I went grocery shopping in February and have no intention of going again until September. Except for milk and eggs. I suppose I could manage with powdered milk, but unless I clear a sizeable portion of the OK Bay bush for a chook run, eggs are a problem.
Actually I tell a lie. I admit to a mid siege toilet paper re-stock. It is after all rather difficult to store 7 months’ worth of the essential tissue. (Mind you, I did vacuum seal 6 dozen rolls for the Tonga sailing trip. They reduce to about 1/8th volume, a fact of which you may have previously been unaware. You pay for an awful lot of air in a dunny roll.)
So now in month six of my shopping embargo, I’m at the “interesting” stage of the weekly freezer forage to see what’s on offer for the coming culinary week. Bags labelled “prawn shells”, “leftover Christmas ham”, or worse, “liver” seem all too prevalent. I decide it’s time to liberate the duck from its icy grave. He is christened Donald and placed in the fridge for two days to thaw. I ignore the fact that Donald might be a Daffy and doubt that he/she will be offended if I got it wrong.
Saturday. Duck Day. Being a duck-cooking virgin, dealing with Donald requires research. I plough through a score of cookbooks and 35 years accumulated recipe cuttings. My, how one’s tastes have changed since the 70’s! I get side-tracked wondering how the hell I ever thought Boston Sausage (a bright orange casserole of boiled sausages, carrots and curry powder, cooked in a tin of Watties condensed tomato soup) was a dish worthy of repetition.
As it would be glutinous (I’m thinking that should be gluttinous?) to roast a whole duck just for one, and being unwilling to let friends witness what could be Duck Disaster, I conclude that Donald’s breasts (that just sounds all wrong doesn’t it?) are best suited to pan frying, and the legs to a slower method of cooking. I’ll make duck soup from the leftover bits, not to mention all the fabulous duck fat I’ll have for roasting potatoes at a later date.
It seems that confit legs are the way to go, but as this apparently involves simmering them in an obscene amount (like half a kilo) of fat for 3 hours, I decide that Braised Duck Legs with Pears and Spinach will be a little less scary. I also like the sound of Pan-Fried Duck Breasts with a Berry Sauce, “the sharpness of the berries offsetting the richness of the duck”. I choose Mat Follas’ berry sauce recipe, which involves only blackberries, redcurrants, rowanberries and a wee bit of sugar (noting that one should “err on the side of tartness”). I also note that I haven’t got any redcurrants and doubt that we even grow rowanberries in NZ, but plenty of frozen blackberries (foraged by my boss and swapped for a jar of my tamarillo chutney), strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.
I wonder if a strawberry and blackberry sauce would be just too weird? The strawberries would sweeten up the blackberries which, being wild, are bound to be on the sharpish side, but would the strawberry perfume overpower? I Google “duck + strawberry” and get 177,000 hits, so decide to run with it, disappointed that I haven’t invented a new culinary sensation.
Donald is lying on his back on the chopping board, legs vulgarly splayed, looking a lot less like a chicken than I would prefer. I reckon I could joint a chicken with my eyes closed, and even bone one out completely with just the odd peek, but the duck breast/leg demarcation doesn’t seem very pronounced as I nervously raise the knife. The end result looks a bit butchered, and I don’t mean in a skilled craftsman kind of way. There’s a hell of a lot of Donald left over, an inordinate quantity of frame, fat and skin.
I decide to roast off the large leftover bits/bones ready for making soup. I don’t know why I decided to do that instead of just boiling them up. Maybe I saw it on TV? The smaller bits I throw in a hot frying pan with a view to rendering the precious fat.
The oven is now spitting in a 2-cans-of-Mr-Muscles-will-be-required-to-clean-it kind of way, bits of Donald are leaping out of an exploding frying pan and the smoke alarm has gone off twice before I decide I should Google “how to render duck fat”. It seems the best way is to boil it up and scrape the fat off when it’s set the next day. Ooops. However you can do it in a frypan if you cut the duck into very little pieces (ooops) and continually drain the fat off (ooops) as it forms, leaving you with very tasty duck “scratchings” which of course I most certainly will not eat. Numm, numm, numm.
The cooking process is interrupted when I realise it’s getting cold and dark and I’d better bring the washing in. I put a pair of wool trousers in to soak, hoping that Napisan will remove duck fat.
The blackberries, strawberries and raspberries (what the hell, at least I drew the line at blueberries) go into a frying pan that I really should have cleaned more thoroughly after last night’s Po Kor Curry. The smell and look of the berries is heavenly (despite a faint curry overtone) and I somehow refrain from adding anything else, following Mat Follas’ recipe religiously (well, apart from omitting two-thirds of the ingredients). I push the berries through a strainer and think the pulp will go nicely in next week’s banana smoothies. The sauce I could bury my face in, it’s so utterly divine.
A phone call from Mother, a visit from Betty, and I’m starting to get mighty hungry. What would go well with Donald Breast and Berry Sauce? I think a potato or parsnip mash, or maybe cauliflower puree? The problem is they’re all so white and look rather sad on a white plate, which is all I’ve got. But maybe some green beans with butter, lemon juice and zest will save the day?
By now the best part of a bottle of wine has been used in the cooking process (and I don’t mean as an ingredient), a sauvalanche warning is imminent and things are slightly losing shape. I put the potatoes on to boil, noting that there are only 2 left, none growing and no prospect of producing any until Christmas, which is a shame now that I’ve got all that lovely duck fat and nothing to roast in it. I could buy some spuds I suppose . . . .
Donald’s breasts are seasoned and scored, fried skin side down for 5 minutes, finished in the oven for a few minutes and left to rest. Unlike chicken, the flesh should be pink. I put the potatoes through a ricer (it really does make good mash), mix with hot (yes, it matters!) milk and butter, overcook the beans dreadfully and serve up something that doesn’t look very attractive at all.
It was delicious though. A lot better than prawn shells or liver. And despite setting a new World and Olympic record for Most Number Of Dirty Dishes Produced By One Person, I’m officially a duck convert.
