Duck Breast; Smashed Celery Root with Garlic-Sage Butter; Duck-Fat-Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Cranberries

The first step is to roast the vegetables. Preheat the oven to 375, then clean and chop the sprouts and celery root* and coat with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. You can put them on the same baking sheet if you want, as long as you keep them separate so you can take them out at different times. The sprouts should take 10-15 minutes; take them out when a few are starting to brown and they're all easy to stab with a fork. The celery root pieces should be about the size of the brussels sprouts pieces, but will take about twice as long. Once they're soft to the touch, take them out as well but don't turn off the oven - you'll need it for the duck.

[*Celery root (AKA celeriac) is something most people I know don't really eat, but it's easy to do and quite tasty. It has a faint flavor of celery and carrot and a texture somewhere between a parsnip and a potato. It looks like a horrible dirt clod when you buy it, but you just slice off the outside layer and rinse off your knife and then you're good to go.]

When you're a few minutes away from taking the celery root out of the oven, get the duck going in a big skillet you can put in the oven later. Put it on very high heat, get it ripping hot, and add a little oil. Salt and pepper the skin side of the duck breast and put it down in the oil. Sear it for a few seconds and immediately turn the heat down to medium (on an electric stove go ahead and turn off the eye before you even put the breast in). You want to render out the fat layer without burning the skin. Once you've extracted a couple tablespoons of fat and the edges of the breast are starting to develop a well-done greyish look, salt and pepper the meaty side of the breast and turn it over in the pan. Let that cook for a minute, then into the oven for five more minutes or so (make it ten if you're an idiot and you take your duck well-done).

While that's going, work on the celery root. Melt a pat of butter over medium heat, then fry a clove or so of garlic for a minute. Add a couple big leaves of chiffonaded sage and a pinch of salt, let that all mix together for a minute, then take it off the heat. Drop in the pieces of roasted celery root, add a splash of milk or cream, and mash together. Set aside but keep warm.

When the duck is done, pull it out of the oven and set the breast aside to rest. Leave the fat in the pan - if you thought bacon grease was good, wait til you fry something in duck fat (Bobby, we'll talk). Add a thinly sliced shallot and a little salt to the pan and cook until the shallot's soft. No need to put the pan back on the fire - there should be enough residual heat from the oven to finish up. To the cooked shallot, add the sprouts and a couple of dried cranberries, then toss to mix and coat.

Slice the breast on a bias after it's rested for a few minutes. Put down the mash, and top with the sprouts and the duck. Garnish with a tiny leaf of sage (mine didn't make the photo). Serve with a wine you'd serve with Thanksgiving dinner.

Ratatouille; Chicken Thigh Confit and Rosemary Crackling with Tarragon-Mustard Sauce

I recommend doing this over two days, since it would take forever to do all at once, and everything (especially the ratatouille) will taste better after a day or two in the fridge. Plus you get to call it "leftovers."

First step is to roast a chicken. I usually get one about 4-4.5 pounds, but if you're feeding an army you can get bigger (and cook it longer). Cut out the backbone with a sturdy set of scissors, then flatten the bird out, breast side up, in a roasting dish. Salt and pepper the outside (be especially heavy with the salt for crispier skin), and then add some chopped fresh rosemary under the skin. Roast it at about 400 for an hour or so, until the internal temperature is about 170 degrees. Cover it with foil and let it rest for 10 minutes or so before carving. Eat whatever you like now, but be sure to leave a thigh and some skin for the next day.

For the ratatouille, thinly slice an eggplant and a few zucchini or squash (bell peppers are also traditional but I don't really like them so I left them out). Sautee the eggplant in olive oil over medium-high heat with a bit of salt and pepper, until al dente, then spread it on the bottom of a baking dish. Sautee the squash next, also with salt and pepper, again not quite cooked through, then put it in a layer on top of the eggplant. The final layer is a chunky tomato sauce with onion, garlic, thyme, and bay leaf. Start by sauteeing some sliced onion and minced garlic, then adding four or five sliced tomatoes and a big pinch of thyme and a bay leaf. Add a splash of water, and let it all cook down until it's saucy but still chunky. Take out the bay leaf and pour it over the squash and eggplant. Bake at 375 (400 is fine if you're roasting the chicken at the same time) for about half an hour, until the onions in the top layer are just starting to brown.

After you're done eating, put everything in the refrigerator, and be sure to save the drippings from the chicken.

