Duck!

[Wilfrid]

I decided to search for and reproduce a duck recipe which I derived from an excellent detective novel by Manuel Vasquez Montalban, The Angst-Ridden executive". Montalban is the Catalonian answer to rex Stout!

"Let me just offer the following, from Catalonia: I read it as a way to cook duck, but I think it would serve for just about any game birds, and could be adapted for rabbit and hare.

Roast your creature [duck] lightly until it is just done. Meantime, fry chopped onions and mushrooms (by all means add truffles). When the roast has cooled, take off the breast, legs (wings if worth eating) and reserve. Scrape any other meat off the carcass and chop any innards; add these to the onion/mushroom mixture together with juices from the bird, stoned, chopped olives and chopped, good quality bacon (good ham would do, or pancetta - but look out for saltiness) and a few breadcrumbs. The aim of this mixture is to make a kind of slurry to coat the reserved pieces of meat - not a wet sauce to pour over, or a dry paste - you want to moisten the meat and have the tasty bits of mushroom, olive and meat debris evenly scattered. If you were cooking a duck, you would have plenty of juice; with game birds, you may want to add a little white wine to moisten the slurry (too wet, of course add more breadcrumbs).

Arrange the reserve meat in a baking dish and cover it with the slurry. Bake in a medium oven until the meat is perfectly tender and infused with all those flavors."

[Toby]

Wilfrid -- Any recipe with the word "debris" in it makes me want to rush out and cook it. There's something about the concept -- consistency, texture, softness, depth of flavor -- that corresponds to the way I like to eat. Maybe we could start a debris thread.