Friday, June 24, 2011

Is it "Quack Quack" or "Coin Coin"?



One of my friends who is from Switzerland and speaks Swiss German was telling me all the different ways that animals make noises in her country. I guess this all stems from the fact that our kids are at the age where one of the favourite past times is to teach them, "what does a monkey say?"... "ooh oooh ooh aah aah aah!" or "what does a dog say?"... "woof woof!" or is it "ruff ruff?"

This got me thinking about duck, or "ya ya" are L likes to call them because she goes to a bilingual Mandarin daycare. Mandarin ducks say, "quack quack" by the way.

Being in Chinatown exposes me to the opportunity to walk by a lot of hanging BBQ meat stores. I'm sure that in a couple of years, L's friends will be screaming, "ewwwww duck face", like Rudy Huxtable et al., but for now, ya ya it is. The live chicken stores also intrigue me, but that is for another day when my friend X will come with me and help me order. She swears that when she first moved here from China, she thought that store bought chicken tasted like wood and she had to buy tasty chicken from the live poultry stores in Chinatown. Now her palate has adjusted which is a bit disappointing, but I'd like to taste what one of these yummy ones is like... maybe even one of the ones with black skin! The skin is purported to have some therapeutic and medicinal purposes, especially for women!

So back to the ducks. On my way home last night, I stopped by Chinatown Cafe and bought 1/2 crispy BBQ pork and 1/2 BBQ duck.



Since I started receiving my Community Supported Agriculture shares from World Peas in the last couple of weeks, I haven't had to go shopping for fruits and veggies and I thought that Monsieur Canard might go well with some brussels sprouts and kale that I had from this week's bounty. There were also some nice garlic scapes that were from last week that I hadn't finished yet. These nice cruciferous vegetables (the baby cabbages and the kale) have great crunch! Cruciferous just means that when they flower, they make a cross-shaped flower -- so holy! It's the same family that broccoli and cauliflower come from.

So these little buddies got all chopped up.



Thrown into a pan with oil and the chopped garlic scapes with a citrus ponzu bath.





And topped with my BBQ'd friend.



Best part is that I still have about 5 servings of leftovers for the weekend. It's going to be a rainy one, so this is my version of summer comfort food.

2 comments:

mini said...

that looks delicious!!

police sirens is the other sound that's different in different languages ... i wonder if it's because they actually sound different

Jenny T. said...

Thanks Mini! How are you and your munchkin? He must be getting big now!

Police sirens in the UK sound distinctly different that's for sure. I know because of James Bond movies! Also there is that new weird rumbler siren that they use here in Boston that uses subsonic vibrations to clear the way!

I don't know exactly how to imitate that one!