Everything Is Just Ducky

Whole steam-roasted garlic

Okay, not really. This month my Charcutepalooza projects have been all about how good food –dreaming it up, cooking it, talking about it with friends, sharing it with friends and family, and (not least) eating it– sustains the spirit as well as the belly during some less than fabulous times. Have I mentioned that by the end of December I will have moved FOUR times in less than a year? I know I’ve cried & moaned about this in previous posts, but this month and the most recent move were especially brutal, and the sheer uplifting and nourishing power of food was profoundly evident. Food had a big job to do, and it came through like a champion.

I started by making two versions of rillettes. The first was a classic French pork rillettes, and for guidance I looked to Jane Grigson’s Charcuterie And French Pork Cookery as well as Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing.

On the left is the pot with venison & pork belly rillettees and on the right are traditional French rillettes, each cooling in its own fragrant bath of broth and fat

The second was inspired by Brad Farmerie’s recipe for pork rillettes with an Asian twist which was published in the excellent Primal Cuts: Cooking with America’s Best Butchers by Marissa Guggiana. I tweaked the recipe in that I used a blend of venison (thank you Larry) and pork belly; otherwise I was pretty faithful to Brad’s recipe.

Rillettes packed into eight-ounce wide-mouth jars before cooling in the 'fridge, and before being sealed under an eighth of an inch of warmed pork lard which I'd rendered the day before

I’d had small nibbles of each of the rillettes while I was cooking them, but I really wanted to taste them properly on freshly baked bread with various pickles, so I baked a loaf, distracted myself with chores until the bread had cooled, and then dug in:

Super-seedy bread, jars of pickles, and jars of rillettes. Must taste now!

Oh, hey, what a surprise: I love my rillettes   I liked them with this year’s cornichons:

A slice of bread with rillettes and slices of cornichon pickle

..and I loved ‘em with this spring’s pickled ramps:

A slice of bread with rillettes and pickled ramps I made this spring

I tried the French rillettes with cornichons and the venison rillettes with ramps, and then I tried the venison ones with cornichons, and the French rillettes with ramps, and I determined that there didn’t seem to be a bad-tasting combination in the bunch.

Thankfully I made the rillettes a little week ago, because my second project was fairly involved and demanding: a roasted roulade of duck with lentils and mixed boiled & buttered beans from this summer’s massive bean harvest. I thought I might have served it yesterday to mom & Carl, but ended up breaking the tasks up over three days and serving it today, deadline-day, once again right up to the wire!

I really enjoy cooking with duck, particularly the full-utilization aspects. Thrift at its tastiest.

Breaking down the duck: skin off in one piece, breasts removed & diced, and the carcass trimmed of every morsel of meat, all sinews & tough bits set aside with the carcass, wing tips, neck, and gizzards for making stock. All fat and skin not part of the large rectangle of skin was reserved for rendering, and the liver was added to the forcemeat scraps.

Here is the skin before it was frozen flat and trimmed of yet more fat:

The whole duck skin will be the outer wrapping for the finished roulade

The breast meat was cut into large dice and browned quickly in a very hot pan:

Frying the duck breast meat

I made a rich and delicious-smelling reduction of shallots, the fond from frying the duck breast, and a cup of Calvados:

Reduced to a loose paste, and smelling fantastic

I should note that the method for steam-roasting garlic to make garlic paste is brilliant; it works much better than dry-roasting, and produced a super-creamy garlic-y paste. The photo at the top of the page shows a half-dozen heads of garlic after steam-roasting and before slicing and squeezing.

I prepped aromatics and herbs for the bed upon which the roulade would rest while roasting. This photograph shows them before they were braised in a whole lot of butter:

Aromatics and herbs await braising in butter

We had a bit of warm sun this morning, and it was a pleasure to sit half-blinded and cozy whilst shelling these outstanding pistachio nut-meats:

These are the sweetest and most pistachio-y pistachios I've been able to buy in years, and so green!

Next was to grind the cold bits of cleaned duck meat, along with some fatty pork and the duck liver:

Grinding the forcemeat for the roulade

To the ground forcemeat I added the shallot reduction, the salt and pepper, garlic paste, and herbs. I mixed this by hand and folded in the cooled diced duck-breast meat, the pistachios as well as some roughly chopped dried cherries. I would have liked to add some truffle peelings, but I have never had a truffle to cook with.. yet! Still, even without the truffle, the forcemeat looks (and tastes) delicious –even before roasting:

The ground duck and pork with a smattering of chopped pistachios and cherries

After trimming the inside of the duck skin of excess bits of fat and tissue, I mounded the forcemeat down the middle, wrapped the skin around the filling and tied it up neatly:

The roulade all bound and ready to roast after an hour or two in the 'fridge to dry the skin a bit

Once mom & Carl arrived, I placed the roulade on its bed of butter-braised aromats & herbs, gave it a liberal sprinkling of salt and pepper, and placed it in the oven to roast for around an hour. I basted it every 15 or 20 minutes with the butter from the roasting pan, and it kept on getting more glossy and golden. Mm!

I also made a pot of lentils with carrots, onions, leeks, thyme, and lots of fresh parsley added at the end:

French lentils simmering with aromatic veggies & herbs a lá Mr. Henderson

Carl finished putting my spare tire on my truck (thank goodness for spare tires) (and for Carl!) in the cold and rainy dark, and when he was settled on the sofa,  dry-ish and warm, I brought out a sliced-up baguette:

Really good baguette I made this morning

..and the two flavors of rillettes accompanied by cornichons and ramps I pickled this spring:

Tasty bits to start our meal

Soon the roulade was roasted and rested, and it was really pretty, and very very good to eat:

Roasted roulade of duck on a bed of French lentils

..along with some green and yellow beans from the Great Bean Harvest of 2011, drizzled with a bit of the duck roasting butter and a sprinkle of salt and pepper:

A plateful of happy

Once again, good charcuterie saves the day.

P.S. Check out this charcuterie kismet: So, my uncle Stephen mentioned on a recent QI that Columbo was, in his opinion, the greatest-ever TV detective. I’ve liked Peter Falk ever since I saw him play himself in that great Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire, but I’d never actually seen a Columbo episode. So I’ve been watching the the old shows, and today when I working on my roulade, I was watching Season 7 Episode 2 called Murder Under Glass, and the whole episode was about chefs and cooking and suddenly there was a galantine right there onscreen and Columbo was, like, ecstatic about it! That was amazing.