five spice duck with baby turnips and fried ginger

July 27th, 2009 § 5

five_spice_duck
David Tanis became my hero when I read that he would rather eat a couple of honestly fried eggs in a roadside greasy spoon than sit through a five-course fusion fiasco in an overpriced uptown dining room. I couldn’t agree more. What’s more disappointing than ordering a meal that sounds delicious on the menu, but doesn’t get any love from the harried kitchen staff?

Tanis also earns my admiration for his masterful work/life balance – for six months of the year, he’s head chef at Chez Panisse, perhaps the most influential restaurant in America, and during the other six, he runs a private dining club from a tiny, ill-equipped kitchen in Paris.

His recent book A Platter of Figs is as much a treatise on the art of simple food as it is a collection of brilliant recipes, presented as seasonal feasts, and laid out with such loving consideration for storytelling, typography, line spacing, and even paper texture, that the book itself is a banquet for the hungry imagination.

baby_turnips
The book is so good that you may be fooled into believing you don’t need to actually make his food to be convinced of how great it is. (My best friend claims that with the right glass of wine, a good cooking magazine can sometimes make a satisfying dinner.) But until you’ve actually smelled these onions slowly frying in duck fat, along with the five spice powder, ginger and garlic, you have not been truly touched by this man’s deep love of food.

chinese_five_spice
The only change we made to this recipe of his was to add a little wine, a bit of dried orange peel, and some black raspberries to the sauce. Here in Québec the black raspberry, rubus pubescens, is called a Catherinette, which is also what you would once have called an unmarried woman over the age of 25.

rhubarb

And the rhubarb at the market has been begging to be invited to dinner for several weeks, so we simmered it with some shallots, ginger, star anise, sugar and balsamic vinegar. It was right at home next to the duck. Forgetting about the shallots, tonight I thought it would be great on vanilla ice cream. It was, except for the shallots.

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§ 5 Responses to “five spice duck with baby turnips and fried ginger”

    Recommended wine:

    Saintsbury Carneros Pinot Noir 2007. If you could drink rubies, this is what they would taste like. George Saintsbury was one of the original Pinot pioneers in California, and this powerfully elegant wine shows the grace of a master in every dazzling sip. Deep, Rembrandt red, with an earthy rosiness in the bouquet, darkly complex fruit, and a crushed velvet finish. Divine.

    Saintsbury Carneros Pinot Noir 2007