Duck à la ChefNick

Yesterday I was in full-on urge for duck. I'm a duck-and-potatoes man . . . other than duck burgers I really haven't explored this delicious bird. If you have never eaten duck or are afraid to try it for any reason, take it from a picky eater: a good duck breast cooked correctly tastes like a very good filet mignon. The texture is slightly different and it does have a certain taste that is not beef, but both are actually improvements on filet mignon.

It most definitely, however, does NOT taste like chicken.

Here is a very safe and almost foolproof way to make duck.

Duck breast

 Ingredients
1 duck breast, as large as you can find
Brine: kosher salt, brown sugar, orange juice
Cracked black pepper, salt to taste

Method
Day before or morning before: prepare brine by dissolving 1/2 cup of kosher salt, 1/4 cup of brown sugar in water. Add about 2 cups of orange juice. Add enough of this mixture to just cover the duck and brine, either in a large ziploc bag or a plastic container, in the refrigerator.

Duck breast in brine

To prepare: remove the duck breast from the brine. Score the fat which should be on one side of the breast in a criss-cross pattern, taking care to cut just deep enough to go through the fat but not penetrate the duck.

Sprinkle non-fat side with salt and pepper. Preheat a cast iron pan on medium heat for about four minutes or until just visibly smoking. Put the duck breast in the pan, fat side down. Don't move the breast around. Just let it sit for about 4-5 minutes; after this time there will be quite a copious quantity of rendered duck fat in the pan. Hold the duck with tongs and pour off the fat. return to the heat another 2-3 minutes.

Flip the duck and sauté for 6-10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the breast (about one inch including fat layer is normal). Cover the pan with aluminum foil and place in a 200-degree oven until you're ready to serve.

To serve, on  cutting board, carefully remove the fat layer with a very sharp knife. Slice the breast across the grain into 1/4-inch-thick slices. The duck should be rare; red in the middle radiating to pink at the edges. If you or someone else prefers medium rare (anything more cooked than this is not recommended) just put the slices that you want done back in the pan, which should still be hot. If it isn't, heat on medium until it's cooked to the desired doneness.

Serve immediately with accompanying sauce and whatever side dish you have prepared.

Duck with haricots fin, pommes de terre Dauphinoise and mushroom sauce

Nick's Mushroom Sauce for Duck


Ingredients
4 C shiitake and pleurot mushrooms, sliced (any mushrooms are fine)
3/4 cup finely chopped shallots
3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 C white or rosé wine
1 C chicken broth
1 C demiglace sauce (commercial is fine, or perhaps you can get some from your butcher. There is no substitute).
1/2 C Italian or flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
2 T butter
Truffle oil or olive oil
Crème fraîche (optional)

Ingredients for mushroom sauce

Method
In a sauté or sauce pan, sauté the mushrooms in oil on medium heat until cooked and browned. Set aside. In the same pan, sauté the shallots on medium for about ten minutes, or until thoroughly cooked. Add the garlic and cook another three minutes or so. Set aside, but not with the mushrooms.

In the same pan, reduce the wine on medium heat until halved in volume, about ten minutes. Add the chicken broth and reduce uncovered for another ten minutes. Add the demiglace sauce and cook for another five minutes. Add back the shallot-garlic mixture and bring to a simmer. Pour the sauce mixture into a large container (I use a 4-cup glass measuring cup) and hand-blend the sauce until smooth, using a hand blender (alternatively, pour into a blender or a food processor and blend until smooth).

Pour the sauce back into the sauce pan and bring to  gentle simmer. Add the mushrooms. Add butter and whisk until thoroughly combined. Add 1/2 cup or so of crème fraîche, if desired, and blend thoroughly.  Add parsley and cracked black pepper to taste. Serve.

Easy Spicy Dill Pickles

If you’re anything like me, you love dill pickles but the ones that come out of the grocery store are always too limp or too tame. Until I discovered this recipe, I too was resigned to this sorry state of affairs. I’d buy them, but the difference in taste from store-bought pickles to the pickles in this recipe is like Chef-Boy-ar-Dee to homemade spaghetti.

There will be those who are convinced that pickling is an arcane and potentially dangerous art (botulism!) and that mere home cooks shouldn’t attempt it, but nothing could be further from the truth. And the good thing about this recipe is that you don’t need any complicated equipment (just a couple of Mason jars) and you don’t need a pressure canner or any of that nonsense that keeps people from making their own preserves.

This is a very simple recipe that will create fantastic, crunchy dill pickles within a week that will be devoured by friends and family (I made this for my family in California and the entire jar was gone in one day.) It looks complicated at first glance, but should only take you a small part of a lazy afternoon, with the results lasting for months.

I’ve made this recipe several times and have fiddled with it, adjusting vinegar and salt quantities, but in general, it should definitely provide you with a memorable pickle and you need know nothing about canning or preserving to do it.

Note first of all that the result cannot be put on a shelf in the kitchen; it has to be refrigerated. But who keeps dill pickles on the shelf anyway?

Okay, here we go:

You’ll need two Mason jars. These can be bought at any hardware store in the “Home” section. I recommend Bernardin. Mason jars consist of a glass jar with a wide mouth, a ring screw top and a central disc that fits in the ring to create a seal. If you can’t find these, use an empty jar of commercial spaghetti sauce (Prego etc.) that has been dishwashed with its top. Since we aren’t actually going through the whole boiling-water bath process, this should do fine, though it is definitely preferable to have the Mason jar with ring and sealer.

