this week i had this absolutely fantastic idea: what if i made risotto but used another kind of cereal instead of the rice? so i chose quinoa, which i love to bits. and during cooking i was very inspired so i called it quinotto. sounds nice, right? and i was really proud of having invented something. until i googled it. guess what? 3.600 hits for quinotto. what a dissapointment! also, 4 other people on flickr have cooked this before. but then again, it tastes really, really good so it really doesn't matter! and now i'll talk facts: there are zucchini, yellow peppers and mushrooms in the quinotto itself, the duck breast is roast with thyme, rosemary and garlic until pink inside, the scallions are roast in a bit of olive oil (super high quality, i got from my friend stephanie in the south of france) and i dried the tomatoes myself with lots of thyme, salt, pepper and a bit of olive oil. quinotto is (as risotto) very easy to make: roast some finely cut onions (or scallions) in some olive oil in a pot but don't let them turn brown, add the quinoa and stir a bit. add some white wine and then vegetable soup. stir all the time and add more soup when the liquid has evaporated. it takes about 12-14 minutes until the quinoa is done. make sure to add enough liquid for it to gets done but not too much. when the quinoa is ready, there shouldn't be any liquid left. then add cold butter (out of the fridge) and freshly grated parmesan. i do add some salt and pepper during the cooking process but you have to be very careful not to add too much as the parmesan is very salty! that's it, 15 minutes and a delicious meal is cooked. if you want to pimp your quinotto with vegetables, you'll either roast them together with the onions (scallions) and cook them with the quinoa or roast them in a pan seperately and add them in the end (better for the texture of the vegetables but dirties another pan). ok now, i'm on my way to find other cereals that noone has yet turned into an -otto!!!

Apart from Photography, one of my favorite hobbies is cooking, and with the weather in Seattle pretty unpleasant these days I decided I wanted a culinary project. About 2 weeks ago I decided to try my hand at home-made Duck Confit. I had Duck Confit for the first time about 2 years ago and loved it, and it has become a great once-in-a-rare-while treat. The process takes some time, first I had to break down a duck. Then I seasoned the legs & thighs (and wings), mostly just salt and a little other seasoning, and it needed a little over a day to brine like that. Next it is submerged in a dutch oven of (and this is the tricky part) hot duck fat. All in all it was about 2.5 pounds of duck fat, some from a fancy butcher, some from a great asian market, and some rendered from one of the duck breasts. Submerged in the duck fat it cooked for about 4 hours under low heat. At that point you remove the duck, strain the fat and submerge the legs. That's chilled and the duck and be held for months encased in fat (it's a preservation method). After a week or so I decided to heat it all up again and cook it a couple more hours, and then refrigerate one leg and freeze the other. The next day (yesterday) I heated it up to what you see here. The soup was inspired by a meal at the restaurant called Terra in Napa Valley, which apart from really lousy service had fantastic food. I had a Jerusalem Artichoke soup there and really loved it, so I've taken a stab at it a few times, but this was the best to date. I think it was about 1 pound of Jerusalem Artichokes, 2 very small potatoes, 1 large yellow carrot, one medium onion... that was the base. All in all it turned out tasty and silky... just as I'd hoped. My wife prepared the salad, mixed green and herbs, persimmon and dried blueberries... also delicious. :)