Along with gum wrappers and a zillion pennies, there is a pile of about twenty CDs in the armrest compartment of our family car. Each one has been labeled by Andy with a black Sharpie using maddeningly unrevealing titles, like "November 2011" or "Maine" or "Chatham" or "July 08" so I never know exactly what I'm going to get when I slip one in the CD player. But they're always curated with listeners big and small in mind, which is why we can go from the Drive-by Truckers' Zip City (we have been strategically coughing over the s-bomb in the first stanza for almost two years now) right after a Miley Cyrus cover by Lauren Alaina, last year's American Idol runner-up. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Lauren Alaina (I'm still mad she didn't beat Scotty McCreery) and the kids have no problem with the Truckers (they know their dad would disown them if they did), but when I was road-tripping yesterday to my reading in Boston, trying to figure out what I was going to talk about, it occurred to me that our mixes are a lot like our dinners. As I mentioned to the nice people of Brookline (thank you again Sara, Amy, Ingrid, Essie, Katharine, Sharon, Kelly, Carrie!), we made the most rockin' dinner last weekend. I brought home a Hudson Valley duck breast from the farmer's market which Andy grilled to perfection (see above photo). By chance, I had dried cherries macerating in red wine (I know, who writes a sentence like that with a straight face?) which I boiled down with peaches to serve on top of the duck; then we broke out the mandoline for our stand-by apple-fennel slaw. It was the first time we had ever served duck at our dinner table -- though definitely not the first time the girls had eaten it; Devika, their first babysitter made a mean duck curry which they'd inhale -- but when presented this simply, it wasn't a hard sell. (Plus we had dinner rolls: The Great Equalizer.) Anyway, if that was our Drive-by Truckers dinner, the next night was our LMFAO dinner: Baked beans on toast, from the can. And just like with the "kids'" Adele song, I went back for seconds.
Grilled Duck Breast with Cherry-Peach Relish
Salt and pepper both sides of a 1 1/2 pound duck breast.
Make your fire. Put coals on one side of the grill and let them burn down to medium heat. Then cook the duck, skin side up for first 10 minutes, not directly over the coals, so you render some of the fat and it drips right off. (There is so much fat on the skin that you have to be careful it doesn't start a fire and burn the duck to a crisp.) Then grill it skin-side down (again, not over the coals -- over indirect heat, right next to the fire. You have to really stand over it and watch it. You do not want big flames) then keep flipping it, skin-side down, skin-side up, until it has a nice burnished (not burned) color on skin side. A total of 15 minutes. Let sit 10 minutes.
I soaked a half cup of dried pitted cherries (such as Montmorency cherries which they sell at Trader Joe's for about half the price at Whole Foods) in just enough red wine to cover for a few days, but I don't think you need to do it for more than 8 to 10 hours. Then I simmered the cherries in their wine with 2 peaches (peeled and chopped up), a little more than 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar, 2 teaspoons sugar, a squeeze of lemon juice, 1/4 cup water over low heat until liquid was thick and mostly gone. In total, it took about 12-15 minutes.
Fennel-Apple Slaw, please see page 243, Dinner: A Love Story. The bread is Trader Joe's par-baked dinner rolls, which Andy baked on a covered grill for about 8 minutes.
Summer Road Trip Mix If I were to make a mix culled from Andy's mixes, this is what it would look like. A little something for everybody.
It Ain't Me Babe, Johnny Cash Zip City, Drive-by Truckers (remember: he uses the word s#@t in first stanza) Passenger Side, Jeff Tweedy Someone Like You, Adele (cannot believe how fun this is to sing) Edge of Glory, Lady Gaga Wonderful World, Sam Cooke You and I, Lady Gaga Frankie's Gun, Felice Brothers Parted Ways, Heartless Bastards Outta My System, My Morning Jacket Boy Named Sue, Johnny Cash The Waiting, Tom Petty I Think I Lost it, Lucinda Williams Long May You Run, Neil Young
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