Recipes

Grilled Texas blue wing teal asado with orzo pasta and fresh chimichurri:

On a recent hunt I harvested a limit of blue wing teal. Teal are a North American dabbling duck small in size compared to other ducks but big on flavor. In this dish I took inspiration from a popular Argentina tradition of having the main meal of the day lunch. Consisting of  mostly proteins teal harvest in Texas make it difficult to stay true to large amounts of meat since you can only harvest four during early season. So I decided to pair this with orzo pasta for a non over powering addition so the teal could speak for itself.
I first took care to clean the teal breast thoroughly making sure to leach the blood out of the meat. To do this I rinse the breasted out teal in cold running water till the water runs clear. after I do this I pat the breast down with a paper towel and place in a glass container to cool in the refrigerator.

Next I take 2 cloves of garlic and smash them on the cutting board and rough chop with a sharp knife.

I then add about 10 sprigs of thyme salt and pepper and extra virgin olive oil to coat breast meat Finally coat all the breast meat and cover return to refrigerator to marinade overnight.

Asado is food cooked over a open fire and my favorite fuel of choice is texas pecan wood the flavor is not as over powering as other woods when cooking poultry or fish and even works well with other game and beef.  after teal is maranaded cook on grill over smoldering wood being carefull not to over cook. A nice medium rare is what your looking for anything over will start to taste more like liver than steak.

Next is the chimichuri sauce this is a very easy sauce to make and it works great as a marinade or sauce there are many variations of this sauce I prefer to use citrus to brighten the sauce up.
the ingredients are as follows.

1 bunch parsley
3 cloves of garlic
1 quarter white onion
1 Tbls sambol
1 cup olive oil
zest from 1 lemon
2 Tbls lemon juice
tsp dried oregano
salt to taste

I use a microplane greater to zest the lemon, mince the garlic and onion.
Next fine chop the parsley and add everything else together you can serve right away or refrigerate and use at a later time.

Its time to grill the duck Like I said I like to use pecan wood to semi smoke the duck and grill at the same time for extra flavor. I prefer cast iron grates making sure that they are hot. Grill duck till just under medium rare and take off of flame to carry over cook to a nice medium rare.

I sautéed the orzo pasta with asparagus roasted red peppers and fresh basil for a nice accompaniment to our September blue wing teal. Hope you enjoy!!