We have had a splendid holiday season here in New Mexico, from attending Los Posados, our traditional candlelit Christmas procession, in mid-December to ringing in the New Year joyously and quietly with my visiting parents. In the mornings we feasted on our own backyard eggs (due to the huge amount of greens that my hens eat, the yolks are a fiery orange-red, always the mark of a good egg) and Purple Peruvian hash browns, along with thick slabs of smoked bacon (not yet home-grown, but in the future, who knows?) We ate my own meat chickens cooked a dozen different ways; in the out-of-focus shot below, you see them grilling on my new firepit grill.
Usually I can take a little time off around the holidays, and so that’s when I do some yearly kitchen chores, like making duck confit. This is a large undertaking and isn’t for everyone. If you just want to quick-grill a leg here and there, buying your duck confit is probably perfectly reasonable. But if you want not just the meat, but the lovely flavorful fat it was cooked in, then make it yourself.
Be prepared to spend some time looking for your materials. I order them on the Internet. To confit six large duck legs, you need two pounds of extra duck fat. I pay less than $15 for the fat, but I have seen duck fat sold in 7oz quantities for almost that price. You can use lard or olive oil instead if you insist, but in my view that isn’t proper duck confit. I should add that I don’t use pink salt, curing salt containing nitrates, for confit and so mine has to be refrigerated or, for storage over a few weeks, frozen. If you want to cure with pink salt, get the excellent book Charcuterie and follow the directions. I always confit twelve duck legs with four pounds of fat so I have some to give to foodie friends, but that’s probably overkill for most people.
Having secured six large duck legs with thighs attached and two pounds of duck fat, you are ready to start. First, salt the legs very generously, using two tablespoons of salt for the whole job. Grind black pepper generously over the legs, chop a small handful of thyme leaves and strew them about, and put in a bowl or plastic bag with 10 peeled smashed cloves of garlic and 10 bay leaves interspersed with the legs. Be sure to get Turkish bay leaves; the commonly found ones from California have a mentholated quality that you will not enjoy in the finished product. Set in the refrigerator overnight.
The next day, heat your oven to 300 degrees. Lay the duck legs out on a baking sheet with the bay leaves and garlic underneath them, and make sure the pepper and thyme leaves make it onto the tray. If doubling this recipe, use two trays. Don’t crowd them, because you need room for them to release their fat. Bake slowly until the legs are golden brown, usually about an hour.
Remove from the oven and place the legs in a pot large enough to hold them with room left over. Transfer the bay, garlic, etc. to the pot as well. Add the extra duck fat, and bring to a simmer. Use a flame-tamer if your burners run hot. Let the pot simmer comfortably until the duck meat is very willing to fall off the bone. This usually takes five or six hours for me.
Let cool just until no longer warm to the touch, but the fat is still liquid. Portion out as you like; I put two whole legs in a plastic container to go in the refrigerator, and ladle in enough fat to cover them. Then I use my Foodsaver to package the rest into bags containing two legs each, with enough fat to fill just the bottom of the bag, and vacuum-seal for the freezer. You will have a quart or two of pure fat left over, and this can be frozen in quart plastic containers for the next time you confit.
Now that you have a lot of duck confit, what do you do with it? For starters, you can make a quick rich meal by putting legs, heated and drained of their fat, in a very hot oven or under the broiler, then serving them on a bed of lentils or with herbed spaetzle, drained well and fried in a little of the duck fat until it has lovely crisp brown spots. You can set a leg or two on top of any cassoulet-type bean dish, nestling them into the beans a little so that as the whole splendid amalgam cooks, the duck fat plumps and sweetens the beans and the duck skin gets very crisp.
You can use fat and chopped confit to coat roast potatoes, letting the little bits of duck get crispy as the potatoes brown.
