Snow Day Cassoulet

We had our first real snowfall of the season last weekend, a half a foot of light, fluffy splendor that transformed the landscape overnight.  And with that snow came the first serious cold of the winter, bringing a definitive end to what had been a long, lingering, quite lovely autumn.  We had the woodstove blazing 24/7, and thoughts immediately turned to warm, filling, savory comfort cooking.  For me, nothing epitomizes that more than a fragrant, crusty and rich cassoulet.

Whether in the iconic brown pot of New England baked beans crowned with a square of salt pork, a French cassoulet rich with pork rind and lard fume, or Cajun red beans and rice simmered with ham hocks and sausage, dried beans and pork products go together like, well, pork and beans.  It’s one of those elementally satisfying combinations.  I love almost all iterations of this classic partnership, from humble baked beans from a can up to an elaborately garnished, ceremoniously presented cassoulet.  But the cassoulet holds a special place in my heart, being so very…gallic, as well as delicious.

In my younger days I would happily spend two or three days making a cassoulet that called for pork, pork rind, pork fat, salt pork, and sausage, along with a couple pounds of lamb and a whole duck.  It was a mammoth production, incredibly rich, delicious, and festive—and I’ll probably never make it again.  In some ways, at least as far as the meats were concerned, that particular cassoulet favored quantity over quality, since with so many different proteins in play it’s extremely difficult to get everything to turn out right.  And frankly, at this point in my life, the thought of contending with lamb, duck, pork, and sausage, all on one plate, leaves me feeling slightly bilious, and exhausted.

The cassoulet I make nowadays—and I make it a few times from fall through early spring—is a streamlined version, well garnished with savory pork, perhaps a leg of duck confit, but much less meat-centric than many.  The thing is, I really like beans, and I consider it the mark of a really good and thoughtful cook to be able to produce a cassoulet in which the luxuriously coddled beans draw as much praise as the meats.  Though streamlined, this is not a recipe to throw together for a quickie weeknight dinner (for that, make a big batch and savor the leftovers).  But it can easily be accomplished in a single day—get the time-consuming pre-simmering of the beans started after breakfast, and you’ll not be rushed to pull the crusty, fragrant, unctuous final product out of the oven at dinner time.

One key element of the streamlining is that I don’t soak the beans overnight, as so many recipes for dried beans suggest.  The reason I’ve omitted this step is simple:  it is completely unnecessary.  What I do, instead, is to parboil the beans for 10 minutes, drain them, discarding the cooking liquid, and then begin cooking them again, more slowly, with lots of aromatics.  Parcooking the beans and dumping the first water also helps to minimize the digestive difficulties that beans, “the musical fruit,” can produce.  Now that we’ve saved 12 to 16 hours, as well as potential social embarrassment, let’s get on with it….

There are beans under there, ready to simmer.

The key to a great cassoulet, as with many bean dishes, and long-simmered or braised dishes in general, is to use loads of aromatic vegetables.  I tend to think that back in the day cassoulet was sustenance food in which relatively small amounts of very flavorful meats were used to garnish and enrich a dish predominantly composed of vegetables.  Lately cassoulet has become a standard winter addition to the menus of many gallic-inflected restaurants, and the dish there presented is often more of a meat-fest than an exaltation of the humble, but delicious, nourishing, and versatile haricot sec.  (There was a recipe for the cassoulet from St Paul’s Heartland restaurant going around last winter; it called for roughly nine pounds of meat to garnish one pound of dried beans, and I just thought, woof, that is not my idea of a cassoulet.)

Bacon and pork shoulder browning.

And anyway, cassoulet is not a restaurant dish.  It’s a dish you want to soak in all day, luxuriate in the aromas of simmering duck confit, fall into the warm embrace of vegetables turning soft and yielding in lovely bacon drippings.  On a snowy winter day you want to get your beans simmering and then go for a brisk walk—or shovel the first real snowfall, as we had the opportunity to do this past weekend.  Then when you come back in, oh, the smell!  The warmth of the house and kitchen!  The anticipation of tucking in, come dinner time, to such satisfying food!  Yes, cassoulet is not just a dish, but an experience.  It requires a few steps, but none of it is difficult.

