(no subject)

[coraa]

Thank you all for voting in the last poll! I made pasta salad with tomatoes, caramelized onions, roasted red bell pepper, peas, carrots, spinach, pickled green beans, lemon juice and olive oil. And salt and pepper, of course. It came out quite nice!

Another question!

Tomorrow, I'm picking up a (whole, 4 or 5 pound) duck at the farmer's market. I'm not sure what to do with it! My thoughts are either to do a straightforward roast of the whole bird, or to remove the breast for seared duck breast and roast the legs and wings separately. (Either way, I'll save the duck fat that renders off, of course.) But if any of you have ideas or experience with cooking duck, I'm all ears.

Comments

[sollers]

I have a variety of recipes including for wild duck and indeed wild goose. I'll have a look tomorrow when I'm more compos mentis (younger daughter came round for dinner tonight and she tends to operate on the basis of "one person, one bottle")

[coraa]

Thank you! :D

[veejane]

My kin made duck for a family event once: actually he imported it illegally from Canada, the offending items hiding discreetly in a cooler under the dog's seat. They were breasts only, not the whole bird.

He cut them in half, skin-on, and seared them on both sides in the oven on a pan with space for the drippings to fall into. The drippings were multitudinous. He commented at the time that generally one would eat duck rare inside, i.e. not more than seared at the edges, but in deference to the squeamishness of teenagers he would roast them mostly through.

The meat itself was fine, the skin a fingerswidth of hot jello which many declined to eat. I found it rich to the point of unpleasantness, but not beyond that point. The grease unfortunately smells like armpit, so use it up on something extremely bland like potatoes, and do so quickly.

[coraa]

Thank you!

I think whatever I do with them, I'll make sure to render down the skin; I've had delicious crisp-skinned duck, but gelatinous-with-fat doesn't sound like my kind of thing. (I'm told that you can make wonderful french fries/fried potatoes with duck fat.)

[elleth]

Oh, duck. I have one recipe for duck breast in orange-cream-and-herb sauce that so far got very high ratings from everyone tasting it, and several members of my family are very picky eaters. It's here, if you are interested. :)

[coraa]

Oooh, that does look good. Thank you!

[squirrel-monkey.livejournal.com]

http://fishmonkey.blogspot.com/2010/09/delicious-duck.html

[squirrel-monkey.livejournal.com]

(Also, since I cannot comment on Dreamwidth: properly rendered fat leaves the skin thin and crispy; if it appears thick and has some fat under, more rendering is needed).

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link! And yeah, many of my favorite duck dishes are things I had at Asian restaurants where the duck skin was rendered to an almost shattering crispness.

[cwendy41.livejournal.com]

Like Peking duck!

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

You will have a fresh duck *envy* (we had a really good butcher who had fresh duck at a local greenmarket for a year, then he vanished. I got spoiled by his ducks.

Anyway, this is a recipe that amuses me, even if I never make the glaze:

http://www.confabulist.com/confabulist/2002/02/ostensibly_simp.html

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that this particular farmer continues to offer ducks, either year-round or seasonally, because yum.

And that is my kind of recipe!

[artemisgrey.livejournal.com]

The only duck related dish I've made is Turducken... It was awesome, but very time consuming considering that it was from scratch. You've got to take a picture when you're done thought because I love me some ducky-type food!

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I will! I can't wait to see how it turns out. :)