Recipe: Danish Easter Duck Bread with Filling and Glaze

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From The Best of Bon Appetit (1979)

Be creative! Make this in the shape of a bunny instead of a duck!

More info here; similar recipe here.)

duckrabbit

“Each slice of this festive bread will show a swirl of raspberry, chocolate and nuts.” —The Best of Bon Appetit (1979)

“Duck may be prepared a day ahead. Reheat in brown paper bag in 200oF oven 15 to 20 minutes and cut into slices to serve.”

“May also be frozen before glazing. Defrost completely and warm prior to decorating.”

DANISH EASTER DUCK WITH FILLING AND GLAZE
Makes 1 bread

¼ C golden raisins, soaked overnight in ½ C sherry
Dough (see below)
1 C raspberry preserves
Filling (see below)
Glaze (see below)
Gum drop
Yellow and green colored icings, “available in tubes”
Melted chocolate and chocolate sprinkles
Mushroom-shaped meringues (see recipes in Desserts section), green-tinted coconut (optional)

Turn out risen dough on an unfloored surface, and roll and stretch into a rectangle 40×8 inches, and spread dough lightly with raspberry preserves. Sprinkle Filling over dough to within 1 inch of edges, roll jelly roll fashion into a narrow roll about 2 inches in diameter and 40 inches long.

To shape duck, cut off a 3-inch length from each end of roll and twist entire roll a few times. Shape twisted roll into a large ‘S’ on an oiled baking sheet, using 1/3 of roll for neck and 2/3 for body. Shape duck loosely with coils close together but not touching. Using 1 piece of remaining dough, shape duck beak and tail, and attach. Using second piece, shape duck feet and attach. Cover duck with waxed paper and allow to rest in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 50 minutes. Preheat oven to 375o. Bake duck 35 to 45 minutes or until golden brown. “It may be necessary to turn pan to ensure even browning.” Remove bread from oven and allow to cool until just warm to the touch.

To decorate, use gum drop for eye, paint body with Glaze, and use colored icings for feathers. Highlight tail and feet with melted chocolate dusted with chocolate sprinkles. Surround duck with meringues and coconut “grass” (if using).

Dough, filling, and glaze recipes below.

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Why does it affect me so?

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I had been alternately diddling inside and out, and thinking and writing about preparedness.

I came inside, sat down at my desk and refreshed American Digest.

For a split second, I did not understand. And then I typed drudge… .

I hit the top link– there were only three at the time– and looked at the pictures.

Notre Dame. In flames. I just sat there staring at the screen.

As much as I know about the brain and how as it relates to the mind, I have no explanation for why my brain singled to my tear ducts in these moments.

And then I went outside for some fresh air. Notre Dame. In Flames. Why does this affect me so? What is going on?

I don’t care about how / why it happened.

I’ve been there once, and only on the outside.

Where is that photo?

Kat & Marg feeding the Notre Dame sparrows in 2000

I searched the picture tub and found it.

So why does it affect me so?

Why did I weep?

New Series: Bug Out Bag!

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  • Tony in Penang
  • A beanie in Seventy2

Kat & Tony’s weekly newsletter from Penang, Malaysia, mentioned natural disasters and survival. They noted that most “survival situations” are resolved within 72 hours. (Mississippi’s Emergency Management agency’s motto is “The first 72 are on you.”) They also linked a video from Uncharted Supply Company promoting a bug out bag (BOB), Seventy2.

As I have a passing interest in preparedness, I clicked over to the 20 minute video and watched about two minutes. [But see updates below.] In slowly ginning up the sales pitch, the dude makes the insightful comment that if you are in a situation where you need a knife, you shouldn’t need a knife to open the box in your BOB that contains the knife. No. You should not.

Let us pause. If you get nothing else from what I hope will be an informative series of posts, please get yourself a pocket knife and put it in your pocket. A Buck, or Swiss Army knife will do nicely. Those multi-tools come in handy– I carry one in my sack– but they are too bulky for my pocket.

My aims for this series are to 1) offer a critique of pre-packaged emergency preparedness kits and BOBs such at Seventy2, and 2) put together a BOB in real life. You heard that right. We do not have a BOB because we have already bugged out to The Farm. I can think of no circumstances, which have any meaningful probability of happening, which would necessitate our bugging out. (We are far enough inland to not be subject to hurricane evacuations, and there would be absolutely zero tactical advantage to knocking out rural north central Mississippi.)

