After the pearl balls and the roast duckling

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you still have to deal with leftovers. For instance, on December 17, for my daughter’s class party, I made pearl balls. I had enough meat mixture to make pearl balls for the party and for our dinner that night but, alas, I only had so much glutinous rice.

Alex brought the pearl balls to school, I made meat loaves with the meat mixture. How? Like this. I laid the ground meat mixture on a large piece of foil. I arranged layers of belly bacon slices, canned pimiento and pickles on top…

… then I took two opposite ends of the foil…

… and gathered them together to form a log, embedded the bacon, pimientos and pickle strips in the middle. After tucking in the long ends of the foil, I popped the loaves into the oven, baked them for half an hour, took them out to cool and, by the time we got home from Alex’s school’s Christmas program (we left the house two hours after Alex did because parents weren’t invited to the class party — only to the program), the meat loaves were ready for slicing.

What’s in the ground meat mixture? See the pearl balls recipe.

On New Year’s Eve, as has been the tradition in my family for the past couple of years, we had roast duckling. There was some leftover meat and, of course, I had all that duckling bones. What did I do with it? Click the link to page 2.

First, I simmered the bones with half an onion in water. For an hour.

Then, I added two quartered potatoes and continued simmering everything for another 20 minutes.

Then, the florets of a small head of broccoli and a small head of cauliflower. More simmering for another 15 minutes.

I strained the broth, discarded the bones, scooped out the onion (minus the skin), potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower and put them in the blender with a cup of the broth.

Everything was pureed and, when the mixture was smooth, back it went into the broth. I stirred the soup, brought it to a gentle boil and added the shredded leftover duck meat. Then, I seasoned it with salt and pepper. Rich, creamy, delicious.

Click here for more cooking with leftovers recipes in the archive.