My 1st Confit

Recently my friend mentioned she wanted to learn to make confit, duck confit and I blustered, "I can show you" knowing full well I'd never confited duck much less watched someone else.

For rescue, I turned to my Julia books, the last words (for me) on classic French cooking. I found a recipe covering both sides of two pages with notes directing the cook to an additional recipe taking up both sides of another page. The combined directions detailed a time consuming process that called for, among other things, pounds of melted duck fat, esoteric equipment and herbs (that despite my extensive collection) I had never heard of.

Not easily dissuaded, I also searched the web, my faithful Larousse , a 40 year old NY Times Cookbook written by Craig Claiborne (no mention there of confit) and an even older book written in French (I used WordMonkey to translate).

What follows is an amalgam of ingredients and procedures and pictures of some of the steps. And my reactions to this first attempt at making duck confit? Not bad. Would I do it again? Yes! in exactly the same way. I enjoyed the challenge; it was fun (and it didn't taste half bad).

DUCK CONFIT

• 2 fresh duck legs with thigh attached
• 4 juniper berries
• 6 pepper corns
• 4 whole cloves
• ¼ tsp dried thyme or 4 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• Pinch allspice
• 4 TBS Kosher salt
• 1 TBS sugar
• 2 large cloves of garlic, peeled, left whole 
• Optional additional seasonings: pinches of fresh nutmeg, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, dried ginger
• Regular olive oil to cover the duck legs by 2”. I used almost all of a 34-ounce bottle

Method:

• Using a mortal and pestle, lightly crush the juniper berries, clove and peppercorns together.

 

• Crumble in the bay leaf, dried thyme, all spice, salt and sugar and mix everything together. If you are using fresh thyme, do not add it yet.
• Select a porcelain or glass dish (with sides) that will hold the legs snugly.
• Spread half the mix on the bottom of your dish along with 2 sprigs fresh thyme (if you are using fresh).
• Put the duck legs in the dish, skin side up and spread the remaining mix over the skin side of the duck. Put one sprig of fresh thyme (if you are using fresh) over the top of each leg.  

 

• Cover tightly and refrigerate undisturbed for 48 hours.

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• Preheat over to 225°
• Remove the duck legs from the cure and brush off as much of the mix as you can.
• Return the ducks to a high sided oven proof container and cover them with the olive oil. The oil should come over the legs by about 2”
• Float in the two cloves of garlic.
• Slowly poach the duck, uncovered, for 3 hours or until the duck starts coming off the bone.

 

• Do not let the oil bubble. It should cook very slowly and have little or no bubbling.
• After the duck is cooked, remove it from the oil and put it into a clean glass or porcelain container large enough to hold the legs and all the oil.
• Remove the garlic cloves and save them for slathering on a crusty piece of bread: cook's treat!
• Strain the oil and pour it over the duck legs. Be sure the cooked duck is fully submerged in oil. Leave the duck to cool and then cover tightly and refrigerate. It will keep up to 3 months.

Salty

Some years ago I attended a cooking demonstration given by someone who (at the time) I considered the last word on all matters food. Her advice---which I took very much to heart----was that we use too much salt consequentially masking the natural deliciousness of our ingredients not to mention doing our health little good. She adamantly maintained that the sign of a very good cook was to learn to develop flavor with little or no salt.

The lady’s advice was forward thinking and many experts soon espoused that position. Wanting to be modern and a good and healthy cook, I eschewed the saltshaker, almost to the extreme. There were other ways to enhance food and I happily sallied forth using lemons, herbs and spices to gild my dishes and wake up the palate.

Now, I did not harbor any ill will toward salt, as I still was a closeted salter of corn on the cob, grilled meat and pasta water. For those foods my health concerns were out the window rationalizing that some things require salt, lots of it, and there simply was no substitute.

Over time the obsessiveness with salt as evil eased. The food world gradually directed that salt was okay again and not only that but now we would have many choices as to what salt to use. Some were for cooking, some for finishing, some for the table, all literally from all over the world. Some were to be used with meat and some with fish or fowl. Salt was to be paired much like wine and suddenly I was looking at exotic salts carrying prices akin to the finest Barolo or a vertical of Silver Oak.

Climbing again on the food trend bandwagon, I set out to acquire a few varieties and study the impact of gray salt, pink salt, sea salt (fine grain, large grain) and Kosher salt on my cooking. I prosthelytized on salt and imposed my opinion on the benefits of using artisanal salts (other than the usual blue box stuff) to anyone who would listen.

