Duck confit with beets

Well the long wait for the confit to age in the fridge is over, the legs had been submerged in the duck fat for a little over two months and it was well and truly time to dig them out and roast them up. You don’t need to age your confit, but doing so intensifies the gamey ducky flavour. The crispy duck leg was served up with a pan seared pickled beet salad and a beet gastrique made using the cider vinegar that pickled the beets.

The night before beetroot was wrapped up in tinfoil along with some aromatics, allspice, cinnamon and peppercorns, baked in a moderate oven until tender then left to cool. When cool enough to handle, unpack the beets and rub off the skin, slice into bite size wedges, place in a container and cover with cider vinegar and a little salt. Refrigerate overnight.


To make the gastrique, slowly caramelize some sugar in a pan and then pour in an equal quantity of the pickling vinegar and a couple sprigs of thyme. Let the liquid reduce to a syrup, but don’t reduce to far. Pick out the thyme sprigs, and set the sauce aside.


Preheat the oven to about 220°C and get a oven proof sauté pan on a high heat. Dig out the legs from the fat and carefully scrape off and excess fat. Place the legs skin side down in the searingly hot pan and cook for a few minutes then transfer to the oven for about 5 minutes. Place the legs on a board and set aside to rest for a couple of minutes.

While the duck is resting, toast some hazelnuts and sauté the sliced beetroot in some olive oil until caramelised. Toss all together with some chopped parsley.

Duck Confit

When life gives you the opportunity to buy 4 ducks legs for a completely crazy price of $10, those moments should be embraced, I was at, of all places, the local supermarket in Karori where I spied a pair of packets of a pair of duck legs heavily reduced by a third because the expiry date was looming. I swear they never sell at this supermarket and sit in the fridge until they are reduced. So they were swiftly procured with the aim to cure and confit. Small problem was the lack of duck fat, but no matter the legs got deposited in the freezer until I managed to pick some up, which I also managed to snap up cheaply at Moore Wilson’s bulk section, they sell duck fat frozen a lot cheaper than they do ‘fresh’.

I’ve previously posted about sous vide duck confit, but this time I wanted to do it traditionally and also give this lot a chance to age submerged and protected in its fat, so at the moment I have four portions in the fridge and an agonising wait for at least a month before I dig beneath the lush white fat and dig out a leg or two.


Duck confit is simple to prepare just a little planning and patience, but it’s all pretty much hands off work. You’ll need enough Kosher salt to coat the legs, I used about a cup, and a good bunch of thyme. In a bowl bash the thyme and salt together to release the aromatics, toss the legs in the salt and pat on the salt, then in a dish just large enough to fit the legs in a single layer make a bed with the thyme and enough salt to cover the bottom, lay the legs in the dish and pat on any remaining salt, make sure all the flesh is covered. Cover the dish in clingfilm and refrigerate for 24 hours.


Remove the duck from the salt, rinse and thoroughly pat dry with some paper towels or clean tea towel, place the legs in a ceramic or non-reactive metal oven dish just big enough to hold them. Scatter over a couple of bay leaves, peppercorns and peeled cloves of garlic. Heat enough fat to cover the duck in a pot to 100°C. Carefully pour the fat over the duck and place the lid on the dish, or cover in tinfoil. Put the dish in an oven preheated to 100°C and cook for 4 hours. You can tell it’s cooked when the flesh is pulling away from the bone.


Remove the dish from the oven and leave it somewhere until it’s cool enough to handle. Carefully remove the legs from the fat and place them into a sterile container. Ladle the fat through a sieve into a bowl, be careful not to disturb the layer of liquid on the bottom it will spoil the confit, it is confit jelly and is an amazing stock for sauces, pour enough fat over the duck to submerge it and then cover with some clingfilm and leave to until cool enough to transfer to the fridge, any left over fat can be frozen and reused for the next batch of confit or roasting potatoes, you should get a couple of confits out of it before it becomes too salty. Pour the jelly through a sieve into a container and refrigerate.

