I pulled a whole duck out of the freezer and thought about what to make with it. I found this picture that inspired me, but it was just a description of the dish: Confit duck leg, seared duck breast, pommes purée, wilted silver beet, black garlic purée, duck jus
I thought it would be fun to replicate this dish, so on Friday I butchered the duck and separated it into sections. The breast and leg quarters went into the fridge uncovered to dry the skin, the excess fat and skin went into a container to be rendered, the carcass and wings when into a container for stock along with the neck and giblets except the liver. The liver looked really nice so I set it aside to make something with it.
Early Saturday morning I started cooking. I rendered all the excess skin and fat and after a few hours I had a quart of rendered duck fat, which is sometimes called liquid gold. If you've never cooked with duck fat, you should try flying potatoes in it. It's amazing! I strained the solids out of the fat and set it aside.
Next I cooked the legs and wing drumettes confit, which is an old method of cooking something in fat similar to deep flying but at a much lower temperature. I covered the duck with its own fat, and cooked it in the over at 250 for almost 3 hours. When they were finished, I put the legs skin side down onto a sheet pan, removed the thigh bone, and put them back into the fridge.
Early Sunday morning, I roasted the carcass, then added carrots, celery, onions and tomato paste and returned the whole mixture to the oven. After an hour of roasting, I put everything on the stove, covered it with water, and simmered it for 3 hours. I removed the solids and reduced the stock a bit more, and added some reduced red wine and seasoned the jus.
To make the black garlic puree I mixed up some gelatin and let it set, then added equal parts of black garlic and gel to a blender and mixed them together.
By Sunday evening, I was ready to put the whole dish together. I scored the duck breast and trimmed them again to remove any thin parts that had dried out too much in the fridge. Drying duck breast for three days uncovered in the fridge is a technique I learned from Thomas Keller's Master Class and it's my go-to duck breast method. I scored the breast and put them in a cold frying pan, skin side down. This allows the fat to render instead of fry. At the same time, I put the now flat thighs in a larger frying pan skin side down to crisp the skin. Both of these cooked most of the time on the skin side, and I only flipped them over for the last couple of minutes.
I blanched then wilted some beet greens, and made some cauliflower mash to accompany it (the wife and I have been seeing a nutritionist who has put us both on a lower carb lifestyle, so I used this instead of potatoes). I put the black garlic puree into a small sauce pan to warm it up, and returned the duck jus to the stove.
The last time I cooked a whole duck I tried making duck pate with the liver, but we didn't really like it even though we always buy pate at Christmas time and love it. My favorite chef, Jacques Pepin, always says that liver is a treat for the chef and he just sautés it and eats it in the kitchen. I decided to use it in a salad. Mrs Nihon was a bit squeamish, so I also cooked bacon for the salad and told her she could just pick the liver off if she didn't like it.
My plate was a bit smaller than the inspiration photo, so I didn't have room to dress the plate in the same manner, so I replicated what I could and took liberties where I couldn't.
The breast got a little overcooked to my liking. I prefer it medium rare, but it was pretty thin, so by time the skin was done I should have just pulled it out of the pan instead of flipping it over. Overall, I was really happy with the results. There was a lot of prep, but it was mostly tending to stuff cooking for hours while I did other things around the house.
The two of us ate almost all of the duck in this one serving. There's a bit of the dark meat left over, and I'm going to make a rillette with it. I also have a quart of duck fat I put back into the freezer for another use, as well as 2 cups of duck jus that I'll use in a soup or sauce. This was the first time I've cooked with black garlic but it won't be the last. It has incredible flavor, and just those few dots on the plate were enough.