Roast pork shoulder rests amid yummy drippings.

 As to the meats I use in my cassoulet:  bacon is essential.  I always have a hunk of home-smoked bacon in the fridge and/or freezer, but good quality slab bacon is widely available now.  Take the time to procure some good, naturally smoked bacon—it’s one of the flavor backbones of this dish.  I also often add a piece of pork shoulder that I’ve either smoked or roasted.  In either case, I set it to macerate overnight with a rub of salt, pepper, and maple syrup.  Details below.  And finally, for the last half hour of baking, I’ll nestle into the beans either 1) a couple of legs of duck confit that I have previously set in a skillet to crisp the skin and warm the meat, or 2) some good smoked sausage, also browned in a separate skillet before adding to the beans.  You could add both, but then things are getting a little meatier than I like.  But—you could skip the pork shoulder and do confit and sausage.  That would be delightful.  
 

Ready for the oven.

Whatever meaty things you choose to garnish your cassoulet is up to you.  The main thing is the beans, unctuous, savory, yielding. You could do without added meat altogether, frankly—the basic beans with some crusty warm bread, a glass of red wine, a salad, this would make a lovely repast.  It could, I dare say, even be made vegetarian, with the addition of some extra vegetables into the mix, and perhaps something like dried porcini mushrooms or morels to give it added depth and umami.  I tasted a very good vegetarian cassoulet once, prepared by my friend, the chef Roger Payne.  

But hey, you know, those beans aren’t going to cook themselves.  Allons-y…

While not the most photogenic of dishes, cassoulet is soul-satisfying fare.

A Snow Day Cassoulet

Serves at least six

For the pork shoulder:

1 pound pork shoulder

2 teaspoons salt

1 ½ tablespoons maple syrup

Black pepper from the mill

2 tablespoons oil, bacon fat, or fat from duck confit

You need to start this at least the night before you plan to make your cassoulet, but it can be made several days in advance.  Rub the pork with the maple syrup and then sprinkle on the salt on all sides.  Give all surfaces a generous grinding of black pepper.  Cover and let stand in the fridge overnight, or longer.  Turn it a couple times during this time if you think of it.

The next day, heat your oven to 325 degrees.  Blot the meat off with paper towels and discard any liquid that has gathered.  Put the pork in a small baking dish (I use an oval ceramic gratin to both macerate and roast) along with the oil or fat.  Roast the pork for 2 hours, or until it is nicely browned.  Turn every 30 minutes or so to promote even browning.  Remove from the oven and set aside.  Be sure to keep the fat and drippings remaining in the baking dish.  We’ll add these to the cassoulet later.

1 pound great northern beans (I've also made cassoulet with cranberry beans; many dried beans would work. I think navy beans are too small.)

¾ cup chopped light green leek tops

1 small shallot, chopped (or use a bit of onion)

1 small carrot, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 small dried red chile, optional

2 whole cloves

½ teaspoon whole black peppercorns

1 or 2 bay leaves

3-4 sprigs fresh thyme, or ½ teaspoon dried

¾ teaspoon salt

Rinse the beans well and sort through them to remove any debris or stones (nothing ruins a lovely meal like biting into a rock).  In a large saucepan, add the beans and water to cover by at last an inch.  Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer, and simmer for 10 minutes.  Turn off the heat, cover the pan, and let the beans sit for another 10 minutes.  Drain the beans, discarding the first cooking liquid.  Return the beans to the saucepan along with all the vegetables, spices, herbs above EXCEPT THE SALT.  Again add water to cover by an inch or so, bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes.  Now add the salt and simmer for 30 minutes more.  Check the doneness—you want the beans to be cooked through.  Some may be even falling apart, a few may be al dente still, but overall you want the beans to be DONE at this point.

