Endives, oranges and duck

hOI HooMAN! How are you? Today I made a 2 course meal, first better that the second (though both great) . To start, I made “Tatin d’endives à l’orange” followed closely by some duck breast with red and green cabbage discs, blinis and a grape and beetroot emulsion. I won’t explain much because I really can not be bothered (sorry, but I’m tired, slightly on edge and want to watch Sex Education). Let’s get started shall we?

The tatin, I made by candying some orange peel in some sugar and water, then blanching some chicory leaves, making an orange caramel, adding some chopped chicory core, and cooking for 5 minutes. Next, I lined some moulds with the leaves, put the chicory orange mixture in (which I mixed with the candied orange) , fold it back up and put it in the oven. I also cooked some puff pastry circles between two dishes, to get a much denser more crumbly result. After fifteen minutes, I placed them on the pastry, added a bit of the orange caramel, ( the extra from cooking the chicory) which I reduced a bit, and served. It was sublime. I would never have thought of putting orange with chicory, but nothing felt out of place, I have also discovered the joy of non puffed puffed pastry. It was just an all around delight. Next, the duck. I basically put some potatoes, fromage blanc , cabbage, eggs and other stuff in a blitzer and mixed to make the blinis. Then I blended some beetroot and grape juice and strained to make the emulsion. Now, I don’t know what they’ve been smoking, but the next step is really bizarre. The paragraph of the recipe is marked “The cooking of the duck”. In reality, I just put it in the oven for 20 minutes at 60 degrees. Barely warm to the touch. I removed them, fried them and plated up (I also cooked the blinis and cut some cabbage). It was a weird little dish really, it felt like it was made more for the look than the eating. It was underwhelming that it was exactly what it looked like. What I mean, is that if you cut circles in something, it suggests you’ve done something with it. This just feels like when you’re young, and you want to make a piece of chocolate cake look prettier so you take a satsuma and put the segments round the edge of the plate. Also, the emulsion is not what they put on their picture, theirs was thick and syrupy.

Well that’s all I’ve got. I hope you enjoyed, it was slightly dissapointing for a level 3 dish (they’re divided up into 3 difficulties), but we ate every morsel. OKay, bye!