I’ll admit that my favorite part of almost any meal is the appetizer, if there is one. When I get a new cookbook, the first part I pour over is the section called “Appetizers and Snacks” or some facsimile thereof. If I had my way, I’d be a grazer. We’d live on crackers and cheese and pizza bites and marinated mushrooms with feta. But, I would double in size and I’m not sure it would accomodate feeding a family every night, anyway. “Here, dear, have a cocktail weenie and a bit of smoked salmon on crostini with capers…” Yeah, not so much. Still, I love a good table laden with snacks and bites of this and that.

So, when we planned the duck dinner, I knew I’d need some pre-meal eats. And considering we’d be spending a lot of time just creating the meal itself, I tried to plan a couple of simple things to snack on while we drank wine and cooked the main parts of the show.

First, I picked up a tub of olives and such from the bar at Dillon’s. It’s really good, if you’ve never visited it. I had several kinds of marinated olives, some hunks of fresh mozzarella, roasted garlic, and these whole marinated onions that made me want to write my congressman, because being that delicious has to be a crime. Do not shy away from the onions. They are sweet and flavorful and not at all overpowering. Amazing.

And, I grabbed a jar of the green beans I pickled last summer from the pantry and threw them in for good measure.

I also made a batch of what I call “wine crackers” and I don’t know why I call them that except, well, they seem to go well with wine, and possibly cheese.

Herby Wine Crackers

2 sticks butter, room temp
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1 1/2 cups flour
Generous pinch of kosher salt

Chopped rosemary, maybe 1 tablespoon or more
Cracked black pepper

Step 1) Whip the butter in the mixer until it’s creamy.

Step 2) Add the rest of the ingredients, and gently mix until they’re well-combined.

Step 3) Bring the dough together into a ball (if it won’t come together, let it rest a couple of minutes and try again.) Then roll ball out into a log shape, about 3 inches in diameter.

Step 4) Wrap the log in saran wrap and pop it in the freezer for about 20 or 30 minutes to harden. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

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Step 5) Remove from the freezer and slice into rounds. Not too thin — maybe 1/4 inch thick. Then place them on a cookie sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes, until just barely golden in color. If you overbake, they’ll get too crumbly. I know, I overbaked mine.

So I got the crackers going and we were sort of looking around trying to decide what needed to be done next, when Adam saw the duck livers just laying there in a bowl, waiting to be gasp discarded, And since we are not about discarding food, and particularly not something as special as a duck liver, he just whipped up a little pate. That’s right, Adam just decided to make pate. From his head. From scratch. He’s like that. Sheesh.

Here’s what Adam tells me about making duck liver pate on the fly:

Without looking, I’m sure Escoffier would say this is all wrong and I’m sure all the Google searches in the world would turn up different recipes, but this is what we did as a total afterthought with things we had on hand. That said, the ingredient measures are all approximate — I can’t be bothered with measuring things unless yeast is involved. I mean there were duck giblets staring us in the face saying, “I’m tasty.” What do you do?

Ingredients:
3 duck livers
3 chopped garlic cloves
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon thyme
1/4 Onion, finely chopped
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons cream
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons champagne – (cognac if you have it on hand)

Salt and pepper (always kosher and always fresh cracked)

In a hot pan, give it a go with some olive oil so you have enough to work with. Sauté some finely chopped onions with a pinch of salt and add the duck livers when the onions are clear. Let them go until they start to form a fond (the brown bits).

(Note: between you and me, meat doesn’t “caramelize” that’s what happens to sugar at 350 — think toast. When meat browns, it’s a Maillard reaction, named after some scientist, and it happens around 290. I always hear people say, “cook the meat until it caramelizes.” Well, you might as well be cooking a hockey puck because it never will). And now I’ll step off of my soap box.

Add some chopped garlic, pepper, a fair bit of thyme, (I added some of the cheap champagne we had on hand, but normally you would use some good whisky), a bit of cream and a few pats of butter. Let it all reduce and deglaze with just a bit of good wine vinegar. Transfer to a food processer and purée. If you have trouble with it becoming smooth because it’s sticking to the sides, just add a bit of olive oil at a time and scrape it back down with a spatula.

(Another note: usually, you would add some bacon or other tasty (fatty) pork parts while cooking, but this is what we had on hand and pulled off as an afterthought because I couldn’t just let those things go to waste — duck liver, waste not, want not.)

After everything is smooth, scrape onto the requisite fancy serving dish, dress with cracked pepper or herbs, break out some crackers, Dijon, and anything pickled. Enjoy!

So with our crackers and olives and pickled beans, we also had a hunk of good cheddar, and Adam’s fantastic On-The-Fly Duck Liver Pate. That’s right folks, we know how to live.

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Now, for the main course we were having the ducks, and the duck fat french fries, and I roasted some asparagus and tomatoes and purchased some good bread, but that didn’t seem like quite enough, so I decided to make leek soup. It was stupid good.

Creamy Leek Soup

3 large leeks, sliced thin
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup whipping cream
1 cup champagne
1/2 cup red wine
1/2 cup shaved parmesan
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste

Step 1) Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, and add the leeks and minced garlic. Cook and stir until the leeks are translucent.

Step 2) Add the wine and the champagne, and turn up the heat to reduce it a little.

Step 3) Add the chicken broth and then puree. For this, you can either transfer it to a blender or a food processor, or, if you have a stick blender, this would be a great application for it.

Step 4) Once it’s all nice and smooth, add the dairy, and reheat over medium heat. Salt and pepper, and just before serving, sprinkle in the cheese. Serve with a nice piece of crusty bread and a good rose. We had ours with a lovely J Vinyards Rose.

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Of course, once we’d all had our share of crackers, pate, and other bites, and then a little later the soup (well before dinner was served), we were sort of uninterested in the main courses. Not that it mattered, we lapped it up with gusto anyway. But that always happens to me. I enjoy the pre-game much more than the real show.