Set the beans aside when they’re cooked to your preference.  DO NOT DRAIN.

For the final assembly:

4 to 5 ounces good slab bacon, in ¾-inch squares, more or less

1 tablespoon oil or confit fat

1 small leek—about 1” in diameter—chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1 small carrot, chopped

3 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped

½ cup canned tomatoes, chopped

3 to 4 sprigs fresh thyme or ½ teaspoon dried

Salt and freshly ground pepper

¾ cup fresh breadcrumbs

Duck confit or smoked sausage, optional—I would allow one confit portion, thigh or drumstick, or about three ounces of sausage per person

Heat your oven to 325.  Cut the pork shoulder you previously roasted into 4 pieces.  Heat a large dutch oven (enameled cast iron is ideal) over medium-low heat and add the bacon.  As it starts to render its fat, add the pork shoulder, and get it nice and brown while the bacon cooks.  When the bacon and pork shoulder are nicely brown, remove from the pan.  Remove excess fat from the pan, leaving about 2 tablespoons.  Add the leek, onion, and carrot, and cook these over medium heat until they are well wilted.  Add the garlic and cook for another minute, stirring, then add the tomatoes.  Cook, stirring constantly, until the tomatoes have given up all their moisture and even begun to brown a bit.  Then return the beans and their cooking liquid to the pan (if you happen to notice the whole cloves or the now leafless thyme twigs, take those out).  The liquid should cover the beans by a half-inch or so.  If it does not, add water or stock to that level.  

Add the bacon and pork shoulder to the pan, along with a couple more sprigs of thyme and a few grinds of black pepper.  Taste the liquid for salt and add a bit of salt if it seems under-seasoned, but note that it will take up some of the salt from the bacon and pork as it bakes, so go easy.  If you’ve saved the drippings from roasting the pork shoulder, scrape these into the beans, as well.  Bake uncovered for 1 ½ hours, stirring every half hour or so.  Cooking time varies a lot from one batch of dried beans to the next, so when the cassoulet is done is a bit of a judgment call.  They’re done when they have taken up most of the liquid and are very tender, but still holding their shape—well, a good part of them, anyway; some will certainly have collapsed, and that’s fine.  You want the beans to be a little bit liquid when you declare them done, as they’ll thicken as they cool.  You can take the cassoulet to this nearly done stage a few hours to a few days before you want to serve it—it reheats very nicely.

About 30 minutes before you want to serve the cassoulet, tuck the duck confit or sausage that you’ve crisped/browned into the beans.  Then toss the breadcrumbs with a tablespoon or so of fat or oil, and stir well to moisten them evenly.  Sprinkle the crumbs evenly over the top of the cassoulet and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until the crumbs are brown.  If you have convection in your oven, this is a good use for it.

Serve hot from the oven.  Make sure everyone gets a portion of the various meats.  Serve with crunchy, warm country bread and a deep red wine—I would go for a Bordeaux, Cahors, Cotes de Rhone, or Rioja.

 

Text and photos copyright 2016 by Brett Laidlaw

Hen of the Woods Confit

The hen of the woods are starting to come in, pretty much on schedule this year--I expect to see them in early September and continuing through the month.  Last year they apparently started in mid-August, and since I wasn't tuned in, most of what I found late in August and early September were already way past their prime.  Which was a shame, because it's one of my favorite wild mushrooms, and certainly the most abundant, at least in terms of sheer weight, since a single specimen can weigh several pounds.

Not the most beautiful of specimens, but it worked well in the confit after some trimming.

The sudden influx of fungal flesh presents a problem, along with much pleasure.  It's a versatile mushroom, excellent sauteed, roasted, even grilled, and it's an amenable companion to pretty much any meat or fish.  With its firm texture it can add a meaty element to vegetable dishes, like a promiscuous ragout of the almost paralyzing variety of garden produce available now, served over polenta or noodles.  One of my favorite ways to serve it is a simple saute of hens and red onion or shallot in plenty of olive oil, tossed with noodles and sprinkled with excellent aged gouda, like Marieke.

