December 24, 2004

Duck, Duck, and Duck!

This year, I had Derrick on "guest chef" duty. In recent years I've been tapping one of my helpers to come up with a dish of their own that they can take charge of in the kitchen. Usually we work it back and forth a bit, and usually try it out once sometime before the big day to work out any kinks and maybe come up with plating.

Derrick did a great duck salad with pomegranate (just pure juice reduced by half in order to form the sauce -- genius!). Derrick writes about his dish here with pictures. It was a great success over all, and made a nice transition into some of the "heavier" parts of the meal.

Duck Time to make the Duck
Here Derrick and Mark work on the plating of the duck. Note that each one is nestled in it's own cup, made from a crepe that had in turn been cut into a circle, and crisped in the oven over the backside of a muffin tin.

This is a pretty typical kitchen scene from during the party/service. Things are fast paced, and multiple people get the dish together for presentation, but nothing is too crazy. Well, most of the time anyway.

Posted by dowdy at December 24, 2004 01:21 PM