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Americans don't eat duck...


=Mark

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Yeah... It was fun. The hedonists among us went to great lengths to demonstrate the joy of animal fat and potatoes. The more constricted of the Baptists among us went to pray for our gluttonous souls. Oh well... At least we learned who was who in the family. :laugh:

Linda LaRose aka "fifi"

"Having spent most of my life searching for truth in the excitement of science, I am now in search of the perfectly seared foie gras without any sweet glop." Linda LaRose

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I had duck for dinner tonight. It was lovely. The meat was cooked rare, just the way I like it - flavorful and juicy. The skin was crisp and crackling - a nice counterpoint to the juicy flesh. Sitting under the slices of meat was a duck confit hash that was very tasty. And the artfully dribbled around the plate was a cherry-syrah sauce. It was heavenly. :smile:

"Some people see a sheet of seaweed and want to be wrapped in it. I want to see it around a piece of fish."-- William Grimes

"People are bastard-coated bastards, with bastard filling." - Dr. Cox on Scrubs

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I often buy frozen duck legs at a local fish and poultry shop. You can give them a spice rub before putting them in the fridge to thaw (or thaw them fast in a bowl of water), and then braise them. Make a pasta sauce, soup, stew, or broil and crisp the skin. Heavenly, and often cheaper than chicken thighs.

Matthew Amster-Burton, aka "mamster"

Author, Hungry Monkey, coming in May

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Goose is easy to find in New York in December. A few sources would be Ottomanelli in Bleeker Street and Citarella. Even Fairway would probably order one for you. To be honest

I think duck has much more flavor.

I like duck fine. But it doesn't taste the same as goose.

Anywhere to eat some good goose in a restaurant in New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens)?

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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I love duck. Esp confit. I order it whenever it's on the menu. Unless it's an Asian restaurant because I've ended up with jerky way too many times. But I don't cook it very often. For the same reasons as everyone else.

That goose sounds wonderful. We've done a version for Christmas a few times but the prime rib contingent usually wins out.

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Goose is easy to find in New York in December. A few sources would be Ottomanelli in Bleeker Street and Citarella. Even Fairway would probably order one for you. To be honest

I think duck has much more flavor.

I like duck fine. But it doesn't taste the same as goose.

Anywhere to eat some good goose in a restaurant in New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens)?

Goose is not difficult to find in NY (because d'Artagnan carries it and distributes it to a number of the better meat markets.) You can even find it frozen at Fresh Direct. Finding a goose that is not frozen, however, is very difficult. It is also difficult to find goose on restaurant menus (except at Christmas). Even d'Artagnan does not have it at their restaurant.

For the record, I am a huge duck fan and make it often. My favorite ways are as confit (I make my own) and breasts baked in salt (which gives it a rich, almost prime rib like flavor.) There is a restaurant near my apartment called Apple Restaurant (Greenwich Village) that serves a broiled boneless duck breast that is virtually without fat.

Edited by mikeycook (log)

"If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony."

~ Fernand Point

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In NYC, ducks are easy enough to find whole or cut up. Chinatown is where one can find legs and thighs, but they never have breasts. Many other butchers in the city have breasts, but rarely thighs and legs. Nevertheless, I don't believe these are from the same ducks. Go figure.

Duck is more expensive than chicken and free range ducks and chickens are more expensive than factory raised ones. Ducks are also even more expensive than chicken when you consider they have less meat and more bone and fat per pound. Regardless, they are worth the difference in price, although I like a varied diet. Scallops are more expensive than squid. I don't know that I like scallops more than squid, but I eat both.

I guess I have to adjust my priorities.  :smile:

We all need to do that once in a while. Some more often than others. :laugh:
Heavens! how could I have forgotten the sublime joys of duck confit?

or is that ...  too rich for our cardiologists' EKGs??

Duck fat has far less saturated fats than most animal fats. It may be closer to olive oil than to lard or butter in that regard.

I once had a sauce similar to bearnaise, where the butter was replace with goose fat. It was quite delicious and certainly healthier and no less digestible. Admittedly it didn't sound appetizing, but I ordered it anyway after the chef had described the sauce, as he made it sound reasonable and was a highly respected chef in an area of France known for it's ducks and geese. I like to listen to my inner "Try it, you'll like it" voice.

