Saturday, March 3, 2012

Smoked duck salad, pages 58-59


When we smoked the duck Fred shot, I was taken aback at how dark the meat was. It's liver dark. I guess I'm an urban girl when it comes to my duck consumption, because I was more familiar with the white meat roasted domestic duck hanging at Chinese restuarants than the dark meat wild duck flying over head.

And, when I looked at the picture of the smoked duck salad glittering at me all colorful and shiny in the recipe book, I thought, "Now wait a second. The glistening pink meat in this here picture doth not resemble my smoked duck."

In the side comments in the book about this recipe, Bernadette mentioned smoked turkey can be used as well. I'm pretty sure we're looking at smoked turkey in the photo and not duck. So, I went down that slippery slope one step farther since I'm running out of wild ingredients at the end of winter and just used some left over baked chicken. Next step down the slippery slope, I guess, would be slapping a can of spam on the salad--doesn't sound bad, actually. And, my frazzling thread of an excuse for still keeping my chin up about making this dish using wild ingredients is that it also contains pecans, and those are from Missouri, right here in Columbia. So, technically speaking we're still good to go.

The salad was so fresh, and clean, and colorful. It has apples, tangerines, oranges, pomegranate, toasted pecans, and lettuces of course. And the dressing is made with lemon, pomegranate juice, orange juice, olive oil, etc. Fred really liked the dressing because he has a fairly strong dislike for heavy, creamy dressings and this one was light and zesty.

This is the sort of dinner you walk away from feeling clean and happy with what you are feeding your body, full of vitamins, and light in your step. And, all the while it's a colorful, tasty dinner.

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