

Friday night we had Japanese curry with roasted eggplant, rice, and pickles. Saturday afternoon after a long stroll in the market I decided to share my duck confit with Briggi so I dug it out of the fat and roasted it in the oven.

I served it on top of spinach salads simply dressed with lemon juice, a little salt, red onions, and some of the Mangalica fat that cooked off of the duck. The smell, texture, and flavor of the duck was amazing! It was so fragrant, tender, succulent, and earthy. The skin alone was some transcendent form of bacon. The Mangalica lard was a perfect choice for cooking the duck in. We paired the lunch with a fantastic Egri Cuvée (a gift from Briggi) that was dry and fruity. It complimented the duck and salads perfectly.

We all had salads of spinach, freshly pickled radishes, beets and red onions. It was a celebration of spring! A funny sidenote about the red onion: I wanted two medium onions and the guy at the stall gave them to me for free! I left 50 HUF behind anyway.

That night we had a ratatouille of radish greens, tomatoes, zucchini, and mushrooms. That was served along side a fresh orchiette pasta with butter sauce and basil. We all enjoyed making the orchiette by hand. It was a perfect dinner after walking all around Szeged that whole day. Briggi, thank you again for visiting I hope you had a great time!

Orcchiette alla Vodka

 

The Pasta-

This amazing pasta is made completely by hand. Franny came over and was key to making this work. It is also a double batch and I didn't measure anything so don't ask. I also made the pasta on the counter by putting down enough flour and salt and making a volcano. Into the crater I cracked 4 eggs and added some olive oil. Mixing this and folding the flour into the eggs, then kneading it and letting it sit to let the flour fully absorb the moisture.

The pasta is divided out into 8 equal portions. Each portion is then rolled out by hand into long snakes then cut into small pieces then pressed into the palm of my hand to make a coin shape that is thin in the center and thicker on the edges. This creates a chewy delicious pasta that holds onto sauce very well.




The Sauce-

This is started by slicing an entire bulb of garlic as thinly as possible, and then sweated in olive oil until the only thing you can smell is delicious garlic. Meanwhile scald tomatoes then separate the seeds and skins from the fruit. Add a good deal of vodka to the oil and cook down to a syrup. Add the, now crushed, tomatoes and add salt then simmer. Add to this a good deal of cream.





To finish this dish add fresh chopped parsley and grated cheese.

Buon Appetito!