Slow Food Nation

As I was browsing around the interwebs today I saw an advertisement for the Slow Food Nation festival. It constantly amazes me that even as close as I am to San Francisco I always feel like the last to know about stuff. Nonetheless, this looks like super fun. Sadly it's a little pricey and I've got a lot of tuition payments and books to buy coming up. I think that'll rule out the festival for Husband and I, it most definitely will according to him, but maybe....

Shredded Duck and Chinese Sausage Fried Rice

After eating that delicious roasted duckling last night I shredded the rest of the meat off the bones to make some delicious fried rice. This is actually the first time I've ever made fried rice, and to be honest, I was a little intimidated. It seemed so complicated for some reason...a reason that I'm unsure of what it actually was. It was easy peasy. Seriously. I see lots of fried rice in our future.

The key, apparently, is "overnight rice." Yesterday when Husband declared he wanted white rice with the roasted duckling, as opposed to the lovely roasted fingerling potatoes and zucchini I wanted to pair it with, I simply tossed double the amount I normally would in the rice cooker and threw it in the fridge overnight. Obviously the ingredients for fried rice vary greatly; I can definitely see this as one of those 'clean out the veggie shelf' recipes. So awesome.



Shredded Duck and Chinese Sausage Fried Rice

Serves 2 as entrée - 4 as appetizer

4 cups "overnight rice"
6 oz. shredded duck
2 Chinese sausages ( lop cheong), diced
1 green onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce

1. In a large hot deep pan or wok fry the sausages for about 3 minutes, until the fat starts to render out of the sausage. Add the duck and cook until warmed.

2. Add garlic and green onion, cook until fragrant and the onion is softened, about 1 -2 minutes.

3. Add rice and fry until heated through, about 3-4 minutes. Drizzle the soy sauce and fish sauce over the rice and mix until thoroughly combined and rice is a uniform color.

4. Make a well in the center of the rice and add beaten egg. Allow to set for about 30 seconds, then begin to combine through the rice. When egg is fully cooked, serve immediately.

Breakfast on Saturdays

So, I woke up this morning with a real hankering for Egg's Benedict. Alas, I had no English muffins or ham slices. Instead I whipped up some pancakes and topped them with creamy peanut butter, ripe bananas, and pure maple syrup. A few shavings of fresh nutmeg and we're good to go.



I usually have some baking mix in the house for when I make chicken and dumplings. For some reason I just prefer Jiffy over every recipe I've tried for dumplings - I know, I'm so lame. Believe me, if we were face to face I'd never admit to using a boxed baking mix. So, feeling incredibly lazy I thought I'd try out the mix for pancakes. They were...okay. Now, I say only okay because I like fairly thin pancakes. These babies poofed up like they were a macho man's chest after his football team just won. Husband liked them plenty, but I was only so-so on them. I mean, for the amount of work put into this breakfast it was pretty damn tasty, don't get me wrong. I'll just have to play around with the batter to perfect some lazy weekend pancakes. But, if you like big, thick, fluffy pancakes you can't go wrong with these babies.

Peanut Butter and Banana Pancakes

1 1/2 cups Jiffy Baking Mix
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
3 bananas, 2 mashed 1 sliced
peanut butter
dry roasted peanuts
fresh nutmeg
maple syrup

1. In a medium mixing bowl combine first 5 ingredients.

2. Over medium heat, cook pancakes - keeping finished cakes on a sheet in the oven on warm while completing the rest of the batter.

3. On plate assemble 1 pancake, layer of peanut butter, layer of mashed banana, pancake, peanut butter, sliced banana, and dry roasted peanuts. Shave some fresh nutmeg over the pancakes and top with warm maple syrup.

4. Watch husband construct monstrous creation of his own while taking pictures.