Well-rinsed, shredded hens in the casserole with sunflower oil and tasty duck and pork fat.

So we eat a lot of it fresh when we have it, but can rarely consume it all, even after giving away a quantity.  I've yet to find a satisfactory way to preserve it.  I think some people dry it, and I should look into that some more, though that seems a last-ditch approach.  The best I've come up with so far is par-cooking it with oil, either in the fry pan or oven, then packing portions into plastic bags and freezing it.  The confit presented here today takes that approach to the extreme, cooking the mushrooms in a lot of fat for a long time.  Initial impression:  it's a winner.

After a couple hours in the oven.

I took 12 ounces of cleaned, trimmed hens, torn into shreds about an inch wide and three inches long--of course, these are going to be pretty irregular, doesn't matter.  I tossed the shreds with a teaspoon of salt, and added these to a lidded glass casserole along with:

1/2 a big shallot (2 ounces by weight) sliced
3 cloves of garlic peeled and halved lengthwise
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
10 black peppercorns
5 juniper berries, crushed
3/4 cup fat

For the fat here, I used 1/2 cup sunflower oil and 1/4 cup of a pork and duck confit blend.  Next time I'll try it with all sunflower oil.  I would add more shallots next time, too.

Stick the covered casserole in a 350 oven for an hour, tossing every 15 minutes.  Lower the heat to 300, remove the lid, and cook for another hour or so, again tossing from time to time.

The mushrooms will give off a lot of water at first.  In the long cooking this water will evaporate, and at the end the hens will wind up almost frying gently in clear, pure fat.  If you've made duck or another kind of meat confit before, this will sound familiar.  It's the exact same progression.

At the end I removed the hens from the fat, not bothering to drain them particularly well, and found that 8 ounces remained from the original 14-plus ounces of hens, shallots, etc.  And I was able to pour out a generous half cup of fat from the 3/4 cup that went in.  The hen shreds remain a firm, appealing texture, and they're imbued with the aromatic additions and the tang of flavorful fat.  I packed them into a Weck jar, and when I added back the fat, it came right to the top.  I'll keep it in the fridge for a while and see how the flavors develop.  With the next batch I may try freezing some.

For a lovely lunch on a cool breezy day, after spending the morning in the garden harvesting ahead of possible frost this weekend, I threw some of the hen confit in a pan along with some slivered jalapeno.  The hens shed a good bit of oil, and when they were hot and the chile wilted, I removed them from the pan and tossed them with a few leaves of parsley.  A little butter in the pan, and I soft-scrambled a couple of eggs.  Served with the hens on top, sliced tomatoes on the side, toasted sourdough. 

I'm ready to get back in the garden, then later perhaps into the woods again, to see if there are more hens about.


Text and photos copyright 2014 by Brett Laidlaw

More Fun With Pork Belly: Rillons

Prior to the era of nose-to-tail/free-range/locally sourced/compassionate carnivorism, before this time of intense scrutiny of all things ingestible, when it seems as if there's a semi-professional charcuterie in every other pantry, pork belly was basically just the punchline in a hoary old Midwestern gag.  "Pork belly futures up a quarter," in the daily radio report from the mercantile exchange (on WCCO-AM eight-three-oh), epitomized all things quaint and farmy, and a way of life which, to the residents of the burgeoning metropolis, was about as relevant as covered wagon days.

All we knew of actual pork belly was bacon, and since that was the chemical-laced, water-logged, pre-sliced stuff hermetically sealed in plastic and cardboard, sometimes with only a representative single slice showing through the packaging, we surely didn't know that it was cured, smoked pork belly; hell, we might not have even known that it came from pigs.

