Duck

Duck was frequently on my menu when I was chef in the earliest days at what was to become the internationally acclaimed Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California. I purchased the ducks whole, with heads and feet still on, in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was always a chore to find a place to park, but I was intent on fresh-is-best even back then, plus the people and markets provided a wonderful ethnographic adventure close to home. Searching for something to do with the many necks left from cutting up the ducks, I created this duck sausage using the necks as casing. I made a broth from the bones and other trimmed bits and braised the sausages in it. Serendipity! The lengthy braising softens the skin casing almost to butter, moistening the sausages as they cook and producing a rich sauce for dressing the sausages when they are served. For this book, I have adapted the recipe to call for whole duck legs (drumstick and thigh combinations): easier to get and equally fabulous.

On my brief sojourn in the Toulouse area, I traveled to many local villages and towns acclaimed for their charcuterie. Among them was Castelnaudary, a small village built of stone, close by the fairy-tale-like medieval castle of Carcassonne. The castle was a thrill; even more so was the cassoulet I enjoyed in Castelnaudary, known as the cradle of cassoulet. I mustered the nerve to ask the chef what his secret was. He graciously shared his version of “the cassoulet secret”: The kind of beans you use is crucial. They should be lingot beans, also called white kidney beans or cannellini beans, or coco beans, which resemble slightly elongated navy beans. Both are sweetly buttery and cook up soft and tender enough to soak up juices, but still hold their shape. Then, the beans must be allowed to cool completely in their cooking liquid before assembling the cassoulet. Overnight is best. Stuffed whole duck legs (drumstick and thigh combination) make a delectable sausage star for a faux cassoulet. To sidestep the lengthy process of curing the duck overnight then braising it in duck fat to make confit, the whole legs are sprinkled with a salt and herb seasoning and refrigerated for a few hours to allow the seasonings to imbue. The sausage is then stuffed under the thigh skin, making a single package of sausage and duck meat.

Our region’s most important restaurant chefs cultivate relationships with local growers and express their creativity through daily special menus. Paul Andrews’s confit method leaves the duck meltingly tender and moist, while locally grown blue potatoes add a subtle, nutty flavor to the hash.

Flavor pairing comes naturally when using products that come from the same region, and Lakewood’s assistant winemaker, John Damian, developed this recipe to prove it. The secret to a chicken dish that he guarantees will awaken sleeping taste buds is the combination of fragrant, flavorful local peaches and just enough residual sugar in the wine to give the marinade a lift.

Dear World, We’re sorry food has come to this. Like Richard Pryor said, more or less, the double down is God’s way of telling you that you have too much money. But it’s also really delicious.

Even though places like St. Hubert Rotisserie have been serving the “hot chicken sandwich” since the 1930s, no factual proof exists that it originated in Quebec. Our only proof is that we haven’t seen it outside the province, whereas inside, it’s a weekly staple. It’s basically hot, shredded chicken, served with galvaude (peas and gravy, usually a poutine variation) and two pieces of white bread. In this recipe, you have four meat options: pork, duck, rabbit, or chicken. They’re all hot and they’re all delicious. For pork, use the pulled pork recipe in Scallops with Pulled Pork (page 30). For the other meats, there are three steps: (1) cure it, (2) smoke it, and (3) confit it. If you don’t have a smoker can, you will need to dig up an empty 1-quart (1-liter) tin can for step 2. If you live in the States, D’Artagnan (www.dartagnan.com) will deliver the duck fat you need in step 4 to your door. If not, use bacon fat. The gravy is the perfect clone of the local poulet barbecue sauce. It’s not a hot sauce, but it’s also not that thickish gravy that tastes like spinach and baking soda. It’s zingier, a cross between BBQ sauce and gravy. It is classic on these sandwiches, but it’s also good, minus the bread, on duck, pork, poutine, or yes, chicken.

This dish is not surprising in taste (it’s duck, sausage, and potato—what can go wrong?), nor very feminine (in other words, it’s not pretty). We like the look a lot, because the fingerlings, duck pieces, and links are all the same size and shape. This is the best way to enjoy duck in the middle of the winter.

You can make sausage links or you can make patties, which are a lazy man’s links. If you opt for links, you will need a sausage stuffer. You may also have to special order the casings from your butcher. It is a good idea to double the recipe, too, because it is easier to work with a larger amount. These are good breakfast sausages, but they also shine with kraut, lentils, or duck. Enjoy with a nice glass of Hungarian wine, or with a nice Hungarian man, i.e., artist Peter Hoffer.

This is the kind of dish that used to be prepared tableside in Montreal chophouses. A few restaurants still do tableside crêpes Suzette, steak tartare, and specialty coffees. We get excited like kids on Halloween when we see that cart rolling toward us. It’s tough to do ourselves because of the size of Joe Beef, but we hope it comes back in a big way (and not in the “lavender and tomato essential oils being pumped over my table from a Provençal print balloon as we eat lamb and the waiter tickles our nose and ears with said lamb’s tail” way).

