Duck season pt. 2

I forgot to post this a while back. Ava got a kitchen set for her birthday, along with this game with little plastic ducks where you pick them up and match the shapes on the underside. A few nights later while I was making dinner, she took some of the ducks and put them in her little stainless saute pan and said "Look Daddy, duckies!" I was very proud.


She tried a little of the roasted duck leg I made the other night too and was actually really into it. I didn't have the heart to tell her she was eating duck, but then again, she didn't ask. It was more of her pointing at my plate and asking "Daddy, I try?"

Duck season

Shortly before Thanksgiving, I bought a duck along with the turkey breast I bought to do for T-day. It was your standard frozen duck available in most larger grocery stores, about 6 pounds - seemed like a reasonable price. I'd eaten duck a few times, and each time I was always amazed. My favorite had been a very simple preparation - a breast smoked with applewood and confit leg. Smoking was a no-brainer, but I am reserving confit for another time as it seemed like more work than I was willing to put in at this point, especially considering this was to be the first duck I've ever cooked.Freshly thawed in water over about 24 hours, I prepared for my first duck breakdown. I'd seen enough chickens and other poultry done on TV cooking shows before, and done a few chickens myself, so it didn't seem like too difficult a task. What I mainly remember is to use a sharp knife (preferably a boning knife, but all I had was a 10" chefs knife...) and let gravity work to your advantage.My plan was to lightly smoke everything with applewood, then give the breasts a quick pan searing and roast the legs, wings and carcass.Everything got a light smoking with about 1/2 a chimney of charcoal to keep the temp as low as possible while still getting the smoke I needed. It took about 20 minutes for my chips to give their all, which was jut about perfect. I had a hot saute pan waiting with a little butter in it (I had scored the breasts before going on the smoker), then seared them for about 3 minutes per side. Next time, I'll stick closer to 2 minutes as the duck was a bit more done than I'd hoped - closer to medium than medium-rare. Use a lid - the combination of hot butter and duck fat, while delicious, makes for impressive splattering. The breasts then took a 5 minute rest on the cutting board before serving. The fuzzy photo below is from all the steam coming off, but it was funny to me as it looked like some glamour shots filter.


Legs and wings went into a 425 oven for about 30 minutes to crisp the skin, then about another hour at 350 to finish. The temperature drop is a good point to drain some of the rendered fat off.


The carcass and neck then went into a pot with some aromatics for 4 or 5 hours and I have about 2 quarts of homemade duck stock, plus about 1.5 cups of duck fat that I drained off at various points during the whole process to use in some future application.

I think duck gets a bad shake as being a fatty bird. It is, but it's all on the surface. Much of it was rendered off during the cooking process. The fat left on the breasts can easily be pulled away, but you should try at least one or two bites of the breast with a little fat and crispy skin left on......fantastic. I think leaving the duck sans sauce is the best way to go to. I couldn't find one recipe in any of my cookbooks or cooking mags that didn't have some elaborate sauce to it. Aside from the smoking, I let the duck speak for itself.

During the whole process, I kept flashing back to the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he and Daffy are doing the whole "duck season...rabbit season..." thing. I kept replaying the part where they're both reading off the names of various recipes Elmer Fudd should try.

Bones

I realize there is a fair bit of irony in a former vegan getting excited about cooking (and subsequently eating) bone marrow, but nonetheless, here we are. This all started with my quest to find a substantial bone/chew-toy for Olive, our pit bull/shepherd mix, who seems to be able to dismantle any store-bought rawhide or other chew item within a matter of minutes. I remembered my mom always giving my childhood dog the bone from a large roundsteak she'd cook up and he always loved it. He was a much smaller dog than Olive though, who would probably swallow one of those roundsteak bones whole. In the process, I've seen and read things on how roasted bone marrow, though it's fatty and can be a challenging (gelatinous) texture, is truly delicious. So I decided to try and please both man and beast in a single culinary act. Olive was, of course, very happy with my decision to attempt this.

I'd seen the episode of No Reservations where Tony Bourdain and company drool over the roasted bone marrow on toast at Prune in NYC. Though I'm sure my preparation was far less glamorous, I consulted various internet sources and my trusty Joy of Cooking, all of which basically suggested to wash, dry, salt & pepper, roast and enjoy. Unfortunately, I overlooked the serving vehicle since I was too excited over just getting the bones themselves. Since the chances of finding decent bread in my town at the unreasonable hour I was preparing this were slim, I had to opt for the multi-grain sandwich loaf I'd bought a day earlier. I figured the bread was not to be the star of this effort anyway, so it shouldn't matter too much, especially on this marrow maiden journey. I essentially took the bones from the package, rinsed them, added some kosher salt and cracked pepper, then roasted at 300 for an hour. Admittedly, the result was a bit underwhelming. I was left with a far greater volume of liquid fat than spreadable marrow. If I have to go into failure analysis, I would list the following as possible contributors:

• I am a lousy cook
• Poor quality bones/marrow
• Excessive cooking time/temperature
• I am a lousy cook
  

Then, there is always the possibility that the "hype" behind this really just led me to believe I would end up with a far different product than I did. Maybe as the father of a two-year old, I just consume way too many fish sticks and toasted ravioli, and maybe my palate isn't what it should be to appreciate the finer, more subtle tastes such as this. Or maybe marrow is marrow and some people just really get off on digging fat and gelatin out of animal bones. This first draft really just netted me a little bit of beef flavored jelly on toast, with a lot of liquid fat I can use later in a sauce or other application. All things considered, it was pretty tasty. My colon-blow whole grain bread had a pretty strong overtone, so that was likely a contributor as well. A more neutral white(r) bread may have let the marrow shine a bit more. I got really excited about eating, so the after photo has a bite out of it......Olive is asleep at this point, but she's going to have quite a treat in the morning.

What's for dinner???

Sweet sweet short ribs....

- This was 4 beef short ribs, about 1.5 lbs.
- Oven to 375
- Season w/ rosemary/thyme/kosher salt/cracked pepper
- Sear in olive oil ~2min per side, remove to a plate
- Add a medium onion and a garlic clove, sliced to the remaining oil & fat that have rendered out during the sear. Give them a quick saute until just browned & remove to the plate w/ the ribs
- Add 2 cups stock (chicken will do, but I had turkey stock from the smoked turkey I did at Thanksgiving) and 1 cup beer (I used O'fallon smoked porter)

- Bring the stock & beer to a boil, scraping all the browned bits off the bottom of the pan

- Add the ribs & onions back to the pot, cover and braise for about 2 hours.
- Add a few chopped carrots in to the braising liquid about 5-6 minutes before the meat is done.
- After the ribs were done, I strained the sauced, which had greatly reduced and made a thin gravy by adding a little butter, flour and more pepper. Looking back, I would have just kept it as a reduction as the gravy tasted a bit flour-y. But even mediocre gravy is still gravy....
- The white stuff is horseradish mashed red potatoes
- Sorry the photos are blurry. Either my eyes are going or the fact that I was really hungry when making this wouldn't allow me to hold the camera steady...

I'm going to wreck you.

Yeah, this about sums it up.

Thanksgiving bird.

This year, we were again fortunate enough that no less than two families wanted us to come over for Thanksgiving. Maybe they just wanted to see Ava, but there is baggage associated with that (Celia and I). As such, we didn't have any leftovers for ourselves. I picked up a smoker at the end of summer and have been toying around with various cuts of meat and flavors, so I decided to smoke a turkey breast the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was the whole breast "cavity" so there were actually two breast sections, plus the carcass and some other bits left over to make stock.

I stuffed some olive oil soaked sage (from the garden) under the skin and used apples, cider, beer and bay leaves in the water pan. All I had in the wood department was apple chips and hickory chunks, so I started with the chips, then added the chunks about halfway through. The result was really good, given it was the first turkey I'd ever cooked. Really moist with a sweet, smoky flavor. I didn't really notice much in the way of an apple aroma or taste, but I'm sure it helped mellow out the smoke a bit. Rumor has it we're hosting Thanksgiving next year, so I'm really looking forward to coming up with a couple good ideas for turkey and some other animal to cook up.

Ava is two.

Ava turned two over Thanksgiving. Cliches aside, it's really hard to believe she was just a baby such a short time ago. A woman I work with very generously gave us a kitchen set for her (her grandkids grew out of it), which couldn't have been better timing. She must have played with it for two solid days straight. Now, she's always asking if we want coffee or chicken. She stews the magnetic refrigerator letters in a pot and calls it soup. I'm going to show her the art of braising soon.