That's how long I spent on this planet before cooking my first duck.
Twenty. Nine. Years.
Normally, I encourage my vast and loyal army of readers to emulate me in all things, but in this one circumstance I'm giving you this special instruction; DON'T BE LIKE ME. I WAS A FOOL.
At the ripe old age of 29, I walked into a bookstore and picked up a copy of Anthony Bourdain's Le Halles Cookbook. I've long been a fan of his shows, and I had heard him speak with reverence about the mystical and awesome powers of duck fat. So, I picked up the book, and I got myself a duck, and promptly had my brain blown out of my butthole.
Many ducks later, I've come up with my own minor variation on Bourdain's classic Duck à l'Orange; Duck à l'Cerises, and I'm even throwing in my own recipe for potatoes roasted in duck fat, that elixir of the gods. You're welcome.
You will need:
1 Duck. 5lbs or so, fully defrosted
1 Buddha's Hand
1 C of sour cherries
Butcher's twine for trussing
Sauce
.5 C of red wine vinegar
2 oz. sugar
2 C of chicken or duck stock
1 C of sour cherries
3 fl.oz. Kirsch
Salt & Pepper
Potatoes
Rendered duck fat
6 cloves of garlic, minced
2-3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves stripped and roughly chopped
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
3 lbs russet potatoes, washed and cut to large bite size with skins still on
For the Duck (that's right, capital D. Respect.):
1. Preheat the oven to 250. Open up the plastic on your fully defrosted duck. Remove the neck, liver, & heart. Reserve the neck for use in the sauce, I'm sure the liver is probably pretty good too. Rinse out the cavity, and pat the bird dry with paper towels. Since we're doing something pretty explicitly French, now would be a good time to break out that CD of French jazz you've got hiding somewhere. And the Absinthe.
2. Cut off the wing tips at the joint. No meat, and they'll scorch. Get rid of 'em. Trim the excess fat & skin. The neck skin will come off in a big flap on the front of the bird, there will be flabby deposits around the cavity opening, trim these as well. Take these trimmings and cut them into small pieces (half inch strips). Put the trimmings into a sauce pan, and put that pan over medium heat. Render the fat- cook the trimmings until the skin starts to turn brown. Like this.
Reserve the rendered fat for the potatoes.3. Season the bird generously inside and out with salt and pepper. Cut the Buddha's hand into half inch strips and stuff the bird with the strips and 1 cup of the cherries. A word on the Buddha's Hand. It's a somewhat hard-to-come-by proto-citrus that they just happened to have at the store the day I decided to do this. They're fantastically aromatic and worth keeping around for the scent alone. You could probably substitute a couple of lemons cut into wedges if you didn't feel like being a pissy little ingredient fetishist like myself. Anyway. Truss the bird. There are a variety of ways to do this, and there are good videos available on YouTube to show you how. Like this one, for example.
4. Put the bird directly on the roasting pan and slap it in the oven for 25 minutes.
5. Now would be a good time to toss the reserved Duck fat with the garlic, rosemary, salt, & pepper in a large bowl, and then throw the potato chunks in there with it. Make sure the potatoes are coated with all that lovely golden fat. Take a moment and thank the Duck for its' tasty, tasty flab. I'll wait. Done? Good. Put your coated potatoes on a baking sheet in a single layer.
6. Once the 25 minutes is up, pull the bird out, and crank the oven up to 350. Put the bird on a rack inside the roasting pan. If you don't have one, used celery stalks or carrots to keep it up off of the bottom of the pan. Once the oven has come to temp, put the Duck and the potatoes in the oven and cook them both for an hour and fifteen minutes.
7. While the Duck and potatoes get happy, put the vinegar and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil until you've got something that looks like a light caramel. Now, this is the point where you add the stock to the molten sugar, but take a breath first. The sugar/vinegar mix is what we refer to as Fucking Hot. This stuff will stick to you like napalm and burn you like those guys at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Do you want to look like a melted Nazi? No. Nobody wants that. Be careful when pouring in the stock, it could foam up. Be ready to turn off the burner if necessary.
8. If you survived that, drop the Duck neck and the other cup of cherries into the stock pot, and let that simmer uncovered for 45 minutes.
9. When the Duck and the potatoes are done, remove the Duck to a serving platter or carving board to rest for at least 10 minutes. Put the roasting pan on the burner over medium high heat, and add the kirsch. Scrape all the cooked on stuff up off of the bottom. Pour the resulting liquid in with the sauce.
10. Mash the cherries with a potato masher, strain the sauce and skim off the fat.
11. Serve the Duck and potatoes with the sauce on the side.
12. Eat.
No comments:
Post a Comment