We’ve got ducks here on the farm. The number has been set at a maximum of 7 now for a few years. They’re all Pekin ducks; the ones that you can refer to as “Aflac Ducks.” White with yellow beaks, they are great scavengers on the farm. They stay with the chickens in the chicken coop during the night. It’s a comfy rental agreement. The chickens prefer to roost at night and the ducks are quite happy to stay on the floor.
We get one egg per female duck per every other day. We have four female ducks: Zoey, Bella, Dobby
and Winkie. The three males are
Duck-Duck, Malcom and Vito. Vito is our
oldest duck in the flock. In fact, he’s the oldest bird we have in this whole
farm. He’s about 7 years old and will
probably only live another few years. He’s
been a good drake (male ducks are called drakes) and has been protecting his
girls well. The initial hope was that we would be able to sell the duck eggs to people around the area and perhaps at the local Co-Op. I contacted them, and discussed the availability of the eggs, but they said no. Their contention was that because we did not feed our ducks organic feed, the eggs were useless. Organic feed is about 4 times the price of the feed we have now and it is fine. I’m pretty sure that the bugs that the ducks glean off our land aren’t certified as organic as well.
Ah well. We enjoy the eggs. They are about 1 ½ times the size of a large chicken egg contain more protein, fat, cholesterol and vitamins than a chicken egg. However, the fat and cholesterol are the ‘good’ types and help make your died more well-rounded. When I started eating them, it took a while to get used to them. They taste richer than a chicken egg. Once we crack that egg, the shells get tossed into a bucket. We put them into the oven for a bit of drying, run them through the blender and sprinkle them on the ground so that the girls can supplement their calcium.
My duck egg recipe is simple. Take 3 duck eggs, 2 cups of flour and a ½ teaspoon of salt. What makes it a lot easier to make is a pasta machine.
Ingredients:
3 Duck Eggs – Chicken Eggs will suffice if duck eggs are not
available.
2 Cups Unbleached Flour
½ teaspoon Iodized salt.
for the duck egg pasta, the process is what makes the noodles the best. And we’ll discuss this with pictures:
1.
Wash your
hands. You are going to be kneading the dough with your bare hands, so you will
need them clean. If you are concerned
about getting dough in your rings, take them off as well.
2.
Put the 2 cups of flour and ½ teaspoon of salt
into a bowl. Stir to blend with a fork,
and then make a well in the middle of the bowl for the eggs. Take 3 fresh duck eggs and crack them into
the well in the bowl. Keep the flour out, you are going to need it!
3.
Take a whisk or a fork and beat the eggs well,
trying not to get too much flour mixed in with the eggs just yet. Blend the eggs so that the yolks are broken
and blended with the whites.
4.
Start blending the flour into the egg
mixture. Gradually add more and more
until it’s well blended and hard to stir.
5.
This is when you are going to need to start
kneading the dough. Using your hands,
push down on the dough rolling forward with your hand, then fold it adding some
more of the flour to the ball, then push down and roll it around in the bowl.
6.
Continue kneading the dough ball until you’ve
got all the flour blended in it. The
dough should feel pretty solid and not be sticky. If it is, sprinkle some more
flour and knead it until it’s not sticky.
7.
Cover the bowl with a towel and let it rest for
at least 10 minutes. I usually wait
about a ½ an hour. In the meantime, set up the pasta machine. Attach the pasta machine to the surface, make
sure the dial is set to ‘1’ and sprinkle a bit of flour on the rollers.
8.
Take the
dough, cut it into 2 or 3 parts. It makes it easier to put through the machine. Flatten one of the parts so that it’s about ½ an
inch thick. Slowly feed it through the
pasta machine while cranking the handle.
It will be difficult for the first few passes.
9.
Fold the dough, turn it 90 degrees clockwise and
feed it through the machine again on the ‘1’ dial setting. This helps square out the dough and make it
easier to feed it through the other settings.
10.
Turn the knob to ‘2’ and feed the pasta through
it. The pasta may start feeling sticky. Sprinkle a bit more flour on it before
sending it through the machine again.
11.
Continue to turn the knob and feed the pasta
into the machine until you reach ‘5.’
The dough will become long and difficult to hold while cranking the
machine. When that happens, I fold the
dough back and forth on a pile so that I can set it on top of the machine and
it will feed through just fine.
12.
After running the dough through the ‘5’ setting,
you can run it through the linguine/spaghetti attachment. Make sure to have either a dish underneath or
parchment to catch the pasta.
And there it is! Pasta.
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