When we opened Joe Beef, we made all kinds of promises, oaths of sorts: no cranberry juice, we would wash dishes ourselves, we would stay open on Monday nights. We also said we would always have (at least) one breakfast item on the dinner menu. Of course, we are closed Mondays and never do the dishes ourselves, but we do always have one breakfast item on the menu. Oh, and we still don’t serve cranberry juice. We see foie gras the same way we see skateboarding: we had a phase, like most everyone. But then it stopped, and now it’s here and there and we enjoy it in small doses. If you come to town and want to feast on foie gras everything, make a pit stop at Au Pied de Cochon; they are good friends and do it better than anyone. Our favorite way to serve foie gras is with a breakfast-sausage patty or with peameal bacon, a well-peppered over-easy egg, and an English muffin. Add a dash of maple mustard and you’re happy, whether it’s 7:00 A.M. or 7:00 P.M. (You’ll have plenty of mustard left over, but that’s okay. It’s good with everything from salmon to corn dogs.) Remember, when you sear foie gras, be generous with salt, use a good pan, and most important, be prepared for a smoke show. Work fast and have a tray and tongs at hand before you start.

This dish, which calls for a whole fresh duck foie gras, has been on our menu since day one. We like it with a thin layer of our Madeira Jelly poured on top, but almost any compote, jam, or jelly can be served alongside.

This take on coq au vin has it all: tender, moist chicken, flavorful root veggies, and an incredibly rich sauce; to top it off, it’s a one-pot meal. Serve with a simple garlicky green salad and lots of steamed white rice to soak up all the chicken broth goodness. Duck legs are a great substitute for the chicken legs, too. You’ll get the best results if you salt the legs the day before you cook, but it’s not essential. If you are short on time, skip the salting and jump right in—just season the legs well with salt and pepper before you brown them.

The plump and pristine Belgian endive from California Vegetable Specialties (see page 91) always impresses the Workshop chefs, and they come up with some novel uses for it. Chef James Boyce, a 2008 participant, made “choucroute” with the sliced endive, braising it with onion, bacon, and apples as if it were cabbage. He paired it with seared duck breasts, but you could serve it with a pork chop and boiled potatoes instead.

The Liberty Ducks we get from Sonoma County Poultry (see page 147) are fed an all-natural diet and allowed to mature for several more weeks than most commercial ducks. As a result, they develop more flavor. The meaty duck legs, braised slowly with aromatic vegetables, make a robust pasta sauce similar in richness and depth to a classic bolognese. Brian shreds the tender duck meat after it’s braised and adds chopped Tuscan kale to the sauce to introduce some fresh garden flavor.

This especially satisfying one-pan dish is delicious served with soft polenta, mashed potatoes, or shell beans. Good choices for the green olives are unpitted Lucques or Picholines.

This is the best burrito you will ever taste in your entire life, and that’s no exaggeration. To “confit” is to preserve the duck meat by first curing it in salt, then cooking and storing it in its own fat. This is one of those things that I eat only on occasion, for obvious reasons, but look forward to tremendously. Take into consideration that the duck must be prepared a day ahead—but believe me, it’s worth the extra effort. (You could also buy duck confit already made to cut the prep time way down.) I must confess to you that, on occasion, I’ve used lard from a local butcher when I don’t have enough duck fat (which I buy at Whole Foods), with the response from my uninformed family usually being, “Marcela, the duck tastes different today. It tastes . . . better.”

Cassoulet in forty minutes or less is heresy, of course, but even “real” cassoulet was designed as a bean stew containing whatever meat, preferably fatty and flavorful, was available to throw in. That’s the spirit here, too. Although the pork tenderloin need not be browned before further cooking, the sausage benefits from a quick browning, definitely worth the five-minute effort. If you can get duck confit, just brown it lightly on both sides, adding both it and its fat to the stew in place of the duck breast.

Here’s a simple procedure for duck in which you first roast the bird and then braise it briefly. It keeps even the breast meat moist while making the legs ultratender. There are many options for the braising medium, but none provides more complementary flavor with less work than sauerkraut. The result is a moist bird with a sauce that doubles as a side vegetable. Although the cooking takes some time, you can practically ignore the duck as it roasts; if the oven temperature is moderate, it will brown more or less automatically and render its fat at the same time.

Unless you’ve made your own duck confit, you may never have cooked duck legs by themselves; but in many ways they’re superior to both duck breasts and whole birds. They’re quite lean, and just a quick trimming of the excess fat is all that’s necessary. And, given proper cooking—that is, long, slow cooking—they become fork-tender and richly flavorful, reminiscent of some of the “lesser” cuts of beef and pork, like brisket and cheek. Finally, it’s easy enough to cook enough legs for eight—which is hardly the case with whole duck!