First, submerge one (or two, if you have the room) of the jars with their rings in a large pot and cover with hot water. Bring to a boil and continue on a rolling boil for ten minutes. This is to kill any possible bacteria lurking inside the jars (even though the pickles will be refrigerated, we don’t want to pack them in dirty jars.)

Sterilizing the Mason jar

Remove the jars and rings with tongs and set them upright on clean paper towels.

For the cucumbers, Kirby cucumbers are the best, although Mediterranean (or “Lebanese”) will do at a pinch. You definitely don’t want to use those behemoth cucumbers that we’re all used to seeing in the grocery store; they’ll turn to mush. They should be from 4 - 6 inches long, firm and green. About six fat ones should fill two jars once they’re cut. Prepare a large bowl with ice water, and after washing the cucumbers, submerge them in the ice water. This will make them crisper. This can be done hours ahead or even the day before.

Kirby cucumbers

Now you need to assemble your spices. These are all whole:

1T dill seeds
1T allspice
1T black peppercorns
3T yellow mustard seeds
3 dried chilies (optional or to taste; this amount will give the pickles a very slight burn, almost unnoticeable)

And you’ll need garlic cloves and fresh dill.

In a medium saucepan, mix 2 1/2 cups of white vinegar with 3 1/2 cups of water. Add 1/6 - 1/8 C kosher salt. Now add the spices. Bring to a boil and boil for three minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. This will take a couple of hours unless you put the pan in the refrigerator.

Boiling spices

Take the cucumbers and cut off both ends. I personally like dill spears (quartered lengthwise) but you can get creative; you could leave them whole (not recommended), cut them into chips (if you have a mandolin you could make ripple chips!) or cut them in half.

Quartered pickles

If you’re using garlic, peel approximately two large cloves per jar, halve them and crush them slightly with the blade of a knife so that they will release their flavor once in the jar. Cut a generous swath of fresh dill from the bunch and wash it.

Now put the pickles in the jars, interspersed with the fresh dill and garlic cloves.

Ready for the refrigerator

Fill the jars with the vinegar and spices, taking care to make sure that the chilies and various seeds get equally portioned to each jar. Leave about a half inch space between the vinegar and the lid, screw the lid on tight, and you’re done! Put the pickles in the refrigerator. They will be done in about a week and will last for at least three months. Incredibly crunchy (impossible with commercial product), they’ll definitely be the best spicy dill pickles you have ever had!

Meat Meets Vacuum; Results in Big Savings

When I was in California over the holidays I found and bought possibly the most valuable kitchen tool anyone can have in their arsenal: a Foodsaver.

Foodsaver with filet

Yeah, I know, the filet looks gross, like a giant Alien baby, but consider the alternative: this untrimmed filet, which worked out to about ten pounds and, at $23.99/kg, cost me $89.09 untrimmed, versus the trimmed version, without a visible shred of fat on it, which was $41.99/kg. 

I got fourteen 1.5"-thick steaks out of my filet, which works out to about $6.42 per steak (imagine how much each approximately 1/2-pound filet mignon would have cost at a decent steakhouse . . . maybe $30, minimum? So I saved about $330). If I'd bought the trimmed filet, each steak would have cost me about $11.75 . . . simply because some butcher removed about one pound of fat and trimmings. But that's still saving $20 or so off the cost of a steakhouse steak!

14 filet mignons ready for the freezer!

I also bought about ten pounds of chicken thighs, ten pounds of drumsticks, ten pounds of stew meat (for grinding later), ten pounds of top sirloin (for curry or boeuf Bourgignon) for about $20 each, and a HUGE Grana Padano, which I've Foodsavered nicely . . . won't have to buy meat for another 6 months all for around $200. That's $33/month!

It's very worth the cost of the Foodsaver ($110). Get one today!


(By the way, I'm selling my Foodsaver Professional II. If you identify yourself as being a reader of this blog I'll cut you an even better deal on it than it already is.)

The Trouble with Truffles

Hmm . . . now that would have been a great Star Trek episode.

Truffles. Have you ever had one? Seen one? Smelled one? Tasted one? Well, until about five years ago, neither had I. The very thought of them -- being harvested from underground by pigs -- made my stomach churn.

Besides, they weren't exactly in the bin next to the button mushrooms at Metro. And I didn't frequent restaurants that served them. Even if I had, I wouldn't have paid the price for them.

But one day, at Jean-Talon market, I saw a bottle of huile des truffes -- truffle oil. It couldn't have been more than 100 ml. -- but it was $44! Insane, thought I, but I had a little extra cash that day so I bought the bottle.

I put it in the cupboard and forgot about it, until one night when I was doing filet mignons. I reached for the olive oil, getting ready to season the steaks, when there it was. I opened it and smelled it. And suddenly I knew that no one had been kidding. And why this bottle cost $44. And why I was going to put it on my jelly doughnuts, and peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, in my salsas, curries, dips, pizzas, my shampoo.


Yes, I had discovered truffles. Or had I?

Turns out the Truffle Story is more than a Trouble with Truffles episode of Star Trek. It's so complicated that I couldn't get a straight answer anywhere I looked.

I wondered how truffle oil was made. Some stories had it that the oil was put in a dark cold room, open to the air, below a large bag of truffles, and the truffle essence somehow "infused" itself into the oil. No, really. Even my culinary friend and expert Barry believed that. (I won't link to him because he'd be miffed.)

Then all sorts of stories started coming out -- most of them bad. I found out that my beloved oil, was, in all probability, a chemical. Or that it had Chinese truffles in it instead of French or Italian.

However, I can't give up on truffles. If they can make it taste like the oil I bought from the Oregon Truffle Oil company my wallet will continue to be light for a long time to come.