The Last Pieces of June

Cherries, glorious, in all their red, white and sour forms! A much healthier cook-time snack than my usual bread groaning under the weight of cheese.

And then... Fresh duck breast! I have not seen this lovely vendor at the Union Square Farmers Market until just last week. It was 6:00--closing time--and produce was a little tired and discounted. I wanted to use my wok again and had scored bok choy, mint, scallions and snow peas when I saw the sign: "10% Off All Duck!"

Abawhaaat!? Giddy, I stepped right up and nabbed a big, fatty, fresh not frozen(!) Moulard breast--almost a whole pound for $7 from the Hudson Valley Duck Farm.

At home, I rubbed five spice and Sriracha onto the breast, browned it up nicely in the wok and then, ghetto-like, finished it in the toaster oven. To keep the heat in the kitchen down, I stir-fried all the green things with a bit of ginger for just about 15 hot seconds, then I put some orange juice, a tiny bit of hoisin sauce and soy sauce, a spoonful of honey and a squirt of Sriracha into the hot wok (these things sort of sounded like they should go together, no?), let it reduce and then poured it all over my duck before mixing everything together.

Final answer: really pretty, really easy, fairly good flavor... and I decided I don't like bok choy. Poor bok choy.

Char Siu for Me and You!

A rare 9am rise last Saturday morning put me at the farmer's market relatively early, so I was able to catch the last of the day's ramps after waiting in a 16-person-long line.

I took the ramps home and threw them into a very healthy breakfast of duck-fat-fried potatoes extra-thinly sliced on my Lil Beni. I also definitely did not cut my finger on my Lil Beni. Huff.

My dinner date had requested pork for dinner, so as soon as I smelled the springy onion-garlic wafting up from the duck fat, I knew these had to go into a pork stir-fry, and as soon as I knew there was pork stir-fry in the future, I knew I had to make Char Siu (aka that bright red Chinese pork deliciousness).

The amalgamation of a recipe I decided on involved hoisin sauce, ginger, soy sauce, and maltose. Because these are ingredients available everywhere. Of course. 

 

But they are available at Asian Foods Express, which happens to very conveniently be located approximately 38 seconds from my apartment's front door, and which now happens, after this visit, to be my absolute favorite new foodie establishment in my already well-hung 'hood. They had everything I needed, including the quirky maltose (see above!) and this secret Lobo seasoning pack that turns the pork the requisite red in lieu of scary food coloring--it's a bunch of Chinese five-spice and... wait for it... beet powder! The best part was that the place is CHEAP.

The Meat Hook hooked it up with a couple pounds of pork shoulder, and the Char Siu sauce went all over it for a nice long saturating bath. 

 

With the power of television--er, internet blogosphere thing--I now present you with the final insanely delicious, I-want-to-eat-this-every-day result:

The original plan was a stir-fry with crap-tons of ramps, so the end dish was a sweet-umami Char Siu stir-fry with added shiitake and enoki mushrooms and snow peas over a bed of crunchy-chewy Chinese egg noodles. Stupid. Just stupid.