The confit should last six months in the fridge, and I’m planning on aging my batch for a month, but you could just refrigerate overnight and cook the next day. When ready to eat the lush legs remove the confit from the fridge a couple of hours before to let the fat soften, preheat the oven to 220°C, carefully dig the legs out and gently scrape off any excess fat, place skin side down on a very hot oven proof sauté pan and cook for 5 minutes, the skin must be crisp, place in the oven and cook for 5–10 minutes.

Poached Pear

So I had a food geek moment. I was going to make myself a salad to have with some of my duck prosciutto, but then I got this idea, the prosciutto would probably go really nice with pear, walnuts and cheese, a good classic combination. It got worse, maybe I wanted a cooked texture to the pear, I could poach it, add another flavour to it, heck, I know, I could totally sous vide that pear! Somehow I didn’t really manage to get the brake on that idea before it came out. Research had started, and it seemed reasonably easy, 2–3 hours at 75ºC, and I’d have a poached pear, easy enough, just keep an eye on a pot of hot water for 3 hours, I had nothing better to do, total food geek brain take over, sanity had left the building.


I don’t do it on purpose, sitting around racking my brain trying to come up with something convoluted and drawn out, my inner food geek is just waiting for the smallest opportunity to escape, much like with the 3 day wait for the pork cheek confit, or making dosa, I had the idea to make the dish, I just had no idea it would take 3 days, and to smaller extents pork hock cake, kai kem eggs or kimchi. It’s usually a passing thought or idea, and the next thing I know I’ve started making something that may take 3 days before I get to eat, or in this case set myself up to babysit a pot of hot water for 3 hours carefully nursing the temperature.

But I’m not complaining, I relish in it, spending hours in the kitchen, waiting and hoping the dish will turn out, that what started out as an idea will be edible and tasty, and that the sacrifice of time and effort will be worth it, and I’ll tell you, the results don’t always match the effort. But if I were to be disheartened after every failure, I doubt I’d ever set foot in a kitchen again, failure is an opportunity to learn from what went wrong, correct and improve on ideas. In saying all of that, the pears turned out great.

Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things - T. S. Eliot.

Ingredients
100 grams Butter (unsalted)
50 ml Brandy
2 pears

• Emulsify the brandy and butter together, use a food processor or stick blender.
• Peel the pears, and place in separate vacuum bags with half the butter mix in each, then seal. You could use a zip lock bag, and remove as much air as possible if you don’t have a vacuum sealer.

• Bring a large pot of water to 75ºC.
• Place bags in the pot and cook for 2–3 hours at 75ºC.
• Keep the flame on minimum and adjust as needed.
• If not serving immediately, transfer the bags to an ice bath to halt the cooking, and reheat in hot water when ready.

Visa Wellington on a Plate is just around the corner and I had the privilege of being able to attend the launch event. It was great to finally meet some fellow bloggers and tweeters, and people from the industry, eat some great food thanks to Ruth Pretty, and down a few good wines. But like all things, nothing good comes for free, and putting aside my absolute terror of public speaking, I’m on stage doing a Peecha Kucha presentation at the City Market event. Which I hope, should be entertaining, if not just for the fact that I tend to talk in half formed thoughts and leave whole ideas in my head and stumble out words in random order from my mouth.

Duck Prosciutto - Part 2

Well it took ten days to reach the 30% required weight loss for my home-cured duck breast prosciutto. The recipe said seven days, but it all depends on the temperature and humidity of where it is hung.

An important note about weighing the breasts, which I didn’t mention in part 1. Weigh the breast after you have wrapped and tied it, as well as beforehand. You need to know how much the string and wrapping weighs, as a few grams can make a difference when figuring out the percentage weight loss.

wrapping = before wrapping - after wrapping
current percentage = ((current weight - wrapping ) ÷ before wrapping) x 100
The second equation will give you what percentage the breast is currently at, you’re aiming for 70%.


The breasts will be firm, with a little give, but not squishy, and a lot darker in appearance.

When you’re ready to eat it, trim off the skin, leaving as much fat on as possible, and if you like, slice off any flesh that has dried out too much (I didn’t bother), and slice as thinly as you can, a little time in the fridge may help.

