Getting festive – day 2

Yesterday, the Christmas fun continued with a little bit of ice skating, which was tons of fun. It was at Hampton Court Palace, which might be the most beautiful place to ice skate ever. It’s next to the Thames and was built in the 1500s. It’s just amazing to think how long it’s been there and who’s lived there.

About the ice skating itself, I have just this to say – I was brilliant, Danda fell three times. (Danda would like it to be known that he resents this remark.)

I obviously wore my cool penguin jumper, purchased the day before, and was the envy of all the other skaters.

We then went for dinner at a nice restaurant with Yaya and his little sister, who’s at an age where she wants to get involved with conversations but can’t quite talk properly. There is a constant stream of noises, which go something like this:

“Lalala, haha, Yaya my frah, watchin tee bee, an wizzy wizz, an the big, waaaah! Daddy yikes boo, Mummy yikes wed, haha! And the wawa, raaaaah! Bearbear, poohbear! Poohbear home, sad. Me see, me see! Loklat for Isla? Laulau, laulau! Book, reeree me?”

That last bit was her asking me to read her a book so we read a hide-and-seek lift the flap book, which she LOVED.

She then discovered the salt and pepper shakers and decided it was time to expand her culinary horizons by shaking pepper onto her fingers and licking them. She had about three goes before she started to look for her apple juice and gulped it hungrily! When her kids meal of chicken and chips arrived, she then proceeded to dip each of her chips into her apple juice before eating them. Always talking though, always talking.

O, to be two and so easily pleased for dinner. Pepper on the fingers and apple juice drenched chips.

Nanny Rhino and the three bird roast

My excuse fobbing you off with my Nanny Rhino entry today instead of writing a proper blog entry?

I woke up late.

Feeble.

So anyway, today it’s about duck. Enjoy.

 

Duck has been a recent revelation to me. My interactions with it have been few but all extremely enjoyable. I first ate duck at a small restaurant near a yoga class I used to take every week. It was Bikram yoga which, for those of you who don’t know, is like yoga on acid. It’s in a heated room and is like a fight to the death, a struggle between good and evil, between you and the heat, to win and make it to the 90 minute mark without having passed out or vomited. If you make it to this 90 minute mark, you feel invincible. Shaky on your legs, but invincible. And really damn hungry! I would wobble out of the class, change and leave, wide-eyed, looking for the nearest place I could get food. I would have taken anything on offer but thankfully, the nearest thing was actually a really great little restaurant. I’d order about four things off the menu, blinded by my intense hunger, not even sure what I’d ordered.

 

Quite often, a total surprise to me, a duck stir fry would arrive and I would consume it in one inhalation. It was so amazing. Inspired by this, I would occasionally buy a duck and hoisin sauce wrap so my mind had started to pair the two together.

 

Then last Christmas, a neighbour had recommended I buy a turkey crown for Christmas Day lunch as a full turkey is really too big for two. So off I went to Waitrose, on Christmas Eve, to buy my turkey crown. Surprise of the century when I got there – no turkey crowns! Well, who would have believed that on Christmas Eve, the shop would have sold out of turkey. Clearly, my forward-planning skills have much improvement to make.

 

I looked sadly at the shelves, which were mostly bare, and spotted two candidates for Christmas lunch. One was a stuffed duck crown with a pork and orange stuffing. The other was a three bird roast; a pheasant, stuffed into a partridge, stuffed into a duck. Noticing all the wide-eyed panic around me, I grabbed both, held on tight and called my other half.

 

“I’ve got stuffed duck crown or a three bird roast! Which do you want? There’s not much time! I might not make it out with anything!”

 

“The, uh, the three bird roast! The three bird roast!” he yelled. “Good luck!”

 

Throwing the crown back on the shelf, I made a mad dash for the tills, holding my three bird roast protectively. A few people made eyes at it, longingly, but I pulled my jacket around it and kept my head down until my money was handed over and I was out of the shop, on the home straight.

 

That duck was one of the best meals I have ever eaten. I made a simple carrot and turnip mash on the side and we used the roasting juices to make gravy and we just ate and ate and ate. I couldn’t believe how amazing it was.

 

The following recipe is another thing I made to impress my brother and his wife when they came over for dinner. It’s a guesswork version of the first duck I ate, post-yoga.

 

Duck stir-fry

Olive oil

8 mini duck breast fillets (or two large, with the fat removed)

A few spring onions

A handful of oyster mushrooms

1 orange/red pepper

Hoisin sauce (plum sauce will also be fine)

1 white onion

1 garlic clove

Thick egg noodles

Sesame seeds

Put some hot water in a pan to boil.

Put a splash of olive oil into a wok and add the garlic clove and the onion, finely chopped. When everything has warmed up, add your pepper, sliced into long batons and mix everything around a bit. Add your duck fillets in, depending on the size, you can slice them smaller, if they look a bit too large.

While the duck is cooking, put your egg noodles into your pan of water, which should be boiling by now and give them a few minutes to cook. When cooked to al dente, drain the noodles and let them sit for a second.

Add the chopped oyster mushrooms to your pan with the duck and check your duck to see if it is cooked through. If it is, give the mushrooms a minutes or two to soften. Add your hoisin sauce in and stir immediately so everything gets coated. Then add your noodles in and mix again, so the sauce is evenly coating everything. Lastly, add in the spring onions, finely sliced, toss everything around a bit and serve, finishing with some sesame seeds, sprinkled on top.

I must just add a little aside to this Nanny Rhino post because my brother, having eaten the whole thing and the main and the dessert, asked, as we were sitting chatting, what was in the duck starter. As I listed the ingredients, he went “O! Mushrooms! I thought that was just bits of fat off the duck and I didn’t want to say anything.”

 

So I apparently come across as the type of woman who would serve up a stir-fry which had slabs of fat in it. I don’t know whether to be a little depressed over that.

An admission

Ok. I’ve got something to admit. I was unfriendly yesterday. I didn’t mean to be, because I’m attempting be more friendly recently.

I was swimming and there was a woman in the same lane as me going a similar speed. So I started having a little Olympic race of my own against her. While breast stroke and back stroke were in play, we were almost the same speed. Then she started doing front crawl. Therein lay her mistake.

She did that kind of laboured don’t-want-to-put-my-face-in-the-water front crawl. Every stroke required her to throw her body in the opposite direction in order to get her arm forward. She was a gonner. I sped ahead. ‘Eat my splashes, swimming lady!’

As we neared the edge of the pool, I snuck in first for the gold, and my competitor came in a second later for silver.

She had been looking at me over her shoulder like she wanted to say something and now that I was alongside her, she went for it.

She said something about it being a lap lane and that I was supposed to be behind her, not next to her. I thought about saying, ‘yes, I know it’s a lap lane, but I can’t swim behind you if you’re swimming slower than me because you’ll slow me down.’ I didn’t say it. But I wanted to.

What I did instead was reached the side of the pool and threw myself into a length of backstroke without even the slightest pause. Just as though I hadn’t heard her say anything. Totally ignored her. That was unfriendly. But she was being nonsensical. When the front person is going slowly, at some point, someone will overtake, so for a brief time, there will be two people next to each other instead of behind each other. Don’t go slow then get grumpy when someone overtakes you.

So I was unfriendly and I’m sorry for deviating from the mission. I shall try harder.

On the other hand, I was walking behind a lady the other day who had her hands full pushing a bike and she dropped a red pepper. As she tried to juggle holding up the bike with bending down to get the pepper, I pottered over, friendly mission face on, and picked up the pepper for her.

So maybe my pepper picking friendliness cancels out my swimming unfriendliness….?