World Cup Eating Challenge - Day 4: France

The second and third day of my challenge had me making some simpler dishes so I wanted to really ramp it up now that I'd had a few days to plan and looking at the schedule, the fourth day gave me a great opportunity - France.

I love French cuisine and watching a lot of cooking shows, I hear a lot of "French techinique" or mother sauces or being classically trained - however, when it came down to the challenge I was suddenly drawing a blank. I kept jumping to cop outs like French fries or French toast or French onion soup and even though I knew there were better options.

Finally I came up with two great options - roast duck or steak frites. I decided to see what was available at Costco and sure enough, they still had a few ducks left so I decided to go with that option. It's hard to believe that just a couple of months ago I'd never made duck and now here I was cooking up my third duck this year. Roasting duck is actually really easy. All you have to do is clean it, season it inside and out, and put it in the over for 30 minutes per pound. I also cut off the extra skin and render it for duck fat. Duck fat is pretty expensive but it's an amazing fat/oil to cook things in. The duck fat can also be used to confit a future duck.

As for sides - I used also used some of that duck fat to cook my carrot "fries" and then added some fresh parsley. The salad was lettuce, spinach, radish, and goat cheese with a olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I paired the whole dish with a rosé that I got for my birthday from my aunt and uncle. The rosé is from Provence and is made by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The wine is my ideal kind of rosé - very dry with lemon and citrus notes. It went wonderfully with our French meal. I've seen this wine a few times at Costco but it wasn't there last time I checked. It's been getting a lot of press so if you're interested in trying it, I suggest you track down a bottle as soon as possible.

I've been having a lot of fun looking up recipes for the countries I'm not as familiar with. Today I learned a lot about different African cuisines. I've also been trying to guess which teams will make it to the round of 16 because I'll get an extra chance to make their recipes. I'm really excited to keep cooking new things!