eoy 2019 & how to make orange sauce

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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!

 

 

(information on equipment)