Enter the cult of bacon, the time of lard love, of reverence for homely cuts and eating low on the hog.  Pork belly has found its time to shine.  And shine it does, what with all that fat, it really can't help it.  In fact, while it was ardently embraced by chefs eager to elevate the rustic and the local, it may have already begun to decline.  The problem with pork belly has nothing to do with its inherent lovableness (see above, that endearing fat), but perhaps that it's hard to coax subtlety from something that is so wholeheartedly what it is.  Like an overly cheerful companion on a long car ride, its very virtues can become cloying.  I recall a dinner not too long ago when I plated up a beautiful meal of braised pork belly for Mary and me, and we both started in with yummy noises a'plenty; but before we had finished half our portions we both set down out silverware, patted at our shiny chins with our napkins, and in unison uttered, "Woof."  The richness was just a little too much.

But lately I've discovered a new and excellent way with pork belly.  What I've "discovered" is in fact an extremely old method of preparation, one that, as with duck or goose confit, was originally a method of preservation: rillons, a specialty of the Loire River valley in France.  It's marinated chunks of pork belly which are browned and then simmered a good long while in fat.  Now, if you're anything like me you're already thinking that sounds pretty good, but here's the clincher:  the result is remarkably light and highly, highly edible.  The lean meat becomes as tender as a well cooked pot roast, and the fat turns ethereal.  This is seriously good pork, mes amis.

As with confit of fowl, the method is extremely simple, though the process may seem daunting, involving as it does large quantities of hot fat.  But here you can do quite a small batch, using a pound and a half of meat or so, and it's very manageable, and well worth it.  Because the cooking liquid isn't pure fat but rather a combination of fat, water, and wine or cider, it's not unnervingly oily.  Bonus:  since the chunks of belly render as they cook, you actually end up with more fat than you started with, and that lovely, fragrant lard is a splendid cooking medium for eggs or potatoes, or for making authentic and delectable flour tortillas.  Mary used some in cornbread that we had last night with our brisket and beans.

I've made rillons twice in recent weeks.  I took my basic method from an intriguing website I've just started reading, Cuisine Campagne--hey, she's tapping birch trees this week! Very cool. It's in French, but you can "translate" it, and while the resulting English is pretty tortured, you can get the gist. In my first try I used white wine and a combination of duck and pork fat; second time around, I kept it ultra-local with cider and all pork fat. Both times it was excellent, I really can't compare. Both the wine and cider add a tangy note to the finished dish, which further mitigates the unctuousness.

How to serve: In the Loire, rillons are often part of an assiette de cochonailles--a platter of pork pieces--served as a first course or filling lunch. You might get some pieces of rillons, a little pot of rillettes (I'm not sure what that rill- root means; anyone have a guess?), some sausage or a slice of terrine, some ham, headcheese--much like the now ubiquitous charcuterie plate, but entirely cochon-centric. With highly flavored red meat products, you might automatically think red wine would be the thing to drink--think again: in the Loire white wine rules, made from the sauvignon blanc (Pouilly-Fumé, Sancerre, Quincy) or chenin blanc (Vouvray, Saumur, Touraine) grape varieties. The crisp acidity of these wines goes beautifully with the assertive pork flavors.

I turned my rillons toward Alsace:  the first batch made a nice addition to the choucroute garnie I recently wrote about. The second time around I also matched pork and cabbage, but this time the rillons stood alone on a bed of oven-braised fresh red cabbage (which was local stuff, Wisconsin-grown, purchased at Seward Co-op).  Here's how that worked:  I had the rillons luxuriating in the solidified cooking fat in the fridge.  I pried a few pieces out and let them sit at room temp so most of the remaining attached fat could melt off.  I shredded a couple cups of cabbage and spread it in the bottom of a baking dish, placed the rillons on top of that, stuck it in a 400-degree (guessing) oven.  After five minutes or so I stirred the cabbage so it was evenly coated with fat released by the rillons, and baked for 25 to 30 minutes, until the rillons were very well browned and the cabbage was tender with still a little bite.  After removing the rillons I added a splash of cider vinegar and some salt and pepper to the cabbage; serve it forth, it was great.  (The little galettes in the pictures were a spur-of-the-moment concoction of potato, apple, and shallot tossed with butter, cider vinegar and maple syrup, baked in little tart molds; not a bad result for a first try, but it could use some refinement.)

