Earthquake

I woke up very suddenly yesterday morning at 4.35. The house was shaking and rattling enough that I got up out of bed to stand under a doorway, but nothing fell over or was damaged.

Usually when we have earthquakes in Dunedin the epicentres are over on the other side of the island where the big fault line runs under the Southern Alps, or out to sea somewhere. Imagine my surprise, when my radio went on a 6.30, to find that this one was close to Christchurch (400km away), was very shallow, and had done an awful lot of damage.

Luckily no-one has been killed, and there are only a couple of serious injuries. I hate to think what the toll would have been if the earthquake had happened during daytime on a weekday. As it is, they had no electricity yesterday, people are doing without running water at least until tomorrow, and it will be days, if not weeks, until the sewerage systems are fixed.

I keep bottles of water in my "beer fridge" for emergencies (and for my soda stream), and I have gas burners, candles and a stock of tinned, bottled, and dry foods, but I rely far too much on mains electricity. I have no battery radio, and I had never even considered what I'd do in the event of a failure of the sewerage system. In Christchurch, people are digging "long-drops" in their back yards.

I'm off to get a chemical toilet and a battery radio ASAP! We are overdue a "big one", and when it comes (hopefully not in my lifetime) it will be far worse than what Christchurch suffered yesterday.

Red shoes

These are the shoes I wore to a colleague's retirement party last weekend:

I bought them in Christchurch in February when I was there for some motorcycle races and haven't worn them until now. The tights are from mytights.co.uk. One of the waiters at the restaurant actually thought I had tattoos all over my legs!

Kouign Amann

One of the blogs I read religiously, and really look forward to, is Joe Pastry.  He's a sensible sort of a guy and knows what he's talking about. He also bakes some great stuff, and I just had to try  Kouign Amann when I saw it.

I didn't actually use his recipe for the dough, I just used half of my usual weekend bread dough. I ended up with half-sized loaves of sourdough and a sort of sourdough Kouign Amann.

I did as one of Joe's correspondents recommended and mixed the butter with some flour. It puffed up beautifully, but I don't know if that was because of the flour, or because our butter is different from the stuff they get in America. I'm always horrified when he writes about how their dairy food is made - our butter is just made from cream.

A duck Pt 2. Duck prosciutto.

These duck breasts are in the fridge being salted.

One of them just has salt and curing salt on it, the other has some liquid smoke as well. We'll see what it's like in a few weeks - I need to dry them for a couple of weeks once they've finished curing.

A duck, Pt 1. Confit and rillettes

A duckling:

Twenty-eight dollars that cost - I shan't be filing this post under "thriftiness". I am making the most of the duck though.

I broke it down into its component parts, and put the carcass, …

… fat, …

… and wings, …

… into my steamed pudding bowl, …

… and put it all in a pot of boiling water for several hours.

Meanwhile, the legs and the meaty rump parts …

… were being salted, with a bit of garlic as well …

… in preparation for being turned into confit.

I strained the steamed duck parts …

… retrieving just under a cup of duck "juice" (no water was added, so it's not really stock), and just over half a cup of rendered duck fat:

The juice jelled solid when it cooled and will go into the freezer.

I picked all the little bits of meat off the bones …

… and pounded them with some of the fat and some thyme from the garden:

The mixture went into a couple of little ramekins, and I poured a little more fat over to seal it:

I didn't have enough fat for the confit, so I opened one of the tins of duck fat my sister-in-law gave me a wee while ago …

… and used some of it to extend what was left of the fat rendered from the duck, so I had enough to cover the legs and rumps:

I also added a bit of thyme from the garden. After about 6 hours in a 90°C oven I had this:

Which I let cool, then put in the fridge. I have to let it "mature" for a week or so before I can excavate the duck from the fat and do something delicious with it.

A chicken, Pt 3. Stock.

The chicken carcass and all the bits of leftover skin went into a pot of water with some chopped onions and carrots, salt, and pepper. I simmered them for about three hours then strained out the solids, leaving this good strong chicken jelly:

The jelly/stock went into the freezer for me to use next time I make soup or risotto.

I picked all the little bits of meat off the carcass …

… and used them in some yakisoba I made for my dinner.Nothing fancy and not worth photographing.