Town and Country

I grew up with a limited amount of experience in the 'country.' My understanding of venturing into it was more or less defined by weekend trips to our far from rustic townhouse in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania.

For years, in one of Hidden Valley's late 1980's model units, complete with pink and teal furnishings, fake plants, and plastic food, my family and I escaped the hubbub of the city in pursuit of quieter, starrier skies. But a long day flexing our intermediate skills on the slopes was as rugged as we got; there was always the promise of a hot shower, heaping bowl of chili, Blockbuster video, and cozy bed to come home to.

I was raised a city girl. I communed with nature by attending annual flower shows, pressing my face against the glass viewing areas at the zoo, and riding my bike on well traversed trails. When I was forced into the greater outdoors by science classes, field trips, and peer pressure I was uncomfortable and unhappy. The idea of sleeping bags, tents, flashlights, spiders, bugs, and snakes was a veritable nightmare.

On the other hand, Peter's permanent state of mind as a kid and as an adult resides in the wilderness - on top of the mountain, at the depths of the ocean, deep in the woods, close in proximity to the world's wildlife - specimens that I am most comfortable viewing stuffed in the Natural History Museum. He is the epitome of an outdoor adventurer, terrified of being landlocked, grounded, or (man)caved in for too long.

So there comes a weekend or two a year when our natural tendencies conflict. Say, when Peter gets a call from the wild and I need a date to a black tie affair. Say, this weekend. While Peter escaped into the marshy backwoods of Illinois' country side to commune with the ducks, I stepped out on the town with my fill in date, Ronald.

I have to admit, when Peter shares the photos and stories of his excursions, I feel the urge to dust off the old sleeping bag and join him. But when push comes to shove, I'm still overtly leery of going too far into the great outdoors. I prefer in legend and in gastronomy that nature be brought to me. So as it has in the past, our marriage of town and country was celebrated through dinner on Sunday - a fine dining fusion of wild Mallard with the tamed taste of a Port reduction.

Well, I celebrated until I bit down on a BB and questioned just how wild I wanted my meal. And for now, I'm training Mary to wear Patagonia, but go shopping in it.

Lo.

Seared Mallard Breasts with Cherry Port Sauce
Serves two

Ingredients:
Two Mallard breasts, split
2 tablespoons butter
Small shallot, minced
1/2 cup chicken stock
3 tablespoons Port
1/4 cup frozen whole cherries, thawed
Salt
Freshly cracked pepper

Directions:
Remove all excess fat (there shouldn't be much) from the duck breasts. Make sure all bbs or bullets are out of the meat. (Critical)

In a medium sauce pan, melt butter. Add duck breasts, and cook for about three-four minutes per side or until lightly browned. After you flip from one side to the other, put the lid on the pan to help get the center to the right temperature. Remove breasts and set aside.

Working quickly, add shallot to the reserved butter. Saute for about two minutes until aromatic. Add the stock and the port. Bring to a boil and continue rolling until sauce is reduced by 1/4. Add the cherries and finish reducing till reduced by half or able to thinly coat a spoon. Turn heat to low, add salt and cracked pepper. Then return duck breasts to the pan for a couple minutes. Remove again, slice thinly and plate, adding sauce and cherries to the top of each serving.

Casserole, Mold, or Croquette?

In 1988, my family invested in a condo at a ski resort outside of Pittsburgh named Hidden Valley. Given the "time is money" mantra that my parents live by, we bought the model home, complete with all the teal and pink furniture, linens, dishes, fake cantaloupe halves topped with maraschino cherries, fake ferns, baskets, artwork, and chopped wood for the fireplace. Hidden Valley was our contemporary 1980s showpiece.

For the nearly 20 years that we owned the place, it remained relatively unscathed. The only things we had added were our second tier personals - our less than favorite picture books (or if you were my sister, big girls books), St. Edmund's Bazaar trinkets for our nightstands, long johns, neon turtlenecks, and stirrup pants, and our family's characteristic make-your-child-look-like-a-sausage ski pants and coats. By 2007, when it was sold, it could have been auctioned off to a museum as a late 80s archival piece.

My parents more or less traded the Hidden Valley condo for its equivalent in South Bend, right off of Notre Dame's campus. And although not all of the time-warped furniture, fake food and artwork made the move, there were some classics that traveled straight from the Laurel Mountains to Indiana.

This past weekend, when we stayed at the condo for the game, I noticed a lot of that stuff - the collection of baskets on top of the kitchen cupboards, the linens, the mismatched gloves and glove liners, the Parcheesi board with missing pieces, the pink and teal dishes, the nightstand trinkets, and the big furry blanket we used to wrap ourselves up in after a day on the slopes. Although Ethan Allen has tried to mask and update its presence, on Saturday evening, while eating a popular apres-ski option, tacos, I honestly felt more like I was in Hidden Valley, than South Bend.   

A couple of other things I noticed on my where's Hidden Valley search were two cookbooks - one by Family Circle, the other, pictured below, by Better Homes and Gardens.

The latter was apparently a gift from my Grandma to my Mom on her 26th birthday - something to guide a busy working mom in the kitchen perhaps. I immediately recognized them from the cookbook lineup at Hidden Valley. Their coloring and cover photos were unmistakable. But I had never delved into the finer points of these gems.

So ... I leafed through, and then browsed, and then gaped and devoured each recipe, caption and image in these books. I couldn't believe what I was reading - what I was seeing - what meal solution suggestions were being doled out. From what I can decipher, a home cook with a busy schedule in 1977 had three, maybe four options for dinner. "Honey would you like a casserole, a mold, or a croquette tonight? .... And no, I'm not going to go to all the effort to make fondue."

The books are sectioned off by quick, quicker and quickest meals, ending with a trifecta of optimal fast dinner solutions for the working woman: the hot dog sauerkraut bake, the chicken of the sea stuffed tomato, and finally, the meatball confetti mold with the classic tag line, "canned corn, canned carrots, canned rice and canned meatballs make this confetti mold easier than ever!"

What shocked me more than the recipes, ingredients, and food photography, is how far culinary culture has come since the 70s. That is, the drastic difference between what meal preparation was and what it is today. Even if you think you have no idea what you are doing in the kitchen, with all the literature, media, ingredients, quick recipes, and peer-to-peer culinary guidance at your disposal, you are honestly well on your way to being a better cook than Betty Crocker circa 1977.

After closing the books, I debated whether or not to bring them back to Naperville with me, pondering if I could actually serve something as curious, yet elaborate as this for dinner ...

But I didn't. And now, I regret it. Just as I regret not being at Hidden Valley the day that our condo was packed up and parsed out between what stays and what goes - not being there to say, 'I want the gumball machine, the wooden crocodile, the neon pink ski goggles, and the little red bed' - I regret that I could so easily dismiss a part of my cooking heritage. I'm nostalgic, yes. But I think we are too quick sometimes to push the relics of our past aside. 

So, I'm reneging. With a cupboard full of Jello molds from Aunt Jeannie, our retro ranch begging for some deviled eggs, a new vintage party dress to wear, and those cookbooks just waiting in South Bend for me to use them, I think I'm going to go get them and start a new chapter in my kitchen capers. 

Before that though, we're off to have the perfect bite and all the rest of the amazing ones that follow in Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving. And maybe, maybe, if it snows, we'll hit the slopes.

Lo.