Duck a l’Orange adapted from Jacques Pepin’s recipe in Food and Wine

         Duck a l’Orange lives in our memory as one of our first introductions to restaurant food.  In Montreal, where we lived, it was fairly ubiquitous on the city’s better menus.  We loved it for its sweetness and its crunch.  For the dark duck meat and the crispy skin. For the orange sauce with its taste of Grand Marnier.  We remember feeling sophisticated just ordering it…although we likely didn’t know what the word sophisticated meant at the time.  At any rate, when this month’s Food and Wine arrived, an article written by Rux Martin, the editor of the soon-to-be-published “Essential Pepin” Jacques Pepin’s soon-to-be-released cooking anthology, intrigued us.

Scampi Fra Diavolo adapted from Bon Appetit

         Few things are more of a convenience in the kitchen than keeping a bag of Costco shrimp in the Freezer. Cleaned, with their tails intact, they are very economical and they come in several sizes of shrimp—from very large to small and somewhere in between.  Whatever size you choose, being able to reach in, take out however many you need and then re-sealing the bag and putting it back in the freezer, is a gift to everyone. From the cook who wants to put something exceptional on the table to the happy recipient of a gorgeous shrimp dinner, everyone wins here.

Shrimp are the original crowd-pleaser, by far the most popular seafood in the United States. And, as I mentioned to you recently, Shrimp are given the thumbs up on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch.  Checking the Costco label, you’ll likely find that theirs have been farm-raised in Vietnam.  Much to my amazement, even then, they still pass muster with Monterey Bay.