Pasta Minchia

 

LEFTOVER ROAST DUCK 

PLUS

 

PLUM GUMBO

EQUALS

 

PASTA MINCHIA 

I recently took a trip to Liguria Italy where I met many lovely people and learned many things...mainly mangia, mangia, mangia and aperitivo, aperitivo, aperitivo. Wherever I travel I love investigating food markets, supermarkets and studying local ingredients and specialties. This trip included introductions to Ligurian olive oil, pasta, fresh seafood, bruschetta, spritzi, delicious fruit and cheese as well as stoccafisso, of which I will blog about at a later date once I have developed photos that I took on my Fish Eye camera.  I had brought some Plum Gumbo as a gift to those who I stayed with and mentioned that it goes extremely well with duck.  The citrus overtones, walnuts and sultanas just work wonderfully with duck.  They noted that they do use duck in their cooking but are more apt to use it in the colder months.  When I came back to London I was really craving duck which is one of my favourite meats to roast.  I ended up roasting a duck and had enough left over for sandwiches and then some.  Thinking of ideas of what to do with the remaining leftovers I came up with a duck recipe that I have christened Pasta Minchia.  I am aware that it may not be the most polite of recipe names as "minchia" is an Italian word of some profanity, but I think it fits and I'm quite keen to learn of Italy and its many ranges from polite to vulgar and back again.  So I give you Pasta Minchia:

Leftover duck meat or duck breast
500-600g Tagliatelle
Several cloves of garlic
1 Leek
2 Tbsp Smy Chutney plum gumbo
Generous amount of double cream
Parmesan cheese
Ligurian olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

The above recipe is for two and is very easy.  If you don't fancy roasting a duck first then take one or two duck breasts (really I think one would give you sufficient meat) rub some olive oil, salt and pepper into both sides of the duck and heat a pan to a really high temperature and put the skin side down until it is nice and crisp, about 4-5 minutes.  Turn the breast and grill that for 4-5 minutes, remove from the pan and then slice the breast thinly or chop as desired.  You may find that they duck is a bit undercooked but you will be returning it to the pan shortly.  The recipe gets going rather quickly so you can put your pasta on cooking a bit earlier or now depending on your own pace.  If you have roasted your duck and are using leftover meat you will want to heat some olive oil in a pan or you can use the duck fat if you have just roasted a breast and gently fry your thinly sliced garlic making sure to not let it brown. Add your leeks and get those going and then add in the duck making sure to either heat up the leftover meat or get your cooked duck breast to the right temperature without overcooking them.  Then add in your double cream and cook for just a few minutes.  Once your pasta is ready and drained you can add your duck, leek and garlic sauce and simultaneously add in 1 or 2 Tbsp of Plum Gumbo depending on your taste.  Stir together well, season as necessary, top with grated parmesan cheese and serve.  I am really pleased with this creation and I expect that as we creep into duck and Plum Gumbo season that this will be in regular rotation in my kitchen.  Why not try it in yours?

and remember...

it's not your chutney...

it's Smy Chutney.

Twin Bananas

Behold the twin bananas that I discovered today whilst making a batch of banana and date chutney! I've photographed them next to a standard banana but they were totally smooth on each side.  They were hiding underneath a small bunch of individual bananas and I gasped as I saw them and turned them over and around, looking at them from all their angles.  The twin hemispheres of my brain were working rather fast but they were slightly confused until they determined, yes - it was a banana but as my hands prodded them I could feel two distinct bananas, twin bananas under one peel.  If they were a hardier fruit I might have thought about keeping them around a bit longer but I'm funny about my bananas, twins or no twins, and these two were already teetering on the wrong edge of how I like to eat and/or use them for my banana & date chutney.  I was obviously wondering if they are a rare or common phenomenon and was planning to take to Twitter to find out but thought I would need photographic evidence.  Had I not lost my camera last month I would have made a video...but please do not get me started on that or the fact that I also lost my Smy Chutney notebook in the same evening, alas, it could have been worse.  But back to the twins, I felt like little Phoebe here and eerily had an almost identical conversation to the one that she has below:

There are lots of images of other twin bananas and even a query on yahoo asking, "Will a pregnant mother give birth to twins if she eats twin bananas? If she splits them behind her back, will she still have twins? Please include research. :)" I do not think this blog constitutes research for or against twin bananas having the power to banana split an embryo into twins, I would think that research is not actually necessary so moving on.

Here are my twin bananas sans peel, just before they were chopped up and sacrificed to a batch of banana and date chutney and as @EllieBry stated, "it was a sacrifice any decent banana would make."

 

I salute you twin bananas, thank you for the memories and I look forward to spreading you on ham and cheese sandwiches.

 and remember: