It it Quacks . . .

And then there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Doing a magret de canard is childishly simple. You simply can't ruin it unless you cook it into shoe leather, which I do NOT advise. Duck should be eaten rare, or at most, medium rare. It is not like chicken. It is not like turkey. It is strikingly similar in taste and texture to a very tender filet mignon of beef.

I brined mine in a salt and sugar solution overnight, but it appears not to have really affected the taste, as it would chicken breasts.

So:
Magret de Canard Wrapped in Bacon
Ingredients
1 large duck breast, about 1-inch thick, including fat
3 strips thick-cut bacon
Salt
Pepper

Method
With a very sharp knife, score the fat of the duck breast without cutting all the way through in a criss-cross fashion. Salt and pepper both sides. Wrap the breast with the bacon slices.

In a non-stick frying pan preheated to medium, set the duck, fat-side down. Don't move it around. Cook about 8 minutes, occasionally draining the duck fat (or saving it to fry some potatoes!). Turn the breast over and cook approximately six to eight minutes for rare. It's always better to cook it less than you think, because you can't uncook it if it's too well done.

Remove from pan and let rest on a warm plate tented in aluminum foil. If not eating soon, put in a 100-degree oven.

Serve sliced thinly. I removed the fat from the slices but it's not necessary, unless you're watching your waistline, in which case you wouldn't be eating duck.

Serve with scalloped potatoes and superfine green beans with a nice Sauvignon Blanc.

Duck breast, scored and seasoned

Duck breast, wrapped in bacon

Magret de Canard with scalloped potatoes, green beans and shiitake-pleurot sauce

A Better Duck I have Yet to Eat

It all came together like a symphony orchestra after a long tuning. Frankly, I don't know what I was agonizing about. The duck itself was the easiest thing out of everything to make. I literally had to cool my heels most of the afternoon, because making it ahead was not an option.

As I mentioned before, the sauce was fantastic, after the addition of some wild honey and mustard:

Sauce for Magret de Canard
Ingredients
2 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 lb. Shiitake mushrooms (about six large ones) stemmed and sliced
1/2 lb. Pleurot mushrooms (about 2 large ones) stemmed and sliced
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon flour
Handful Italian parsley, chopped
Handful fresh tarragon, chopped
1 cup good white wine
1 ½ cups veal or chicken stock
1 teaspoon wildflower honey
1 tablespoon piment espelette mustard (any dijon-style will do)
3/4 cup heavy cream (35%)
Salt and pepper to taste
Love

Method
Sauté the mushrooms in butter on medium heat until browned and have lost their liquid. Set aside. Sauté onions and garlic in butter until done; approximately 8 minutes.

Add wine and reduce to approximately half; add broth and reduce further, maybe 15-20 minutes all together. Add back the onion mixture, parsley and tarragon, cook a couple of minutes further. Purée everything with a hand blender and return to pan.

Tastes a lot better than it looks

When ready to finish the sauce, reheat on medium. Add honey and mustard and combine well. Add back mushrooms. Add cream and reduce on medium low heat, about 7 minutes. Adjust for seasonings. Serve!

Ze Sauce, Boss! Ze Sauce!

Oh

My

God

Don't you just love it when serendipity rears its welcome head, when a situation you thought was definitely going to be fucked turns out to be exactly the opposite?

It was the time that many cooks dread: time to make the sauce. One mistake and you're twisting in the breeze, 9 feet up. A hair too much salt and the table will fall silent. A hair too much sweetness and a vague rumbling will sweep the room. Too thick, too thin, too dark, too floury, too heavy . . .

But get it right, OOOOooooo . . . . . you've just won the chef's lottery. I cursed when I tasted it and it was too damn salty, but then I thought, wait a minute -- don't you dare put sugar in it. Half a teaspoon of wildflower honey and those sweet onions . . . that's all you're going to need! And I was luckily right.

I started by sautéeing onions and garlic, knowing I'm just going to liquidize them later. Remove. Then a tiny roux, some unsalted butter and some flour. Not too thick. Then some white wine. Reduce. Then some veal broth. Reduce. Then add back the onions/garlic, and some chopped fresh tarragon and parsley. Taste. Add a little more wine.

The mushrooms shrink ten-fold

Christ alive. We haven't even come to the heavy cream, a dab of duck fat and the brilliantly sautéed shiitakes and pleurots . . . this duck is going to be the happiest duck on Planet Earth.

Waiting for the cream

PS. Never underestimate the power of tarragon! I bought a whole bottle of Pernod thinking I was going to use it for the sauce but in the end decided to use tarragon and drink the Pernod instead. Life is swwwweeet.

Holy Indigenous Varietals, Batman!

I'm Blooking! Yes, blogging while I'm cooking. I can't believe the mess I'm in (wasn't there a rock song about that? Something to do with Doctor, Doctor, Please) but at least the first mess is behind me.

I'd drive you nuts if I posted three recipes in one shot, so let me do it post-by-post.

Twelve-Cheese Scalloped Potatoes with Bacon and Heavy Cream

Okay, I lost count of how many cheeses there are in this dish. Let's just say "lots." Right click to save and print for the attending cardiologist when you check in to ER.


Step one: The Mandoline

The "Ripple Cutter." If it seems to be grinning, it is.

See, you need a mandoline for this dish. Anything else and it will be a Fail, unless you're an expert potato slicer with an extremely sharp knife. So get one, a quality one. I have a Matfer.

Ingredients

2-3 large Idaho potatoes (don't use new or waxy Yukon Gold-type potatoes) depending on how many people you are going to serve

1 mid-sized red onion, very thinly sliced
4 slices thick bacon, preferably applewood-smoked, briefly broiled in the toaster oven and cut into one-inch slabs

Internal cheese
1 cup grated Gruyère cheese
1/2 cup aged cheddar
1/2 cup good goat cheese, sliced into rounds
1/2 cup Provolone cheese, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped garlic, mixed into the cheese
Parsley

Topping
1/2 cup Pecorino Romano cheese, grated, mixed into 1 cup crushed Italian-style croutons
3/4 cup heavy (35%) cream

Method
Ripple-cut the potatoes at about 1/8" thick. If not using immediately, immerse in cold water. Mix the garlic and parsley with the grated cheese

When ready to assemble dish, preheat oven to 350º (an oven thermometer is very handy).

Dry potato slices thoroughly with paper towels.

In a large cast iron pan, or baking dish, layer in the following order:

Potatoes to completely cover the bottom of the pan/dish
Bacon
Onions
Internal cheese, generously sprinkled
Cream, generously applied
REPEAT in same order

After the last layer of potatoes, sprinkle the remaining soft cheese mixture. Then  sprinkle thoroughly with Romano/bread crumb mixture.

Bake, uncovered, at about 250-300 degrees for half an hour. Check every ten minutes to make sure the top is not getting burned.

Cover pan/dish with lid or aluminum foil and bake one hour longer. Let rest. Serve.

Mandolined potatoes

The Suspects

The first layer

Ready to go into the oven

Eh voilà, your ticket to bump up to the head of the line to see Reza Pahlavi, your new cardiologist

Have I Bitten Off More Than I Can Chew?

Hmm . . . it's Cooking Saturday. In case you didn't know, it's when I tune in PBS and watch all the cooking shows and cook right along all day.

Brigitte's not here and I have no one to impress, so it's experimentation time . . . if it's lousy I'll just dump it and no one will be the wiser.

But on today's menu is duck breast in Shiitake and Pleurot Tarragon-cream sauce with three-cheese scalloped potatoes and superfine green beans . . . well, all good and well, until the bacon came along.

Yep, you read it right. My little eye espied the bacon, sitting frozen forlornly in its extra-thick glory, and I vowed to myself and it that I would not leave it there a minute longer. (Hell, I don't mind being dead and sliced up, but dead and sliced up AND frozen? Mercy).

So dinner has become BACON-WRAPPED Duck Breast with three-cheese scalloped potatoes WITH BACON and superfine green beans.

I'm up to my neck in it as I type. I'm documenting all with the camera, so look for a juicy update later today. I weighed 163 yesterday, but I'm going to weigh 263 tomorrow.

What I Had For Dinner Part XVII

What else would a bachelor make when his wife is on a ten-day trip? Why, garlic shrimp with spaghettini all' pomodoro, of course.

And what would he make tonight? Why, Thai green chicken curry with bamboo shoots, basmati rice and ghost-pepper salsa!

The Dreaded "Ghost Pepper"

So called. In actuality, it's the Bhut or Naga Jolokia, or Morich . . . it's all the same for the hottest chile in the world, by far. I guess, like some dreaded mafia guys, ya gotta have seven nicknames to match your reputation.

I'm not normally a masochist, but I definitely like hot food. I was a little suspicious when watching a youtube movie of some clown eating an entire Jolokia but I quickly realised that this man was very sincerely sorry he had done what he'd done.

I was foolish in my youth but I realise now that it is not at all hard to find some noxiously incendiary pepper to crash your mouth. I actually quite enjoy my habanero salsa, which involves finely chopping habaneros and mixing with tomato, onions, cucumbers, you name it.

But the Jolokia actually makes the habanero pale into green pepper territory. It will and can put you in a hospital.

So naturally, the other day while buying my Indian munchies at a place on Victoria, I was suddenly inspired to ask if they had any Jolokia.

Turns out they do. I mixed up some salsa to have with some curry I made the other day and I put a teaspoon of this stuff in it. I tasted a smidgeon but now I'm going to have the curry, with much more than a smidgeon. Wish me luck.

Here are the pics if you want to pick some up.