Robert Buxbaum

WorldTable

Recent WorldTable posts include: comments about reporting on Michelin stars in The NY Times, the NJ proposal to ban foie gras, Michael Ruhlman's comments in blogs about the NJ proposal and Bill Buford's New Yorker article on the Food Network.

My mailbox is full. You may contact me via worldtable.com.

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I never cook a whole duck these days but a duck breast once a week or so is de rigeur in my kitchen I brine the breast for 24 hours and then  let it dry in the refrigerator so that the skin will be really crisp when it is sautéed. I score the skin and then sauté very slowly skin side down, removing the fat as it melts, until most of the fat is gone and the skin is brown and crisp. I then flip it over just to sear the flesh, never cooking it beyond medium rare. I slice it on the bias and serve with a demiglace wine reduction with cherries or currants. I like to do this with Moulard or Muscovy ducks as the breasts of the Pekin variety are thinner. All duck legs are wonderful braised slowly or made into confit.

I just don't get it. Duck has so much flavor. Again the problem might be overcooking, as with lamb. A whole duck cooked Chinese style can be wonderful but roasted in the old European style the breast becomes dry and tasteless. Many people have never tried it when properly cooked.

Can't remember when we last cooked a whole duck, but it would have been slowly braised so the fat melted and meat was succulent. We would have probably braised it and served it with peas, but that was so long ago. Nowadays, it's either duck breast rare and just about exactly as Ruth does it, with the exception that I rarely use fruit in the saucing. Ruth is right on the mark with the leg and thigh suggestions as well.

When we seemed to have more time for cooking, we used to buy more whole ducks. Have the breasts rare, combine the thigh and leg meat with pork and pork fat and maybe some duck hearts and gizzards and make sausages, pates and rillettes. When we buy a whole duck these days, it's already cooked at the Chinese butcher shop and we have him cut it up Chinese style. It's pretty fatty, but I've developed a taste for more of the fat than Mrs. B. At any rate, a whole duck these days means we have no time to cook.

Robert Buxbaum

WorldTable

Recent WorldTable posts include: comments about reporting on Michelin stars in The NY Times, the NJ proposal to ban foie gras, Michael Ruhlman's comments in blogs about the NJ proposal and Bill Buford's New Yorker article on the Food Network.

My mailbox is full. You may contact me via worldtable.com.

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Heavens! how could I have forgotten the sublime joys of duck confit?

or is that ...  too rich for our cardiologists' EKGs??

Duck fat has far less saturated fats than most animal fats. It may be closer to olive oil than to lard or butter in that regard.

I use a recipe from Paula Wolfert for potatoes cooked slowly in goose fat for a couple of hours. She notes that you will wind up with almost all of the fat left over, rather than it absorbing into the food. This is another way that duck/goose fat can be preferable and less damaging. Dean and Deluca sells 28oz gans of goose fat for $10. This is what I use for confit and I always have a ton (too much, really) left over for cooking.

"If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony."

~ Fernand Point

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OK... Christmas Goose Disaster to follow.

I got a recipe for goose and/or duck from a Cajun friend. It called for potatoes, onions, and bacon. You season the goose with a typical Cajun seasoning mix. You stuff the cavity with some potato and onion chunks. In the bottom of the roasting pan, layer thickly sliced potato. The goose is wrapped in bacon strips. I did the bacon wrapping in an artful manner. The end product was lovely to look at, but... Good Lord... I have never seen so much fat. I am definitely not adverse to good animal fat, but this was ridiculous. It then occurred to me that my friend was probably referring to wild geese or ducks that would not have as much fat, therefore the bacon.

(Actually, those potatoes on the bottom of the roasting pan were wonderful, in a guilty way.)

edit to add: We decided that this recipe was fine as long as you discard the goose and just eat the potatoes.

Living down in South La myself, I can almost promise you he was refferring to wild goose. There are so many of them that for the last three years the season has been extended long past the normal duck and goose season, and there is NO limit. You can shoot them til you run out of shells or until you shoulder falls off. They are pests as far as the farmers are concerned. A flock of geese (we are talking flocks in the mulitiples of thousands) can turn a field into muddy goo over night doing great damage that is very costly to repair. They are pretty amazing to watch however, thousands of them rising at once and making a gotterdamrung sound that is hard to forget once you hear it (it kind of bites to be under one of these flocks though. BOMBS AWAY :shock:

All that being said, outside of being tough (I refer you you to the Leadbelly song "The Old Grey Goose"), they can be pretty tasty when cooked with care.