But secretly I was growing some serious confusion. All these exotic salts---one website listed forty! Forty? (yikes)---and I still had trouble telling them apart. Aside from larger or smaller grains, few offered any significant differences in taste and I am concluding that hand harvested French sel gris at $7.99 an ounce is just too much.

So here I am, after many years of ups and downs with salt, settled on just three: Kosher salt for general use, rock salt to make a bed for meaty juicy roasts and sea salt when I’m cooking fish. And that, my friends, is it.

It is finally autumn in Atlanta, my favorite time of year. Time for soup. Rich, long simmering pots of deliciousness to warm us and bring comfort. Number one out of the gate this year? Onion. My take on classic French Onion Soup using an apple, a good splash of ruby port and three kinds of onions.

Try this. It's good.

Three Onion Soup

serves 6

• 4 cups of onions sliced---1 leek, 2 large sweet onions and 4 shallots should be enough to make the 4 cups/cut the sweet onions in ½ and slice them in half moons.
• 1 large apple (I use Braeburn), peeled, cored and cut into small dice
• 4 TBS unsalted butter---1/2 stick
• 1 TBS vegetable oil
• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
• 2 TBS flour
• 1 TBS sugar
• 5 cups good beef stock, warmed
• ½ cup ruby port
• S&P to taste
• Croutons: ½” thick  rounds of day old French bread or baguettes, toasted
• 2 cups shredded cheese, Swiss, Jarlsberg or Gruyere.

Method:
• Select a heavy duty 4 quart pot with a lid. Melt the butter with the vegetable oil over medium heat. Add the leeks and cook for 1-2 minutes or until they begin to soften
• Stir in the remaining onions, apple, thyme and pepper to taste, turn the heat to low, cover and cook for 15 minutes.
• Uncover the pot and stir in the salt and sugar. Continue cooking for 30-40 minutes, stirring frequently, until the onions are a deep golden brown.
• Stir in the flour and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes.
• Add the stock, port and check the seasonings. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes.

To serve:
Ladle the soup into oven proof soup bowls. Float a crouton on top of the soup and pile the crouton with cheese. Put the bowls under a broiler until the cheese is melted. Serve immediately

Cook’s notes:
• For a de-fated version---Refrigerate the soup overnight and skim off the congealed fat that will accumulate before reheating over low heat.
• If you don’t have oven proof bowls, put the croutons on a baking sheet, pile the cheese on top and broil until the cheese is melted. Using a spatula, float the crouton into the soup and serve.

Parker's on Ponce

We had lunch last week at Parker's on Ponce in Decatur. Impressions? Well, I have to divide that into three parts.

Let’s start with the best, appearance and staff. Parker’s has a lovely outdoor patio in front and a welcoming low key interior. Tables are covered in crisp white linen and are comfortable and well spaced apart. We were warmly greeted at the door by a smiling hostess and seated promptly.

Service. Our server was very nice (like everyone we met there) but clearly disorganized and perhaps over whelmed as we noticed only two other staff for a half full dining room and patio. There wasn’t a manager in sight.

Service was also quite slow and I am guessing it was a combination of short staff and perhaps a kitchen not quite as ready as it should have been. It took twenty minutes to get two cups of decaf coffee----the coffee had not been brewed yet---and three requests before water appeared. Our order was collected after fifteen minutes at the table and took another thirty minutes before we were served.

During our wait for the food a manager did show up and promptly seated himself for a time at a table next to us. I can only say that the gentleman could use a shave and a haircut or else perhaps some effort to make his waist length pony tail a bit tidier (for a person handling and working around food he looked unkempt).

The food. We were three and wanted to taste everything, the menu was so appealing. We did end up ordering a lot so we could share and taste each other’s plates. Portions are generous.

• "Irish" onion soup with Guinness and cheddar crouton. After wading through lots of wonderfully gooey cheese and a nice thick crouton I found the soup underneath greasy and missing on the rich flavor I was expecting from long simmered onions and stock. Onion soup should have a lovely sweetness but this one was almost bitter. Unfortunately, it was also served along with everything else and I had a cold entrée by the time I finished my soup.

• Grilled flat-iron steak sandwich on ciabatta bread with onion jam, melted gruyère cheese, Bibb lettuce and tomato-garlic mayonnaise. Heaven! The steak was perfectly tender, rich and delicious. The combination of onion jam, gruyere and kicked up mayo was wonderful. I could easily eat that again and again.