The prosciutto should last a few weeks in the fridge, and a few months in the freezer, even better if you vacuum seal them. If you’re freezing the breasts, take advantage of the frozen state while defrosting to slice it thinly.


The prosciutto, is rich, gamey, and floral from the thyme (due to the cure).

Duck Prosciutto - Part 1

I have been meaning to make duck prosciutto ever since I read about it in Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman, Brian Polcyn and Thomas Keller, which I got for Christmas, but it's far to easy to put things off. I was in Moore Wilson on the hunt for a nice slab of pork belly, along with a bit of lard, to make a tasty meal of pork confit, and to stock up on kosher salt as my supply at home was getting dangerously low. Taking my time, as I always seem to do, no need to rush when there are so many goodies to tempt yourself with, I saw a lonely packet of duck breasts in the chiller, it was fate.


The method is very simple, you'll need about 450 grams of kosher salt for two duck breasts (or coarse sea salt, not table salt, or iodised salt), a container to cure them in, some muslin/cheese cloth, white pepper and what ever else you want to cure the duck with.

I did two different cures for each breast, one with thyme flowers and juniper berries, and the other with Szechuan pepper and coriander seeds.


You'll want to start by trimming any excess skin of the breast, but don't go crazy, just trim it so it looks nice, then give it a rinse and pat it dry. Set the breasts aside. In a bowl mix together the salt and herbs/spices. You don't have to add any herbs or spices, you could just use salt.

In container pour a layer of the salt mix about a centimeter deep and lay the duck breast on it (flesh side down, skin side up), then cover with the rest of the salt mix, make sure there is no exposed flesh, if you're doing both breasts in the same container make sure they're not touching each other. Ideally you want to use a container that isn't much larger than the breast(s) so you don't have to waste too much salt.

Tightly cover the container and place in the fridge for twenty-four hours.


Remove the breasts from the salt, they should have firmed up, and deepened in colour slightly.


Thoroughly rinse all of the salt off the breast and dry with paper towels. Weigh the breast, and either take a note of it somewhere or make a label you can tie to it later, it's very important to know the weight at this stage.


Dust each breast with some white pepper, or another spice, I used a combination of white pepper and coriander on the Szechuan and coriander cured breast.


Wrap in a single layer of cheese cloth and tie, make sure to leave enough length to use to hang the breast. It's a good idea to add a label with the date you hung it and the weight.


Hang the breasts somewhere cool (10–15°C) and dry (60% humidity), I've hung mine under the stairs as I know it is a pretty constant 10°C no matter the outside temperature. I've seen some people hang it in their fridge, but I'd be a bit worried about cross contamination of flavours.

There are many different times given all over the internet on how long it will take to be ready, but it all depends on the humidity and temperature of where it's being hung. The best way to check if the duck prosciutto is ready, is to weigh it. When it is at 70% of its start weight, it's ready. I've just checked mine and after five days it's only lost 12%.

Duck Confit - prep

Getting ready to cure the duck, salt, thyme, bay leaves and duck.


Grinding the bay leaves, the smell is amazing.


All the ingredients in a bag ready for a short stay of 24 hours in the fridge. It looks so green because what I thought was dried thyme was in fact a fine powdered freeze dried thyme.

Food pairing

I received this food pairing tree for Bay leaves (Click on the image for an interactive chart or here if you have a pop up blocker).

So the brainstorming begins, how to extract the flavor, and use it differently to how I normally do, unceremoniously chucking it in a pot. I think it's a herb taken for granted and I want to try to do some thing special with it.

Initial thoughts on extracting the flavor, are blitz it with some light olive oil (which it also pairs with) and use it as a dressing, make a stock syrup out with it (serve with some vermouth (another pair) over ice), make a tea from it, or turn it in to a powder to dust with.

As well as experimenting with Laurus nobilis, I'm trying my hand at sous vide slow cooker duck confit.

I have a couple of posts sitting in drafts at the moment, which would get posted except this computer refuses to open the edit posts page.

A couple of quackers

Roast duck was on order for the weekend (above photo is after the birds had been drying out in the fridge for 24 hours).

As I had never roasted a whole duck before, a bit of research was in order, and in the end decided Crispy Chinese Duck was in order.