Brooks Hamaker, aka "Mayhaw Man"

There's a train everyday, leaving either way...

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Our favorite way to serve duck is...with guests and leftovers.

We invite a couple of couples over and buy enough duck to give everyone a breast. Cut the ducks up, render the carcasses for fat and then roast the bones for stock.

We slowly pan-roast the breasts to medium rare, with a nice wine-stock-fruit reduction sauce -- maybe setting atop lightly braised leeks in buerre monte.

Then the leftover legs and fat get turned into confit. The effort turns out to be pretty small, in return for one fancy dinner for six and three wonderful bistro meals for two.

One good suggestion for roasting the breast: cut the skin and fat of and fry them up as cracklings, and sprinkle over the pan seared breasts when they are finished, to get your crunch and fat back. It's not quite as good, but it's a lot less tricky in terms of timing.

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government.

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I had duck for dinner tonight.  It was lovely.  The meat was cooked rare, just the way I like it - flavorful and juicy.  The skin was crisp and crackling - a nice counterpoint to the juicy flesh.  Sitting under the slices of meat was a duck confit hash that was very tasty. And the artfully dribbled around the plate was a cherry-syrah sauce.  It was heavenly.  :smile:

::drools::

::falls over::

If I'm following correctly, you had this in NYC. What restaurant did you go to for this dish?

(Unless I missed the flow of the thread and you cooked this one...)

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then roast the bones for stock.

Right. I forgot to mention that.

Robert Buxbaum

WorldTable

Recent WorldTable posts include: comments about reporting on Michelin stars in The NY Times, the NJ proposal to ban foie gras, Michael Ruhlman's comments in blogs about the NJ proposal and Bill Buford's New Yorker article on the Food Network.

My mailbox is full. You may contact me via worldtable.com.

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I had duck for dinner tonight.  It was lovely.  The meat was cooked rare, just the way I like it - flavorful and juicy.  The skin was crisp and crackling - a nice counterpoint to the juicy flesh.  Sitting under the slices of meat was a duck confit hash that was very tasty. And the artfully dribbled around the plate was a cherry-syrah sauce.  It was heavenly.  :smile:

::drools::

::falls over::

If I'm following correctly, you had this in NYC. What restaurant did you go to for this dish?

(Unless I missed the flow of the thread and you cooked this one...)

We went to Shallots, which is a kosher restaurant in mid-town. It's one of the nicer, upscale kosher places - David Rockwell designed the space. Great place for business lunches and special occassion dinners.

"Some people see a sheet of seaweed and want to be wrapped in it. I want to see it around a piece of fish."-- William Grimes

"People are bastard-coated bastards, with bastard filling." - Dr. Cox on Scrubs

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I wish I had seen this thread before I made dinner tonight. I love duck and can cook duck breasts well using Bitman's technique. Tonight I cooked a whole Pekin duck by a recipe from Julia Child's , which is usually right on. I steamed, braised then roasted it with S&P, sage, thyme, onion, carrot, celery and white wine. It was ok, but unfortunately overcooked, even though I timed it for less than the recipe. Oh well, I should have known to look for a thread here.

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster."

- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

Docsconz - Musings on Food and Life

Slow Food Saratoga Region - Co-Founder

Twitter - @docsconz

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edit:  i can't believe i posted something so dumb.  probably doesn't come as a surprise to everyone else though.  :unsure:

Damn! and I missed it! :angry:

I saw Tommy's post before he deleted it. If you are interested PM me and I will send it to you :biggrin:

E. Nassar
Houston, TX

My Blog
contact: enassar(AT)gmail(DOT)com

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OK: now my 2 cents.

I LOVE duck. ok. that is out of the way.

Now for my question: I found a small duck breast in my local shoprite (I snatched it up) ; now, however, it is in my freezer.

I need to know how to cook it - i do not have a grill...

And would prefer easier, as opposed to 'challenging'.

:laugh:

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