Dieser Beitrag enthält Werbung – advertising.
Eoy 2019 … to clarify from the very beginning:
I won’t try to predict any future by reading in tea leaves or – like here – watching boiling orange sauce – if the photo above may suggest anything like that to you.
This post … well, there is only 1 (!) photo which I took in between my cooking adventure – because I never planned to cook any orange sauce, but let’s start at the beginning i. e. our Xmas traditions.
Xmas begins for my better half & me usually about a week before Holy Night. The 2 of us married on Dec 19th & that’s why we always do a short city trip to celebrate before Xmas. This year we went to Madrid – more about Madrid coming soon.
We returned home on Dec 22nd, a Sunday, meaning that we had to rush into the Xmas Tree & Xmas food shopping project next day & … there was no orange sauce!
We’ve always a special dinner on Holy Night: it’s duck breast, red cabbage, mashed potatoes (or dumplings …) – always w/ orange sauce. We like a special orange sauce, a delicious ready-to-use orange sauce from our trusted food store. This Monday before Xmas we found out that it was sold out.
Ad hoc I decided to make our own orange sauce. I thought about it & decided that I’d need:
- orange zest
- orange juice
- orange liqueur
for the orange touch.
Furthermore I decided to add some duck stock & some concentrated stock for the meat touch. (I opted for demi-glace, but unfortunately it was also sold out.)
So we bought whatever was not waiting in our pantry & at home I started to prepare the orange sauce. (Keeping in my mind that I had another day for corrections if it won’t come out as planned.)
So I took off … throwing everything in a pot & bringing it to a boil. Adding salt & pepper. Adding starch dissolved in cold water for thickening.
… & it worked! We had a delicious home-made orange sauce – we had lots of it & I stored about 2/3 of it in the freezer for future use.
The Holy Night dinner was secured.
For the record:
You may have noticed that I didn’t do anything from the scratch …
(Set aside the limited time before Xmas.)
Of course I could have prepared a special duck stock by buying some duck & cooking parts of the duck for some hours w/ some spices & vegetables in a pot on my stove. Fortunately there are ready-to-use stocks available, however, you should read carefully what’s the stock is made of. Stay away from any stocks that need preservatives or any additional ingredients that seem not appropriate (& which you’ll never use when doing the stock home-made.) Some cookbooks suggest to use a „high-quality stock“ when buying – which means the same.
Next step: I could also prepare at home any concentrated stock or demi-glace. It’s only a question of time & patience. However, you can buy also „high-quality demi-glace“ etc. The same rules apply as for stock in general.
At the end we had a fine dinner on Holy Night.
(.. & I think we’ll do it again soon – maybe w/ a roasted duck – because of the orange sauce waiting in our freezer.)
Coming back to our Xmas traditions …
I always like to take a break beginning w/ our city trip until short after New Year. So you shouldn’t be surprised that there were almost no news & posts from me. This special time “in-between-the years“ is for me a period for relaxing, for taking stock of my blogs, for thinking about what to do next year & making some rough plans …
This year the period stretched until now … (i. e. longer than usual!) & even so I don’t have the feeling that I’ve finished pondering about my plans. Nevertheless it’s now coming to an end & business-as-usual is taking over my daily life again.
So once again:
Happy New Year & all the best for 2020!
- zest of 2 organic oranges
- 150 ml orange juice
- 100 ml orange liqueur
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 400 ml duck stock
- 80 g concentrated stock (meat) or concentrated jus or demi-glace
- salt & pepper to taste
- 3 - 4 tbsp cold water
- 1 - 2 tsp starch
- Grate the zest of 2 organic oranges & put the mess in a pot.
- Squeeze the oranges & add the juice (150 ml - only!).
- Add the orange liqueur & the sugar & bring to a boil. Whisk until the sugar is dissolved completely.
- Add the duck stock & bring again to a boil.
- Add the concentrated stuff & whisk until dissolved.
- Add salt & pepper to taste.
- Mix cold water & starch & add gradually to the boiling mess. Whisk again until dissolved & the sauce has satisfyingly thickened.