73. Cooking Duck

My most recent cooking adventure:

We picked up some duck breasts on a road trip, and about a week after we got back, I thawed it out and looked up how to cook it. My husband was working on a car, and I was starving, so I decided to try my hand at duck.

I pulled up some recipes that mentioned the fat has to boil off, and since I didn’t know what that looked like, I pulled up a video.

In the video a British cook says to set the oven to 200 degrees, do some stuff to the duck on the stove (a paraphrase of all the steps), and then put it in the oven for 6-8 minutes.

I cooked it on the stove, and while I wasn’t entirely sure it was correct, it looked okay. So I stuck it in the oven at 200 degrees, and for good measure (because I thought the temperature was a little low) put 10 minutes on the timer.

Around the time the oven beeps, my husband has come in for the evening and checks on the duck.

It is not cooked.

So I show him the video, and within the first 5 seconds, he says, “Oh, he’s using Celsius. You need to convert it to Fahrenheit.” And then he laughs.

I redid the temperature setting, and the duck tasted excellent that night.

And to redeem myself, I cooked eggs in the morning, and it went off without a hitch.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes practice can make a weakness stronger but might never be the strength of someone with years of experience. But the way I look at it, as long as you’re having fun along the way, why not keep trying?