• Slider combination plates with crab cake remoulade, prime rib, fried oyster, White Oak Pastures burger and barbequed pork with coleslaw. Every one of these---except the oyster---was a rich delicious mouthful. Our favorite was the prime rib…as tender, juicy and flavorful as any I have ever tasted.

• The oyster slider was another story. It had a horrible metallic taste. Just a bite had me spitting into my napkin. (Sorry). I am very uneasy when a restaurant of this purported quality serves bad seafood. It literally and figuratively left a terrible taste in my mouth.

• Potatoes at Parker’s rock. Garlic mash and hash browns were nearly perfect with one miss... they were not hot and barely at room temp. (Something I expect goes to short handed staff leaving cooked food sitting in the kitchen. That impression was reinforced later when we noticed the Chef serving food).

• Creamed corn was rich with fresh corn flavor and lots of corn but it suffered from a gritty texture we couldn’t figure out. Maybe cornmeal that wasn’t pre-soaked or cooked enough?

• We took black bean and cannellini bean hummus to go. It comes with olives, feta cheese, pepperoncini peppers & tomatoes, and was perfect with our at-home-before-dinner-wine. It’s an unexpected combination that really works.

All in all Parker’s on Ponce reminds me of a poem my Mother used to recite (called The Little Girl with the Curl and she was usually referring to me). “When she’s good she is very, very good; but when she’s bad she is horrid.

I would love to go back and find it running on all burners with stepped up managers directing the show. Parker's on Ponce could be great.

Time to Make the Marshmallows

There’s a fire pit sitting in my back yard looking all forlorn and lonely. I want to turn it over, set it on the grass, fill it with wood and light it up.

I want to toast marshmallows until they’re charred and almost dripping off the stick. I want to tilt back in my chair, watch the night sky, sip some wine.

I have been waiting for this all summer, waiting through the swampy heat and humidity, waiting for a suitably cooler evening. It’s almost here.

Time to make the marshmallows!

Marshmallows

Makes about 50 2” squares

Note--- these can be made using a hand mixer however, I’d urge you to borrow a good stand mixer (my borrow is a KitchenAid) if you don’t have one. It will save a lot of wear and tear on your mixer and your back.

• About 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 3 1/2 envelopes (2 tablespoons plus 2 1/2 teaspoons) unflavored gelatin
• 1 cup cold water, divided in half
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large egg whites from very fresh eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla

Method:

• Grease the bottom and sides of a rectangular 9x13x2 inch metal baking pan with plain vegetable oil, then heavily dust the bottom and sides with confectioners’ sugar.
• In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, sprinkle the gelatin over 1/2 cup ice water and let sit about 5 minutes to soften.
• In a heavy duty 3 quart saucepan, cook granulated sugar, corn syrup, second 1/2 cup of cold water and salt over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon, until sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to moderate and boil mixture, without stirring, until a candy thermometer registers 240°F, about 12 minutes.
• Remove pan from heat and pour sugar mixture over gelatin mixture, stirring until gelatin is dissolved.
• With standing, or a hand-held electric mixer, beat sugar mixture on high speed until white, thick and nearly tripled in volume, about 6 minutes if using standing mixer or about 10 minutes if using hand-held mixer.
• In separate medium bowl, using very clean and dry beaters, whisk the egg whites until they just hold stiff peaks.
• Fold beaten whites and vanilla into sugar mixture until just combined. Pour mixture into the prepared baking pan
• This is the hardest part of the entire process. The mixture is very sticky and is difficult to spread evenly in the prepared pan. You will also not be able to get every bit of it out of the mixing bowl. Use a lighty oiled spatula to spread the mix evenly in the pan and use what’s left in the bowl for tasting. When you’ve had your fill, soak it immediately in hot soapy water to make for an easier clean up.
• Sift 1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar evenly over top. Chill marshmallow uncovered for at least three hours.
• Run a thin knife around edges of pan and invert pan onto a large cutting board that has been sprinkled lightly with confectioner’s sugar. Lift up one corner of the inverted pan and with your fingers ease the marshmallow onto a cutting board. Use a large lightly oiled knife to trim the edges of marshmallow and then cut into roughly two-inch cubes. (If you have one, an oiled pizza cutter works well here also.)
• Sift remaining confectioner’s sugar back into the now-empty baking pan and roll the marshmallow squares through it, coating all sides, before shaking off the excess and packing them away in an airtight container.
• Marshmallows will keep at cool room temperature for 2 weeks

Locavore, Locavorism

It used to be, when I was learning about food and cooking (which I admit I still am), I would occasionally stumble across a term like brunoise that sent me scurrying to my Larousse for a look up. But those were words long a part of the traditional food lexicon. And, as there were a finite number of those words, I knew at some point I would learn them all.

