The Ten Hour Duck

12:00pm Duck comes out of the fridge. Dan instructs Burgle on how to prep the duck for later smoking and then roasting. The duck gets washed and scrubbed down. Then coarse salt gets rubbed and stuck into crevices. Duck gets strung up (with knitting cotton!) and hung inside the smoker while we were out. The smoker wasn't on, but the duck was hanging there to dry.

5:30pm Smoker gets turned on

8:00pm Duck smoking is finished. Dan seasoned it (should have rinsed it before it was smoked) & stuffed it in the oven on my lasagna dish. Dan says he should have also pricked the skin so the fat had a place to roll out.

9:45pm Duck came out of the oven. Now at this point I must mention there was a haze inside the entire house because of all the smoke coming from the oven. Burning fat? The smell wasn't that bad, it smelled like bacon, but boy do I hate the smell of burning in the house.


Meanwhile I was playing dominoes with Peter & Burgle. Kicking their butts, actually. Hm.

10:00 Dinner is finally served. Alongside the duck was the wild rosehip sauce as well as a salal berry sauce (salal juice from berries we gathered in August), steamed jasmine rice, steamed baby bok choi.

I have had duck exactly twice before and didn't like it either time. Living with a foodie, however, I must try something 'prepared right' in order to correctly judge whether I do, in fact, dislike something. Well, to no avail. Even if this was very well prepared duck, I couldn't handle the taste nor the texture and I will hopefully never eat it again. Dan has threatened to sneak it into a dish later on but boy-o-boy I know I will notice. It's one of those awful cloying tastes you just have to get out of your mouth as quickly as possible.

Not only that, the smell of smoke (i.e. burning grease) wafted upstairs and settled on our bedding. You can imagine my, um, displeasure, when I climbed into bed and was smacked with yet another reminder of that awful dinner I couldn't eat. (I did eat the rice & bok choy, of course).

Luckily, I had made my mum's Chocolate Cake recipe and that really saved the meal for me. Some of the Irish Cream that went into the earlier hot chocolate also made its way into the icing for the cake. YUM. Just saying.