Duck with Port and Figs

Food & Cooking
1

Started here.

Caraway seed, shallots, and ginger blended to puree.

Yuck…

Quack quack quack quack quack…

Eventually i figured this much out!  I had no idea what I was doing really…

Breasts, legs… remove the wings, put those into a pot.

All the remaining garbage, on 2tbsp of olive oil.  By the way I ate the meat, I was hungry.

Scored the breasts.  Did a bad job of it.  Needs improvement.

Coated with that goop.

Went into the fridge.  Skin sides of breasts weren’t coated.  Keeping that in mind, look at the orientation used.

Boiling garbage and chicken stock, and water.

Figs I dried out.

Strained stock.  I refrigerated it overnight, removed the fat from on top.  Put it in a container, added COLD water (to not melt fat), shook and poured off.  Froze the duck fat.

Legs in rack with some water in the pan.  Fat drips off.

Olive oil and nasty goop I browned.

Added this and boiled until it looked like wet sand.

Then added this (notice the duck fat I later removed) and a bay leaf and boiled down to 1/4 remaining liquid, strained out.

As I said.

Strained that garbage into a sauce pot.  14 ounce Lodge cast iron butter melting pot really.

Added the figs, waited for them to plump for 2 minutes.  Added butter, salt, pepper.

Fried breasts in skillet, pouring off the fat repeatedly for 20 minutes as it rendered.  My bad scoring meant my breasts were still a bit fatty when I was done, instead of as crispy as I’d like.

And here’s the meat (flipped over the breasts and fried them to medium-rare in duck fat, of course… the breasts were exuding tons of duck fat, it was in the pan already).

Split the legs, sliced the breasts…

Cover with the figs and port sauce, and serve with a Pinot Noir.

Cost me about $30 overall, including a $15 bottle of ruby port.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/duck-with-figs-and-port-recipe/index.html

2

Nice.

Looks great. Always looking for a good duck recipe.

I used to make that “Crispy Aromatic Duck” dish that takes like three days to make. Marinated it in rice wine star anise, cinnamon, ginger and scallions. The next day steam it for about three hours Let it cool and dry for a few hours.Then deep fry it till it is crispy and flaking apart.  It is awesome but takes a lot of attention.

Now a days I have just been throwing a couple a whole rubbed ducks into the turkey fryer. They don’t need any sauce but youcould serve them with just about anything and they are good.

3

Food Network has like 100 of them.

Yeah this took me all day one day and like 3 hours the next.  If you can butcher a duck fast (5 minutes, tops, easy; took me an hour), you can do it in 3.5 hours total; however, it’s preferable to find time to chill down the stock and reclaim the duck fat.  It takes 3.5 hours to make the duck stock, and the longest single task besides that is 1 hour 15 minutes; one the stock is going, you can do everything else in parallel.  Unfortunately, it all finishes once the stock finishes.

Of course, if you can afford to tie up a burner boiling stuff, you can just leave the duck stock to boil.  It doesn’t require your attention, so that time is effectively free; you could even use the kitchen to do other things.  Make it a day ahead of time.

4

I had some Peking Duck while up at Chinatown in Philly earlier this year. It was excellent. It was very tasty. They use five spice and other ingredients. When you come into the restaurant the ducks are hanging in the window. The aromatics will make your mouth water.

5

I like duck. You can eat the darn whole thing! Takes a great deal more cooking than chicken but if you sear the s#!t out of the breasts and slice it thin it’s MMMM with a drizzle of demi-glaze. Confit is pretty easy too.

Usually, I’ll pick’em up on sale after the holidays though fresh would be nice.