From Montreal With Love: Duck Confit, Part 3

Duck Confit on Salad with Thyme-Roasted Celeriac

Ingredients:
8 duck legs
1 kg fat
1/3 cup kosher salt
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
2 bay leaves, crushed
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Sprigs of fresh thyme

It's true, it took me weeks of planning to find a large quantity of affordable duck fat in Montreal, to forget to bring the fat to Toronto, to have my roommate save the day, to render extra chicken fat to supplement the duck fat, to source duck legs at White House Meats in St. Lawrence Market, but,

it was completely worth it.

I didn't even really mess it up. Rob Feenie did. Sorry, Rob, but the two cups of fat that your Gold Medal Plates-winning recipe calls for wouldn't even cover the little toes of my ducks. Fortunately, I cheated on Rob with a French recipe that came with helpful pictures. Always cheat with a French man. Sophisticated, experienced, well-dressed (the duck).

The day before the big family dinner, I did what both recipes agreed was proper and rubbed the duck legs with kosher salt. Rob's recipe called for way too much salt and didn't say anything about rinsing the legs the next day after they'd sat in the fridge overnight to macerate. He did think that other flavourings besides salt (pepper, bay leaves, garlic and thyme) would be nice to the macerating duck legs. Since I didn't want to wash off those seasonings along with the salt, I decided to trust him and not rinse the legs. Besides, the sodium outrage in Canada is over-hyped.

At the beginning of the afternoon I preheated the oven to 475 Fahrenheit. There was no way I was going to get this started too late and be eating dinner at midnight. It needed hours of cooking and then I needed decide whether to broil the skin or pan-sear it. To start, I melted the combined rendered and delivered fats over medium heat in a saucepan and poured it directly over the duck legs (I'd had to put the legs in two separate casserole dishes since I didn't have one large enough for all the legs. This was my mistake, not Rob's. To be fair, I could have stuck with the French recipe which said to use a huge pot, heat the fat to precisely 70 degrees Celcius and plunge the legs into the hot oil for hours. This sounded risky, since thermometres are notoriously finicky, but brand new ovens are pretty trustworthy).

So the casserole dishes got covered with aluminum foil tightly and popped in the oven for 3 hours.

See, the problem was that the oil didn't completely cover the duck legs...so I thought that the top might dry out at such high heat. To try to avert disaster, about half-way through the cooking time I turned the legs over so the bottom would have a chance to be completely submerged. Now the problem was that the top parts of the exposed duck legs had crisped up like fried chicken. That's delicious and all, and kind of what I wanted as the end result, but not what I wanted with an hour and a half more cooking time to go. What choice did I have, though?

I re-covered the legs with foil, and prayed.


I was getting a little nervous now. Both recipes state that at the end of the cooking time the meat should be fall-off-the-bones tender, but since my skin had crisped up, there wasn't really a way to check if the inside was tender without massacring a leg. Fortunately I'd made extra, so I massacred away. The inside seemed right, but now I didn't know quite what to do. Rob's recipe said to let the legs cool in the fat and said nothing about frying of broiling the skin afterward to remove excess grease and make the outside crisp (though the ducks had decided to multi-task and combine these steps into one all by themselves). Rob said to skin the duck, but that seemed horribly unfair when it looked so beautiful and fat-soaked. The whole point of the dish was to enjoy cooking with fat. Removing it so late in the game seemed counter-productive, if not cruel.

The French recipe said to remove the ducks from the fat when ready to serve, put them in a skillet and cook them over medium heat, covered, for an indeterminate amount of time. Halfway through this imaginary stretch of time the skillet was to be shaken to remove the excess fat from the ducks. Then the ducks should be flipped over and when golden, served. Well mine were already golden, so I decided chestnut brown would be a more appropriate colour...thank goodness the artichokes were a pleasant distraction for my guests, as was the ample Henry of Pelham wine.

Even though the legs turned a little darker than they were supposed to, they preened beautifully atop a mound of organic green salad along with a sprinkling of roasted celeriac.

But how did it taste?? The first bite of skin gently released itself from the rest of the leg and the salty oil glazed the greens in the most luscious vinaigrette. Inside the seared skin the duck meat was incredibly tender. I always thought it odd that confit leg is often served on greens. A salad entrée is fine dining since when? I get it now...both for the lightness of the salad with the weight of the duck and for contrast in texture of the crisp skin, the tender meat and the crunchy greens. The roasted celeriac added a nice savoury touch and a chewy texture.

Seems like everything worked out just fine, right?

Well, yes, miraculously, but here's what I realized I did wrong:
1. The reason Rob said not to wash off the salt after you leave it in the fridge overnight was because his recipe called for the skin to be removed before eating the duck. Since I left the skin on and ate it, the dish became was much saltier than it should have been. It would have been plenty salty if I'd washed the legs post-maceration (that's one word I never thought I'd write...First olives, now duck legs. I'm on a roll! though I would have preferred to call the olive-pitting evisceration, because when else am I possibly going to use that one?). I should have just washed all the seasonings off the leg and settled for whatever salt, pepper, thyme, garlic and bay flavours felt like sticking around.

2. Since so much of the skin cooked too quickly, the outer layers of meat got cooked too, leaving less of the ridiculously-tender leg meat inside the slightly charred coating. Nobody minded, but it would have been nice to have more tender, and less crisp.

3. I should have added a splash of lemon to the celery root after it had cooked, since it was a bit bland compared to the duck. I had left it simply seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh thyme. I also would have roasted it in duck fat instead of olive oil if I'd had any extra, and I think it would have made a much more attractive presentation if I'd chopped them differently. Small cubes were not so appealing. Maybe a fine mandolin-slice. Or even a julienne.

So I really shouldn't feel like Rob let me down. He's a swell guy, I'm sure, even though he's not French. Not his fault (the French bit), I suppose. Probably he used a different kind of casserole where the fat covered all the meat. In the future I would also try this recipe with a pot on the stove like in the French recipe, and just make sure I have a good thermometre.

Still, with a beautiful bottle of Henry of Pelham Baco Noir, the duck's flavour took centre stage. The saltiness of the skin was cut by the dryness of the red wine and even the fresh salad had a moment to shine.

Oh! I almost forgot that I made a quick balsamic fig vinaigrette with a beautiful dijon from my mustard place, Kolznik's. It was one of my four dijon purchases from St. Lawrence Market. I added no olive oil or salt, since the legs would extrude more than enough. The sweetness was a nice touch, and didn't even overwhelm the dryness of the wine.

So Quebec and Ontario mixed harmoniously for one evening. Canadian recipes for French cuisine, Niagara wine, Toronto baguette, St. Lawrence Market produce and meat. Traditional flavours of orange, fennel, and vermouth, and I haven't even gotten to dessert...one more post and I'll have polished off every last bite of a beautiful meal.