There you have it, more reasons to love our friend the pig.  I ordered too much pork belly for the smoking demo I did at the Hay River Transition Initiative event, so things have been very porky around here, indeed.  In the fridge I've still got a couple pieces of salted belly that will become petit salé aux lentilles, another traditional, rustic French dish that has always intrigued me, but which I've never made.  You will likely see the outcome right here.

Salut!

Rillons

1 ½ pounds pork belly in 2-inch cubes
¾ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon confit spice (i.e., quatre épices )
Pepper
1 bay leaf crumbled
½ teaspoon thyme leaves

1 tablespoon duck fat or lard
½ cup duck fat or lard
¾ cup dry hard apple cider or white wine
1/2  cup water

Mix the pork belly with salt, herbs and spices, and marinate several hours at room temp or overnight refrigerated. Heat oven to 325. In an ovenproof dutch oven or large saucepan brown the belly pieces well, on all sides, in the 1 tablespoon of duck fat or lard. Add the additional ½ cup of duck fat or lard, the cider or wine, and the water. Bake for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. The pork should be very tender but not falling apart.

Remove the pork from the fat to drain on a wire rack if you want to use it right away. To store, place the pork pieces in a glass or ceramic container and pour the fat over them. They will keep for two weeks or more in this way.


Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw

Duck, Deconstructed

We eat pretty well out at Bide-A-Wee, especially considering that we have no kitchen to speak of--no sink, no refrigerator, no appliances of any sort as there is no electricity to run them. Well, we have an oven, but it has to be preheated for about three hours before it's ready to use. In the cold months we simmer and braise very merrily atop our woodstove, Haggis. At any time of year I'm happy to grill over hardwood coals--last winter I actually built a fire and grilled steaks in the midst of a wind-chill advisory.

In the warm months our main heat sources are the campfire/grill and a two-burner Coleman propane stove. Pretty basic equipment, but still there's not much you can't cook very creditably with it. For weekend trips we tend to keep things fairly simple--a steak and veg on the grill, potatoes in the coals, or even a made-ahead stew or hearty soup that we just have to heat up.

When we have a few more days to slow down and relax, it's often a pleasure to cook out of doors, and prepare things a little more elaborate. So on our last Bide-A-Wee vacation we brought along a duck. The breasts and thighs were grilled and napped in that unchaste berry sauce described in the previous post.

The carcass and neck, with all the fat and skin removed, were chopped up and browned well in our dutch oven. Then I added a variety of aromatic vegetables--leek, fennel stalks, carrot, onion, garlic--stirred those around with the duck bits for a while, added some thyme and black pepper, covered it all with water and let it simmer for a couple of hours. That provided the basis for my berry sauce, as well as a rich element in a South Shore fish chowder I prepared a couple of days later. I had enough left over to add to a cassoulet that I made at home in Saint Paul, using duck confit that I prepared at Bide-A-Wee.


Drumsticks, wings, heart and gizzard, liberally salted, peppered, tossed with thyme and a few cloves of garlic. At home I would have used the quatres-épices confit spice , Madeleine Kamman's recipe. I had some b-b-q spice rub at the cabin, quite a similar thing, in fact. With a little piment d'espelette, it worked fine.

To make confit you need fat, lots of fat. Fortunately, ducks come with lots of fat. You obtain rendered fat by cutting the fatty duck skin into strips, about a half-inch wide by two or three inches long. Put those in a pan, cover the duck skin with water and bring it to a boil. Simmer medium briskly until all the water boils off. At that point most of the fat will have rendered out of the skin. Watch carefully as the duck skin turns a nice golden brown. At that point you've gotten out all the fat you're going to get.

