Crispt duck

Originally uploaded by wjharrison77.

It’s Sunday evening and around this time I usually start to think about the school week ahead. Tonight is no exception. First thing tomorrow I’ll be teaching my seniors. Really looking forward to it as we are reading a favourite of mine, MacBeth.

Thankfully the class are enjoying it so far. I was worried they wouldn’t as their previous experience of Shakespeare was not terribly positive. Despite their former teacher’s best efforts the class absolutely despised Romeo and Juliet. Not even Luhrmann’s dazzling adaption managed to win them over – weirdos.

The Scottish play is a winner though. The graphic battle descriptions (Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps/ And fix’d his head upon our battlements) and hirsute witches (you should be women,/ And yet your beards forbid me to interpret/ That you are so) seem to have caught their imaginations. And when, with a little rearrangement of the original text, they figured out that “Aroint thee thy rump fed runion” basically meant “bugger off big bum” it swiftly became the insult of choice in the fifth year common area.

Tomorrow they are going to meet Lady MacBeth for the first time. Expecting her to raise a few eyebrows!

This evening we are having an Asian feast! My mum loves aromatic crispy duck and requests it whenever she visits. Have also made vegetable spring rolls, Thai basil rice, steamed greens and a pineapple granita to finish with. A mish mash of our favourites rather than an elegant array of dishes. 🙂

Aromatic Crispy Duck

A big duck (excess fat from around cavities cut away)
1 tblspn salt
1 ½ tblspn Chinese five spice
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp ground ginger
Thumb of fresh ginger (cut into chunks and smashed with a mallet)
3 spring onions (chopped into large pieces)

To serve:
Cucumber (finely sliced)
Spring onion (finely sliced)
Plum sauce (don’t bother making your own unless plums are in season, which they obviously aren’t just now)
Chinese pancakes (from Chinese supermarket – I have to go to Aberdeen for them. And I do!)

• Blot the duck with kitchen roll until dry.
• Combine salt, spice, pepper and ground ginger. Rub ALL over the duck and on the inside.
• Stuff duck with fresh ginger and spring onions.
• Roast in a deep roasting tin at 170oC for 2.5 hours. The duck will render a huge amount of fat. Pour this off every 30 mins or so.
• Turn up heat to 225oC and roast for another 20-30 mins (until very crispy).
• Leave duck to cool before using two forks to shred the meat and skin off the carcass.
• Serve the steamed pancakes, spring onion, cucumber, plum sauce and duck in separate dishes so that the diners can assemble their own wee duck rolls.

PS  Disturbingly, as I was taking the above photo a large drake was sitting atop my neighbour’s house and quacking loudly. At me?

Chicken Originally uploaded by wjharrison77.

My seniors were doing some peer assessment of their travel writing today. They just started to write yesterday after a week of reading articles by, among others, Paul Theroux (my favourite) and Bill Bryson (far from a favourite). The class loved Bryson and hated Theroux. Boooo, I said. Booooooo!
After reviewing the conventions of travel writing (for example, the mixture of personal experience plus facts) the pupils began writing their opening paragraphs. The following period the class read each other’s work and pointed out what was working well and what required improvement. I had a peek at the paragraphs too and I must say that, despite their shoddy choice of role model, their efforts were superb, especially considering these were the class’s first drafts. A few extracts that made me smile:

• Some people say the town is a fading glory. Many go as far as to call it tacky. But to me it’s simply brilliant. From the pleasure beach to the tower, the sandy beach to the hoards of tourists; I love Blackpool!

• (On Edinburgh)
The one o’clock cannon goes off and 3,000 people have a near heart attack. The odd couple worriedly wonder where the cannonball goes.

• Being a tcheuchter, I obviously cannot comment on the modern ways of the lowlander. With their new fangled televisions and four-wheeled cars us Highlanders don’t have a hope in hell of understanding how they live. Or so they’d have us believe!

A “tcheuchter”, for you non-Scots, is a person who lives in the countryside. Who you call a tcheuchter (or tchuech) depends on where you live. Coming from a village, I would be a tchuech to a city dweller. But farm folk are tcheuchs to me. And the farmers I know have a tcheuch hierarchy too! It’s all relative.  🙂

Dinner last night was very low maintenance and very good.

Chicken with Tomatoes and Peppers
(serves 2)

4 x chicken thighs (bone in)
300 g cherry tomatoes
1 orange, red or yellow pepper, sliced thickly
1 chilli pepper, sliced
100 ml stock (or water)
Handful of basil leaves
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

• Heat the oven to 180oC
• Season the chicken well.
• Put the first 6 ingredients into a tight fitting oven proof dish and drizzle with the olive oil.
• Cover with tin foil and put in the oven for an hour.
• Remove tinfoil and cook at 200oC for another 20-30 mins, until browned.

