Made To Impress, Without Stress

An occasional series in which staff members share a recipe that we turn to time and again:

The moment when I officially became a food writer happened several months after I moved to Boston and started writing about food full time. It was when my friends stopped having me over for dinner.

Oh, you wouldn't want to eat our (insert: chicken/stir-fry/any homey dish here), they would beg off. It's not quite the foie gras you're used to.

Actually, when I'd just spent six nights a week dining out, a home-cooked meal -- even an overcooked one -- was exactly what I was craving. But neither subtle hints nor blatant pleading got me anywhere. They all wanted to come to my house.

At my house, they imagined, Tuesday night meant a menu of thyme-infused cocktails, salt-crusted sea bass and blood-orange panna cotta. And neither subtle hints nor extensive descriptions of a fridge containing only condiments got me anywhere.

So I invited them over.

A little part of me wanted to set my friends straight: I could serve spaghetti or burgers. But the rest of me wanted to fulfill their fantasy. I kind of like the idea of being that girl, the one who settles in on a weeknight with a thyme-infused cocktail.

What I needed was something fabulous yet easy to prepare.

I scoured a few cookbooks, then decided on a pomegranate-glazed duck with fennel and oranges from "Matthew Kenney's Big City Cooking." The book is a favorite of mine, full of recipes elegant enough to impress but possible to make in a closet-size kitchen.

Preparing duck -- which can be greasy if you don't render the fat -- intimidates people, so I thought it would show off my cooking skills, plus I like the rich flavor. (To save calories, remove the skin of the duck after cooking and glaze just the meat. It will cut the calories in this dish dramatically; see the recipe's alternate nutritional analysis.) The pomegranate, fennel and oranges lend a touch of the exotic and appeal to my desire to put fruit in every dish, sweet or savory.

Since then, it has become the most stained recipe in my collection. I serve it at parties or the first time I invite a date to dinner. And, occasionally, I even make it on a Tuesday night.