Fish the cracklings out with a fork, and drain them on a paper towel. With just a little salt, these become one of the best things you could put beside an aperitif, a glass of scotch or a martini, assuming they survive until happy hour. At our house they often mysteriously disappear well before dinner time.

The duck legs and wings sat in their seasoning overnight, and I dried them with paper towels just before cooking. At home I'm usually making confit with four drumstick-and-thigh portions, and I use a big casserole or dutch oven. With the smaller batch I made at Bide-A-Wee I just put the drumsticks and wings right into the pan in which I rendered the fat, and when I was finished cooking a couple of racks of spareribs, I put the confit pot on the grate, under the lid, to cook slowly as the coals died down. I turned the duck once or twice while it cooked, slowly turning tender and unctuous in the bubbling fat.

I find it both enjoyable and satisfying to spend an afternoon that way, with lots of pots on the fire, making a lot from a little, anticipating the fine eating that will be my reward. Nothing went to waste. Instead of "Duck, Deconstructed," I could have titled this "Everything but the Quack".

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Bide-A-Wee Confit ( X 2)

I don't know why we don't eat more duck in this country. In both Europe and Asia duck is a common sight in markets and on restaurant menus. When I taught English in China in 1989-90, duck was cheaper than chicken, more readily available than beef or lamb. What French bistro or brasserie doesn't feature magret or confit de canard on its menu, or a seared slab or paté of foie gras, a salad topped with preserved gizzards and hearts?

A well-raised duck offers the dark, succulent meat that gourmands adore, and the pleasures of game without having to shoot something. Everyone I know loves duck, so why don't we see it more often?

Oh, it just came to me: It's the fat.

As we became a nation of skinless-boneless-chicken-breast eaters, as all the flavor was drained out of commercially raised pork in the fat-phobic decades that preceded the anti-carb movement, as even our beloved American hamburgers turned dry and dull with the move to extra-lean ground beef (do not even get me started on turkey burgers!)...well, what was a duck to do? With all that dark, dense meat enrobed in noble fat, encased in gorgeous yellow skin, there was no way the duck could pass itself off as "the other white meat," or pretend in any way to be lean cuisine.

A duck must be a duck, and it's a shame we can't accept it for what it is. Fortunately, more and more people are now doing that. Perhaps the ultimate acceptance of canard-comme-canard is to face its fattiness full on, and that means confit de canard--duck legs cooked in duck fat. When I say cooked, I mean poached, immersed, completely submerged in rendered duck fat. This does not mean you have to eat a bowl of duck fat, though it's tempting.

Making a confit of fatty meat--usually duck, goose, or pork--is actually an ancient means of preserving meat. The meat was first salted quite heavily, then cooked slowly in fat, and finally sealed in jars, completely covered in fat. With the salt preventing bacteria growth, and the fat protecting the meat from air-borne contaminants, the confit would keep for months.

Following the counsel of Madeleine Kamman in In Madeleine's Kitchen I make a confit of duck legs that focuses more on flavor than preservation, though even this less salty version will keep for at least a couple of weeks.

Here in the Twin Cities, we're lucky to have a great, reliable source for nice meaty duck legs from Au Bon Canard, a foie gras and duck producer in southwestern Minnesota. We find Au Bon Canard products at Clancey's Meats and Fish, a local treasure run by Kristin Tombers. Clancey's doesn't seem to have a website--Kristin, why don't you have website? Clancey's is located in the Linden Hills neighborhood of southwest Minneapolis, 4307 Upton Avenue South, 612-926-0222. If you haven't yet aquired a supply of duck fat for making confit, Kristin and crew can set you up with that. If you want to try confit without making your own, you can buy Clancey's' house-made version, and I'm sure you'll be very happy.

Once you have the fat, though, making duck confit is simple. And you get to keep the fat, which is the best thing ever for sautéeing potatoes. It keeps indefinitely in the freezer, and even gets better with age, as it acquires the flavors of the successive confits you cook in it.