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Get everything out of the regrigerator. First step is to re-warm the ratatouille, which you can either do in the microwave or in a low oven. I actually ate mine cold and that was also tasty. Next, prepare the confit: shred the meat off of one of the thighs and put it in some of the leftover fat and juice from the roast, in a small pan over low heat. You don't want the chicken swimming in the stuff, but you want to be sure it's pretty moist, as well. Cook that for as long as you feel like until it's very rich and very tender (no less than 20 minutes and probably no more than an hour). Then pile it in a little ring mold (or just in a pile if you prefer) and press down in hot oil in a pan, just to brown the bottom. Let it cook for five to ten minutes while you crisp a piece of skin. Take a nice flat piece of leftover skin with a lot of rosemary, and press it flat in the pan you're frying the confit in. It should bubble and hiss as the water comes out. Once the bubbling slows down, flip it over and again wait for the bubbling to stop. Once it's stopped hissing, it's dried out and should be nice and crispy. Finally, for the sauce, drain the oil from the pan, add a pat of butter and a dash of flour, stir to make a roux, then add a splash of white wine, some dijon mustard, and a pinch of tarragon.

Seared Mahi-Mahi over Green Pea Puree with Lemon-Garlic Orzo

I have been trying to get a nice crust on a piece of fish for years. Every restaurant in the universe seems to manage it no problem, but for some reason I could never pull it off. Finally I discovered the tricks: Teflon, plenty of oil, a very hot pan (#1 and #3 may combine to cause cancer or kill your household pets with lethal fumes - enjoy tasty seared fish at your own risk). In any case, once you get the hang of it, it turns out to be very easy. Salt and pepper the prettier side of the fish. Get your pan really hot, with a few tablespoons of olive oil to coat the surface, then set the fish down on the nice side. If it doesn't sizzle and pop and burn you a little you didn't do it right. Don't touch it for at least a couple of minutes. Once it's cooked a little more than halfway through (you can kind of gauge this by looking at the exposed edge of the piece), turn it over. Nobody wants accidentally raw fish, but it's much better to serve it on the slightly rare side than the overdone and dry side. Take it off the heat and plate. The fish actually takes very little time so you should probably do it last.

First, start the puree. This is easy. Sweat some onions and green onions in a little butter with salt and pepper until softened up a bit. Throw in some green peas. Fresh would be great, but if like me you only had half a bag of freezerburned old frozen ones, that's fine. Add enough water to cover the peas, and give the whole thing a stir. We want to cook the peas, but barely - color is the real key here, and overdone peas turn into army green mush. Once they're done, take them off the heat, cool them down a little, and blend until smooth. Adjust the seasoning and texture as needed by adding a little liquid. Water would be fine, lemon juice or a few drops of vinegar if you want some brightness, salt if it needs more flavor, etc. I actually added some buttermilk because I had some in the fridge and I love the stuff. It added some sourness and some creaminess and a certain little "Hm, what is that?" character to the mix.

Cook the orzo in salted boiling water. Sautee garlic and shallot in a little butter, with salt and pepper to taste. I always burn the garlic but I bet yours will taste better if you don't, so keep an eye on it. Throw in some chopped fresh parsley* if you have it (don't buy a whole bunch just for this though), then add a splash of white wine and a squeeze of lemon juice. Cook that for a minute, then add in the pasta and toss to combine. Put some more parsley if you like it and still have it (especially if you went out and bought parsley just for this).

[*Curly parsley tastes nasty and as far as I can tell only exists as an ugly garnish for boring food at diners and steak houses. I would love to engineer a boycott to destroy the annoying curly parsley industry. In any case: buy flat-leaf parsley!]

Pour the puree out into a shallow bowl or deep plate (or pretentious bowl/plate hybrid you bought because you are the type of weirdo who posts pictures of his dinner on the internet). Spoon a serving of the pasta across the puree, then rest a piece of fish on top of that. I garnished the fish with a little slice of lemon peel, a parsley leaf, and some pink Australian sea salt.

Grilled Lobster with Cherry Tomatoes, Conecuh Sausage, and Garlic Cheese Grits

grits. garlic. butter. tillamook cheddar.

Conecuh sausage.

shallots. sage. tomatoes.

lobster tail.

Gazpacho with Green Apple and Watermelon Slaw; Grilled Garlic-Rosemary Shrimp

tomato. garlic. cucumber. onion. bell pepper. olive oil.

watermelon. apple. salt. cider vinegar.

shrimp. rosemary. garlic. lemon.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Brown Butter, Crushed Coriander, and Sage; Star Anise and Garlic Pork Meatballs

sweet potato. egg. flour. butter. sage. coriander.

pork. garlic. star anise.

Sautéed Portobello Mushroom; Roasted Garlic Gnocchi with Tomato-Basil Cream Sauce

portobello mushroom. basil.

roasted garlic. potato. flour. tomato. garlic. basil. cream.

Grilled Fennel; Pork Chop with Red Wine Gastrique; Broccoli Rabe

pork chop. red wine. red wine vinegar.

fennel.

broccoli rabe. garlic. chili flake. olive oil. pasta.