However, I can think of circumstances under which we should have a bag of useful things in the truck, should we hit some sort of snag in the routine, or come across another’s emergency. To be clear, the BOB I will put together will not be a true BOB– a bag that’s packed with things one would need to flee one’s home in advance of an impending threat. Rather, it will be a bag containing items Mr. Big Food and I might need to get home on foot (EMP?), to use if we are trapped away from home (massive flooding?), to help others in a serious emergency (car accident?). We’ll still call it a BOB, though (it’s a search engine thing).

One general, and one specific observation about Uncharted Supply Company’s Seventy2 below the fold, as well as one almost true life scenario. 

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Honking

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Some honking creature just flew across the front yard from the lake to the pond. What a great time of year!

Well… except for the tornadoes, fluctuating temperatures, and flooding.

It’s wet out there!

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The Peninsula

Good Morning!

What a beautiful day to be stuck inside. We have had 6.5″ of rain this month. It’s a slog. Mr. Big Food is behind on his cutting. I’m behind in my planting. And there will be no cutting or planting for a while.

On a positive note, I did get those three shrubs planted and this is perfect weather for their first week of life on The Farm.

FYI, there’s an Easter ham in my future!

Think it through

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@USTornadoes

Good advise.

Also,

  • put a flashlight in your pocket
  • clean the kitchen & run the dishwasher
  • pick stuff up from the floor– make sure the path to your tornado room is clear
  • wash & dry a load of towels
  • be sure everything is fully charged, including your battery packs and weather radio

Think it through.

Unsmooth | A recommendation for weather nuts

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RadarScope, a bit ago

The radar images you see at the various weather sites are all “smoothed.”

RAdio Detection And Ranging

Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object’s location and speed.

That Infallible Source

That information is raw data. What you are seeing at Wunderground, Windy, and NWS, though, are not colorized raw data, but data that have been subjected to a computational filter, an algorithm. (I’ve seen it called “averaged,” but that is not a correct term, although it captures the underlying sentiment.) I thought this about a particular filter was pretty telling:

In situations where the target motion conforms well to the underlying model, there is a tendency of the Kalman filter to become “overconfident” of its own predictions and to start to ignore the radar measurements. If the target then manoeuvres, the filter will fail to follow the manoeuvre. It is therefore common practice when implementing the filter to arbitrarily increase the magnitude of the state estimate covariance matrix slightly at each update to prevent this.

That Infallible Source [my emphasis]

If you want to see the information itself, you need to look at un-smoothed data.

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Fancy @The Farm

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Last evening, Mr. Big Food asked if we could invite the Berkley Prof to The Farm and I said, “Sure.”

Turns out the Berkley Prof was a normal human being. Waitressed at a DQ Dairy Queen when she saw a teen.

Maybe there is hope.

Evening Whisps

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Yesterday evening’s sky. So much going on. In the large photo, can you see the whisps coming up from the bottom and arching out to the left (north)? The wind at the time was from the south/southeast. So is it visible water vapor rising?

I feel sorry for folks who don’t have an evening sky to contemplate.

What does it mean to be ‘smart’

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So the Farm Hand & I are working in the Asparagus patch.

He’s an A-B student. In a decent school district. His Dad is a biology teacher, FFS. His Mom’s a nurse.

And he going on & and on about how smart we are.

I tell him that he’s smarter that he thinks he is.

What does it take to be smart? He asks. Read. Ask Questions.

It’s not that complicated.

Aside of 1949 Noodles

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No. That’s not a typo. This is an aside about noodles and 1949.

Yesterday evening Mr. Big Food an I were talking about the Fried Noodle Rings and Chow Mein recipes. We got to wondering just what, in 1949, were considered “fine dry noodles.” Those pictured look very fine.

After some research, I bet they were these:

Found by searching Kroger dot com

I searched K-roger because both Proctor & Gamble (publishers of the crappy old Crisco cookbook) and Kroger have forever been headquartered in Cincinnati (Kroger est. 1883; P&G, 1837; Manischewitz was established elsewhere in 1888). If the Home Economists in the Crisco Kitchen in Cincinnati needed fine dry noodles, surely they would have sent a boy down to Kroger to pick some up.

So that question is answered but leads to another. What if your town or village had no Kroger or other grocery with a wide variety of noodles, and you wanted to make Fried Noodles and Chow Mein in 1949?

We take so much for granted. If I need fine dry noodles, I need only walk to the pantry to find a package of ‘Canton Style Egg Noodle’ from Canton Noodle Factory (H.K.). It must have come from The Asian Market in Starkvegas. Yes. S’ville has a full-on Asian grocery store. Truly amazing. There was no Asian grocery in Starkvegas in 1949.

No Asian market near you today? ______ . com

We take so much for granted.