James Beard Award-winning blogger Hank Shaw is on his cross-country promotion tour for his latest cookbook, “Duck, Duck, Goose: The Ultimate Guide to Cooking Waterfowl, Both Farmed and Wild.” This is not your typical meet-and-greet in the one remaining brick-and-mortar booksuperstore, rather, Hank is criss-crossing the country on his own dime, collaborating with local chefs to host a duck-themed dinner in THEIR restaurant, making some money for the restaurant and selling as many of his cookbooks as he can. You’ve got to admire his chutzpah!

My friend Beverly turned me on to Hank’s blog. She knows Hank from previous blog conferences and owns his first book, so when she saw he was coming to the DC area, she started asking around for who might be interested in joining her. When I heard that Hank would be collaborating with my biggest Celebrity Chef Crush Ever, Bryan Voltaggio (of Top Chef/Top Chef Masters fame), well, I was on board immediately! We were to be a party of four — Beverly, her husband, a dear friend of theirs, and yours truly.

Let me talk briefly about the cookbook. If you love duck, BUY IT. If you love duck but have been afraid to cook it, BUY IT. If you hunt waterfowl, BUY IT. Hank’s intended audience is the home cook, like you and me, and he makes cooking duck and waterfowl approachable by even a novice cook. It’s not that he dumbed it down — some of the recipes really are quite complex — but he has the knack for explaining so thoroughly in understandable terms that it all just makes sense. Two of my takeaways — hints for duck pan sauces (pick complimentary liquor/liqueur and fruit) and use rendered duck/goose fat in pie crust.

The collaborative dinner at Range was an INSANE five course celebration of duck. There was a duck consomme with duck liver spaetzle (my personal favorite), a char siu duck, duck sausage, dry aged duck (reminiscent of a dry-aged steak), and a dessert course with a duck fat ganache (truly swoon-worthy). I barely stopped myself from licking the plates clean (when I say plates, I mean mine as well as my dinner companions). Hank stopped ’round during our fourth course, and he is as genuine in person as he appears to be in his blog. He of course endeared himself to me when he inadvertently dropped the F-bomb (as I too am wont to do).

On our way out, I gave in to my hero worship and blushingly and stumblingly asked Range’s event coordinator, Tracy, if Bryan were available to meet and maybe take a quick picture. She graciously sent someone to the kitchen to get him, and OMG — I got to meet him! He is a little shy in person, quite humble, and was happy to pose. I told him I was so inspired by the meal, I would HAVE to cook duck myself that weekend! He wanted to know how I was planning to cook it, and I said probably on my Big Green Egg, and his eyes lit up, and he said, those are really good to cook on it, right, and I said yes, we have two, and then others wanted a picture, and the encounter was over. I was a little weak in the knees — it was Chef Bryan!!

It truly was a tasty and inspiring evening. I am fortunate to have attended with other food-crazies like me (three of the four of us pulled out our cameras at the start of each course to take pix as discreetly as possible!). Although I might have been mocked **slightly** for the wobbly knee reaction. And, I’ve got some duck ready to go in a COLD pan as soon as we can get some of the leaves tamed!