Author Archives: mamster

Duck!

Last year I wrote an article about duck legs. Here it is. In the article I pointed out that duck legs are economical, relatively easy to buy, and delicious. In conclusion, I said, you should eat them often, like my family does. Iris, who was about 11 months old at the time I was writing, was particularly fond of them.

While testing recipes and otherwise researching this article, you could often find a dozen duck legs in my freezer. Naturally, by the time this article was published, we were sick of duck legs and didn’t eat them again for a year. I assume this is often true when you read an article on a particular topic. Like, after Pitchfork puts together their annual best-of list, they probably spend January listening to nothing but Bob Seger and the Three Tenors. And it’s easier to burn out on duck legs than the Arcade Fire.

Anyway, yesterday I was at the U District farmers market and loaded up on green beans, peaches, Alden Farm potatoes, huckleberries, and other stuff that I can’t remember because I already ate it. Walking back to the bus I thought, hmm, potatoes…green beans…DUCK LEGS. So I stopped at University Seafood and Poultry for four duck legs. There should be some hip drug slang for requesting four duck legs, like a “quad” or a “fo-pack”.

I took the duck legs home and prepared them according to Mark Bittman’s “crisp-braised” method. If you make this recipe, and I recommend it, don’t bother with the vegetables, which are too braised out to eat by the end and do very little for the flavor of the duck. Use some good broth or a broth and wine combo, serve vegetables on the side, and consider making a sauce. I made potatoes fried in duck fat and green beans blanched and marinated in lemon juice and olive oil.

Oh, there was another inspiration for this dinner. The other day at the park Iris grabbed one of those climbing structure steering wheels and announced that she was driving to Lark, which is a great Seattle restaurant. (She’s never been there.) I said, “Here we are at Lark! Try the crispy duck leg,” which is indeed something Laurie and I have eaten at Lark. Iris became mildly obsessed with the idea of crispy duck leg.

So rather than shred the duck meat for Iris, as I would normally do, I just gave her a whole drumstick to chew on. She needed a little help, but she ate the entire thing. Then her friend Sam rolled by in his stroller, as he often does during dinner, and she waved her drumstick at him.

The moral of the story is, eat duck legs while listening to the Arcade Fire, and watch out for those tenors.

Baby fish mouth

Iris invented a new game. (Note that “Chubs” is one of my many nicknames for Iris, although she hasn’t actually been chubby for over eighteen months.) The game started with Iris flinging herself onto my bed and saying, “Chubs overboard! Rescue me with that life preserver! Rescue me way up high!” The life preserver was a pillow, and I had to hoist her onto the pillow so she could fall off and the game could start over. This is the most exercise I’ve gotten in years.

Then she added a twist to the game.

> **Iris:** Chubs overboard! I got some fish in my mouth! Take me to the doctor!

> **Me:** Hmm. I see some anchovies and pilchards in there.

> **Iris:** Take them out.

> **Me:** Okay, they’re successfully extracted.

> **Iris:** Now I need some medicine.

> **Me:** What’s the antidote for pilchard?

> **Iris:** Sweet pea medicine and cough syrup.

Schnitzel

Iris likes to listen to [KEXP](http://www.kexp.org)–or at least she likes to come into the bedroom and turn on Laurie’s clock radio, which is set to KEXP. The other day she got upset because the DJ was not Cheryl Waters.

I was listening to a promo–you know, “Hi, this is Ben from Death Cab for Cutie, and you’re listening to KEXP”–and had a funny idea that I’m sure is already a standup comedy staple. What if classical stations also had promos like that?

> **Me:** Ja, zis is Mozart, you are listenink to KXYZ.

> **Laurie:** I don’t think Mozart talks like that.

> **Me:** Of course not, he’s dead.

Iris loved my Mozart impression, so I scooped her onto my lap.

> **Me:** Ja, zis is Mozart. Vould you like a viener?

> **Iris:** (laughing) Are we playing Bavarian Meats?

> **Me:** Vould you like bratwurst? Knackwurst? Weisswurst?

> **Iris:** No! We are playing Mozart.

The local

My all-time favorite book of food essays is not by MFK Fisher, Jeffrey Steingarten, or A.J. Liebling. It’s by a Canadian reporter named John Allemang. _The Importance of Lunch_ (which is out of print in the US but can easily be found on [Bookfinder](http://bookfinder.com/) or [Amazon.ca](http://www.amazon.ca/)) features a number of remarkably unstuffy pieces about food and modern life. It’s impossible to imagine a write more down-to-earth than Allemang, who is opinionated (he loves to make fun of the tall food chefs were assembling in the 90s) but also understanding. He’s got kids who are picky eaters. He gets it.

It’s one of those books you can pick up any time and open to any page and be struck by some understated insight. I was reading it on the bus the other day and opened to this passage about Chinese food:

> An essential of modern urban life, as far as I can tell, is having a Chinese takeout restaurant to call one’s own. The joint you dial up on a Saturday night, when you don’t feel like the sameness of your own cooking, should have a place in your heart–or at least a menu under your fridge magnet.

This made me sad, because I don’t have a Chinese local. I have a few Chinese restaurants that I love, and none of them deliver to my house. In fact, the closest Chinese restaurant that I really like (Sichuanese Cuisine Restaurant) is two miles away.

There is a Chinese restaurant nearby in the form of Broadway Wok & Grill. I used to go there back when it first opened, and they had a pork and garlic sauce dish that was notable for its generous amount of vegetables. But since they expanded into the space next door and turned it into an extremely offputting bar, the food seems to have gone downhill–though I haven’t actually tried it in over two years. Maybe I need to give them another chance. They deliver, though the minimum order is $20 (and they’re only six blocks away). Iris is so impressed by pizza delivery that she might actually swoon if rice comes knocking.

What’s your local?

**Update:** After posting this, I remembered that one of my other favorite food writers, Steven Shaw, once wrote a eulogy for his local:

> Hunan K was not a good Chinese restaurant, or even a mediocre Chinese restaurant. I would characterize it as a bad Chinese restaurant, though I don’t mean that in a bad way. Having grown up with bad Chinese food, I find that certain perverse examples of it — egg foo yung smothered in gelatinous brown gravy; day-glo red sweet-and-sour chicken — bring me comfort. I’m gratified that Shanghai, Teochew, and other regional Chinese cuisines are now expressing themselves in America, but I’d be sorry to see the bad Chinese restaurant breed die out.