5 Star Recipe

This recipe came from the September 2009 issue of Gourmet and I made some slight modifications to accommodate my personal tastes. The recipe calls for making a relish; which means mixing some ingredients and serving cold [or room temp]. I preferred to have tomatoes slightly sautéed, so put the relish into a pan and worked it for two minutes to get it warm.

Another variation is I left out the grained mustard, since my wife simply doesn’t like mustard. I would include the mustard to give it just a bit more flavor.

To prepare the chicken you can either use your BBQ or you can use the stove. I used the stove method because I was out of charcoal – of all the things. Nevertheless, the stove method works as well. I have a pan with grill slates on the bottom and I sear on each side for 2 minutes then bake at 500 for 6 minutes. The original recipe called for grilling on the BBQ, however, I will show you the stove method.

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This week on Gordon Ramsay’s The “F” Word, a recipe for duck was prepared fairly quickly and with some simple ingredients. Last night I set off to reproduce this recipe but fell short when I could not find any duck breasts. This weekend I will travel a bit further and obtain the duck breasts that I seek.

Nevertheless, the sauce in this receipt sounding interesting and he uses Madeira, and I looked in my cellar and well I guess I was all out. So I was batting 0 for 2.

But have no fear. I had fresh cherries (Bing) from my neighbor [Eric Moore], who ran up to Hood River last weekend to a customer (Hood River Cherry Company) who buys custom made boxes from his company (Alliance Packaging). I really needed to finish up the cherries because they were getting a week old.

So, with some pork in hand, cherries, and some Willamette Valley Vineyard Pinot Noir 2007, I started to make an alternate to this recipe, still using the same techniques for the sauce and displaying the meat by slicing and fanning.

This is truly amazing!

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