duck soup

You're probably wondering how you yourself might make a soup as delicious as this looks. Well, just forget about it. Even if you were smart enough, you still lack the skills necessary to pull it off, and besides, your ADHD prevents it. So, sorry. 

↑ Reverse psychology.

This is the layer of fat ↑  that formed on top of the larger layer of duck stock aspic  and clearly delineated like a lava lamp unplugged which makes it very easy to remove. The fat is in addition to the larger amount of fat that rendered from the duck as it cooked. There is about 1 + 1/2 cup duck fat total. Two teaspoons of that fat was used to start the vegetables, and I must say, I now realize why the French like this so much, for I have seen the light. Hallelujah.

This originally was intended to be a simple soup that used up a few leftover ingredients, but as I started scrounging around pretty much everything looked good. I had to have a little internal debate about what to leave out, like sweet potatoes, pineapple, fennel, and noodles. But even so, this turned out more complex than intended. That always happens, I've come to accept it. 

The stock was made the usual way described here. 

From the duck roasted here, shown in the immediate previous post, along with a portion of the collard greens with bacon and Brussels sprouts. The collard greens contained bacon fat and cider vinegar, and that trace of acid carried through to this soup.

I decided today that making soup is easier in a broad open pan than it is in a pot. That way, the ingredients are all part of the action right off and stay part of the action right though to the point where the aspic is added at the end. The ingredients are added to the pan as a stir -fry, sturdiest first, then the pan deglazed with the usual suspects:

* sake (less than an oz)

* soy  (less than 1/2 oz)

* fish sauce (just a few drops)

* mirin (a few tablespoons)

These liquids evaporate rapidly so the stock is added to finish nearly immediately before that happens. In this case the stock is in aspic form, a jelly, so it must melt into the liquid. Once melted and boiling, it pervades everything in the pot and tends to unify the divergent flavors, from bitter sprouts, tart vinegar, hot capsaicin, salty soy, sweet mirin. The soup hits all the flavor and scent sensors at once, plays them like chords on a piano, and moves the diner's emotional state to one of deep satisfaction. Or maybe that's just me thinking it. Whatever. All in moderation, and with some moderating sense of balance, it is nearly impossible to go wrong. 

I never showed the dry chile flakes sold in small packages, although I have shown the large ones, and I am sorry about that. I've seen the packages around various places, at the regular grocery store in the Latin section, at Whole Foods in their own rotating display where the packages are on little clips. The ones I bought were seen at the Asian market, again in their own special section, although all the chile packages are typically Mexican, and they're marketed using Spanish terms. I bought five or six packages of different chile types, all with different characteristics. Then I sat at the dining room table and opened them all, separated out the seeds (I'm a bit neurotic about that), then tore them apart and crumbled by hand to control the size of the resulting flakes. I ended up with a rather large jar of chile flakes that could not be duplicated if I tried, and I will try when these are used, but the next batch will be different from this batch because the selection will necessarily be different. You can buy chile flakes where the regular spices are, but those are a single type of chile and so one-dimensional, and they always get the name of the specific type wrong as if it didn't matter, and the jars are always loaded with seeds, which are inert heat-wise. 

The membrane that attaches to the seed is where nearly all of the capsaicin resides, but the seed itself has no heat whatsoever. Trust me, I tested this. Nonetheless, you will hear chefs instruct constantly to remove the seeds if you care to control the heat. That's because the seed are clustered on those capsaicin-laden membranes. This is good to know when you are separating out seeds from membrane from chile flesh.

Before the bean sprouts, napa cabbage, deglazing liquids, and broth ↑. 

After the bean sprouts, napa cabbage, deglazing liquids, and broth ↓.  I love it when a plan comes together. 

Like my Japanese grandmother always says, "Damn, dude, you're rocking da shit out'a dat soup!"   ← Lie. I got no Japanese grandmother.