Eating - Jason Epstein [27]
Save the duck fat, which is said to be less harmful than other animal fats. Add a tablespoon of duck fat to a pound of lean chuck to make a poor man’s version of Daniel Boulud’s hamburgers with foie gras.
There are many kinds of ducks, and many ways to prepare them. My favorite is the magret or boned breast of the Moulard, a large duck bred from a Pekin female and a male Muscovy and raised for its fattened liver. Magret de Moulard can be found in high-quality markets or ordered directly from dartagnan.com, which sells magret as a by-product of its foie-gras business.
MAGRET DE MOULARD
Each half-breast weighs about a pound and serves two. You will need a cast-iron or heavy steel skillet, and a very sharp knife to score the skin through the fat but not into the meat in the finest cross-hatch you can manage. Lay the breast skin side down in the hot skillet, and reduce the heat so as to render the fat slowly without overcooking the meat, which must be served pink and warm: no more than 125 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, or even less, according to taste. Above all, do not overcook the magret. Pour off and save the fat as it accumulates: use it to braise a few turnips in three-quarter-inch dice. In about ten minutes, nearly all the duck fat will have been rendered. Then turn the breast over and sear the other side over high heat for a few minutes, until the meat feels firm to the touch. Keep the magret warm under a kitchen towel or in a barely warm oven.
Meanwhile, prepare Colonel Hawker’s Sauce.
Colonel Hawker is said to have been Wellington’s fowling officer in the Peninsula Campaign of 1809. My late dear friend, great editor, wise counselor, and fine cook, Angus Cameron, gave me this recipe years ago, and I have used it often for duck both tame and wild, venison, wild boar, and so on.
COLONEL HAWKER’S SAUCE
Chop three shallots coarsely, and sauté them in a tablespoon of duck fat or butter or a combination of the two. When the shallots have softened, add a tablespoon or so of arrowroot to make a roux, and cook for a minute or two. Add a cup of warm veal and duck demi-glace, which you can also order from D’Artagnan; a tablespoon each of Harvey Sauce and Mushroom Ketchup, nineteenth-century English condiments that you can order from the British Shoppe (1-800-842-6674) or thebritishshoppe.com (or substitute Worcestershire); juice of one lemon; four whole cloves; one teaspoon ground mace; and a half-teaspoon of cayenne. Reduce this slowly to about half its volume, then pour in a glass of good but not great port, and reduce again by half. Strain out the vegetables and spices, and boil down to thicken slightly if necessary. Cut the duck breast on the bias across the grain about a quarter-inch thick, or more or less as you like, fan it out nicely, and nap with the sauce. Serve with braised or sautéed turnip or puréed celeriac and a mélange of wild mushrooms.
SEVEN
AVE HOMARUS AMERICANUS
The joys no less than the agonies of childhood become the substructures of maturity. I remember long summer excursions a lifetime ago with my cousins to the lobster pound at Pemaquid Point, on the Maine coast, where, in a pine grove on a headland above a pounding sea, at tables of varnished pine, we ate lobster from steaming kettles of seawater; preceded by buckets of soft-shell steamer clams, which we dipped in mugs of clam broth to wash away the sand and then in drawn butter, in which we also dipped our lobster chunks. In winter there were lunches at Locke-Ober in Boston with my father, who referred familiarly to the grand old restaurant, with its dark paneling and gleaming silver, as Frank Locke’s, insider’s lingo of the previous century, and introduced me—I could have been no more than twelve—to the great Washington Street merchants, plump, red-faced, in their gray double-breasted suits, sipping their scotch and sodas at the other tables. There, in this dining room for men only, our lobster Savannah was served under silver domes by immaculate Irish waiters with thinning white hair and long white aprons