But our twenty first century food scene has morphed into a whole new beast growing rarefied techniques using unapproachably expensive equipment and a peculiar new vocabulary. Case in point locavore and locavorism.

Hailed as “The Best New Food Trend” by Atlanta’s Creative Loafing, locavorism sent me scrambling. Finding nothing in Larousse and nothing in an unabridged Webster’s, I found myself trolling the web.

Along the way, I stumbled on this article published two years ago by William Safire. I guess I really missed the boat on locavorism. Silly me.

“As the economy began its downturn last year and imports became more expensive, localness challenged cleanliness as being next to godliness in the food dodge. The lust for the local is even competing with organic — food grown or raised without a chemical assist but often transported around the world — and Wal-Mart, having joined the organic parade two years ago, is now touting its purchases of produce grown in-state near its supercenters.

Naturally, a name was needed to describe the new anti-exoticism. The word locavore was coined in 2005 on the analogy of carnivore, “flesh eater” (which most dictionaries prefer to “meat eater” because the Latin caro is translated as “flesh,” but nobody eats fattening flesh these days), and herbivore, “plant eater.” The suffix -vorous means “eating, devouring” and spawned the adjective “voracious.”

The coiner is Jessica Prentice, who was challenged to come up with a name for what Prentice had been calling the nearby foodshed, I presume on the analogy of “watershed.” She promptly melded the Latin locus, “place,” with vorare, “swallow, devour” and (gulp!) there was locavore, the noun that became the Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year for 2007.

“The Rise of the ‘Locavore’ ” was a Business Week headline this spring in an article about the spread of farmers’ markets: “Consumers increasingly are seeking out the flavors of fresh, vine-ripened foods grown on local farms rather than those trucked to supermarkets from faraway lands.” Name of the trend (in a recent review in The New York Sun, which lamentably set last month): locavorism.

The trend was also confirmed in a macabre New Yorker cartoon by Bruce Eric Kaplan. A man-eating shark, munching on a human arm, says to another shark, “I’m trying to eat more locals.”

Stu's Pink Applesauce

Apples remind me of my boys when they were small…all rosy cheeks from running wild.

We took them apple picking in the fall, ate fresh donuts hot from the fryer and tasted new cider. A bushel of red Macintosh always came home with us and Stu loved the applesauce I’d make….it was pink from leaving the skins on.

I made applesauce again today. That brought the memories back. It made me smile. I feel happy.

Stu’s Favorite Pink Applesauce

Makes approximately 4 cups

3# Macintosh apples, cored, skin on, cut into ¼’s

2/3 cup cold water

1/8 teaspoon allspice

1/8 teaspoon ground clove

1 cinnamon stick

1/4 cup sugar

Pinch of salt

1 tablespoon sweet butter

The quantities of sugar and water will vary based on how sweet and juicy the apples are. Half way through the cooking taste it and add more sugar if you want a sweeter result. Do the same with the water. If you like a looser applesauce add more water, a tablespoon at a time. The applesauce will thicken as it cools so don't fret if it looks a little loose.

Choose a heavy duty pot with a tight lid.  (I use my 5 quart le Creuset---it's older than my boys and is still in great shape).

Add everything at once and stir. Put the pot over medium heat and bring the mix to a boil. Cover and adjust your heat to keep everything at a gentle boil.

Cook for about 20 minutes----stirring occasionally---until the apples are soft and easily mashed.

Remove from the heat and check seasonings. Adjust as needed. If you are adding more sugar, spices or water at this time, return the applesauce to the heat and cook, covered, another 5 minutes. 

Remove from the heat, uncover and cool, in the pot, for about 15 minutes. (Do this to avoid burns. Hot applesauce hurts!)

Put the applesauce in a food mill and puree to remove skins and any stray seeds.

Cover and chill. Lasts for one week in the refrigerator or can  in a water bath canner for 20 minutes. I use 1/2 pint jars so I can enjoy Stu's pink applesauce as a snack.

Pink Applesauce---Enjoy!