One of the things that makes Madeleine's confit (and hence, yours and mine) the best you'll ever taste is the spice mix, quatre-épices, which flavors it. This will make enough for many confits, and is good with other duck, game, or pork preparations:

Quatre-épices a la Madeleine

2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/8 tsp ground cloves

Just mix it all up and keep in a tightly closed jar in a dark place. A little goes a long way. (Yes, the name means "four spices," and it contains six spices; I have no explanation for this.)

Now to make the confit:

4 meaty duck legs, thigh and drumstick together--if you have gizzards, hearts, wings, or necks, use those, too; the giblets and shreddy meat are great on a dinner salad

Fat to cover, about four cups (it needn't be absolutely submerged as it cooks; the legs do tend to float somewhat, and you can turn them a couple of times in the cooking)

quatre-épices
salt and pepper
garlic, eight to ten cloves, peeled and left whole
a couple of bay leaves
fresh thyme, optional

A day before you make the confit, you must salt and spice it: Dry the legs with paper towels, then salt them. I don't use a particular amount of salt. What I do is, salt them once as you would season any kind of meat prior to cooking, but don't be mean with the salt, season them well. Now do that again, and then once more. Do that on both sides. Add a generous grind of black pepper, then just a judicious sprinkling of the spice mixture, both sides. The legs shouldn't be coated with the spices, just nicely speckled.

Cover them and place them in the fridge overnight, or for a couple of days, even. Prior to cooking, drain off any accumulated juices, and dry the legs with paper towels.

Heat your oven to 275 F. Arrange the legs in a single layer in a casserole or heavy pot large enough to hold legs and fat, without the fat coming right to the brim (I use our seven-quart Le Creuset dutch oven). Spread the garlic cloves around, and the bay leaves and thyme if you're using it. Cover the duck with the fat, but, as I say, don't worry if the legs broach the surface a bit--they will shrink with cooking, and also give off their own fat to add to the reservoir.

Cook for two to three hours, covered, turning the legs once or twice during that time. I look for the fat to be clear and bubbling at the end--it will cloud as juices come off the duck. Those juices will settle at the bottom of the pan, and you'll want to save them--they're a bit salty, but absolutely delicious.

Let the duck cool in the fat. You can use it the same day, or store it for a couple of weeks. Prior to cooking, dig the duck out of the fat and let it sit at room temp for excess fat to melt off. Then what I like to do is either fry or broil it to crisp the skin and warm the meat through.

Here's one preparation we made at Bide-A-Wee, our tiny, rustic Wisconsin cabin:


We browned the legs in the dutch oven, took them out and removed all but a tablespoon or two of fat, added some chopped onion and garlic, then some of the mixed sauerkraut of cabbage, beets, and carrots I made in the fall, rinsed, drained, squeezed dry. A little of that delicious fond saved from the bottom of the confit pan, and just a splash of water. That all simmered very gently atop the woodstove. Just before serving we added back the duck to warm, and some fingerling potatoes we had boiled separately. It made for a very pleasant table.

A couple of weeks later we were back at the cabin over Christmas, and we brought out the other two legs from the same batch of confit. This time we served it with a mixed mash of market and garden vegetables--carrots, parsnips, potatoes, celery root. Those were all peeled, cut up and boiled until tender but not falling apart. After browning the confit I left a bit of fat in the pan, sautéed a chopped leek and a couple cloves of chopped garlic in that, added the vegetables and a ladle of reserved veg-cooking liquid, and mashed it with a fork. Serve the duck right on top of the mash.

That wine, a Graves from Vieux Chateau Gaubert, 2000, was fantastic. It had been sitting around in our basement for at least a couple of years, I think. Red Graves wines are not the first thing I think of when I think of Bordeaux, but they're often very good, and a good value.

Really cuts through all that yummy ducky fat.

Text and photos copyright 2008 by Brett Laidlaw