We ate this with some super healthy steamed green beans and some highly unhealthy garlic bread.

Im so handsome!

Originally uploaded by genna.rhodes.

Feeling ridiculously happy this evening. Had two surprises today. Firstly, an ex-pupil popped in to school to say hello. In a small community, as Alness is, this shouldn’t be a huge deal but Ramseena moved back to Kerala in India last year. She turned up today in my last class in a stunningly beautiful blue and gold sari rendering my boisterous (but lovely) third years speechless. Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish I’d had a camera. To have captured Ramseena in what turned out to be her honeymoon sari would have been wonderful. It was a truly bizarre sight to see such a sparkling vision in a dusty, grey computing room.

    Secondly, one of my pupils from last term gave me a bunch of flowers to say thank you for teaching her. Now, my aunt and cousin are primary (elementary) school teachers and are inundated with gifts at several points in the year. This doesn’t happen as a secondary school teacher! Was so chuffed I shed a wee tear – much to the horror of the pupil, I should add. And, if all this wasn’t enough I have a cracking weekend coming up. Off to Aberdeenshire to see my parents, go to a food festival (Taste of Grampian – will report back) and visit my best friend and her new puppy, Rufus. Isn’t he a cutie? Enough gushing. Dinner this evening was very simple but exceptionally successful. More of a suggestion than a recipe, I think.

Artichoke Heart & Parsley Omelette

20g butter
4 artichoke hearts, tinned or marinated
Palmful of fresh parsley
3 Eggs
Salt and Pepper

• Melt half the butter in a frying pan.
• Saute the hearts gently for a minute (just to heat through).
• Meanwhile, beat the eggs, parsley and seasoning gently.
• Cut the remaining butter into little cubes and add to egg mixture.
• Pour egg mixture into hot pan and stir a few times.
• When the omelette just begins to set fold in half.

My omelettes always look terrible. This one tasted fab though!

Met my new Higher class today.  They are a lively bunch and seem very keen to do well.  This is their fourth year together as a class so they have a very strong group identity.  So much so, in fact, that this morning I had to fight the feeling that I was a guest in my own classroom.  It always takes a wee while to get to know a group and work out the class dynamic.  Wondering if this will be a lengthier process since the group already have a dynamic.  We’ll see. 

Starting the term with a travel writing project.  Reading/examining writing by Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin, Bill Bryson and some extracts from a Lonely Planet travel writing anthology.  The pupils will use what they learn to write their own travel piece.

Talking of travel, a friend of mine was in Sicily last year and fell in love with a spiced aubergine salad.  She told me all about it and I began looking for recipes.  There were plenty to be found!  I’ve tried out several different versions of the dish and all have been lovely.  In Roast Chicken and Other Stories (one of my favourite cookbooks, though I’m not at all keen on the sniffy sequel, Second Helpings) Simon Hopkinson tell us the salad was a favourite of Elizabeth David.  What more do you need to know?  Hopkinson’s version uses allspice instead of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg.  I prefer the latter combination as it provides more of a kick to liven up out-of-season tomatoes.  When tomatoes are at their best/tastiest the allspice version might be better.

This is my entry for Joanna’s HotM vegetable round-up.

Aubergine Salad

(serves 2)

1 aubergine (eggplant), diced

Salt

Olive oil

4 big, juicy tomatoes, roughly chopped

1/2 tspn cumin

2 cloves

Pinch of nutmeg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Pinch of cayenne pepper

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 tbspn raisins

1 tbspn fresh mint, chopped

1 tbspn fresh coriander, chopped

Extra virgin olive oil

• Put the diced aubergine into a colander and sprinkle a generous amount of salt over it.  Leave for an hour.  (Salting aubergines was originally to draw out any bitter juices.  Apparently the majority of aubergines available these days don’t need this treatment.  I tried salting and not salting.  The former version was tastier and the salt seemed to help the aubergine brown when fried.)
• Fry the spices and garlic in a generous lug of olive oil for one minute.  Add the sliced onion and fry until golden.
• Add the tomatoes to the spiced onion and cook gently for 20 mins.  Add the raisins and remove from the heat.
• In a seperate pan, heat another generous lug of olive oil and fry the aubergine in batches until golden. This can take some time.
• Combine tomato mixture with aubergines and herbs.  Taste for seasoning.
• Serve at room temperature drizzled with extra virgin olive oil.

This is great as a bruschetta topping or simply eaten with a spoon.