You can use a bit of chopped confit meat and duck fat to dress winter vegetables like carrots or parsnips, with a sprinkle of parsley to lighten the effect. Frozen green peas, given a brief boil, drained, and tossed in a hot pan for several minutes with a dash of heavy cream, a tablespoon or two of chopped confit meat and fat, and some soaked, chopped slices of dried porcini mushrooms, are elevated above their usual station in life. In the winter, duck confit adds subtle richness to everything it touches. On very cold evenings, you may even enjoy plain garlic toasts popped under the broiler with some chopped confit on top. Whenever you take some out of the container, gently warm it so that some fat liquifies and covers the meat to protect it from the air. Keep it in the refrigerator; it will not store safely at room temperature. Then when the hot weather comes, you will no longer be interested in confit at all. So enjoy it in its season.
Archive for the ‘kitchen staples’ Category
3 Jan
The Winter Kitchen, with notes on making duck confit
6 Dec
The Very Composed Salad, and notes on vinaigrette
For the most part I make simple salads when I make salads at all, relying on top-quality greens and a well-made vinaigrette for effect. But the salade composee, or composed salad, will always be dear to me because I can remember when Salade Nicoise was the very height of Manhattan foodie chic and Nocoise olives were hard to find. The urge to make a greater spectacle of my salads comes over me in midwinter, when short days and long nights give me more time to fiddle. In my opinion, this salad is one worth fiddling with.
For two people, I started with a small red onion, half a head of purple cauliflower (probably 5-6 ounces, or a heaping cup of trimmed florets) , a very firm red-skinned pear, and a small head of castelfranco raddicchio from the garden. A small head of round or Treviso raddicchio from the store would work just as well. I had on hand a third of a cup or so of red-wine-vinegar vinaigrette (see notes below) and a bottle of truly superb olive oil.
First, heat 1.5 cups of water to boiling, adding a tablespoon of salt and the juice of half a lemon. The lemon juice is essential to keep the red/purple veggies from turning an awful muddy grey. Trim the cauliflower florets neatly, slicing the stems where needed so that all pieces are about the same size. Drop them in the boiling acidulated water, cover tightly and turn the heat down to medium, and poach at a fast simmer for eight minutes. While it cooks,slice half of the onion very finely (save the other half for something else) and put them in a bowl. After eight minutes, drain the cauliflower, pouring its poaching liquid into the bowl with the onion slices. Run cold water over the cauliflower pieces to chill them, and set them aside to drain thoroughly. Stir the onions around a little, then let sit for half an hour. Drain the onion, press out excess moisture but don’t rinse, squeeze on a few more drops of fresh lemon juice, work them through the soft onion strands with your fingers, and set aside. Wash the radicchio thoroughly and spin it dry or whirl it around in a kitchen towel (outdoors, please) until reasonably dry. Put it back in the refrigerator. Rinse the lemon juice off the onion slices and squeeze them dry in a towel. You can do all this up to two hours before dinner. Everything should be at room temperature except the radicchio, which is used cold from the refrigerator.
When ready to eat, use a very sharp knife to cut thin slices off the pear. Choose your salad plates, preferably red ones, but black looks equally good and very dramatic. White will do. Arrange some torn radicchio leaves artistically on two plates. Toss the thin pear slices around over them. Pile half the cauliflower florets on each plate, keeping them toward the center so that the radicchio and pear show clearly. Place some onion slices (which will now be soft and magenta in color) over and around the salad. Drizzle with a tablespoon or two of the vinaigrette, and then drizzle lightly with your very best olive oil, taking care to get some gleaming golden drops on the pear slices. Grind just a touch of pepper over the top. Serve.
Purple cauliflower is widely available in this season. Check your favorite food co-op if it has a good produce section, or try Whole Foods. If you can’t find any, the yellow Cheddar cauliflower will give a different but still nice effect. A light scattering of toasted pine nuts or walnuts would be a great addition to this very autumnal salad. Don’t be tempted to throw in any cheese, no matter how fine a cheese it is. The pure flavors will get muddy, and the result will be undistinguished. Half the art of the composed salad is being able to stop before you ruin it with over-elaboration.
I have strong, even violent, opinions about vinaigrette. Each vinaigrette has to be made to suit the materials it is meant to enhance. In my opinion, this is the right one for this salad. Nothing that came premixed in a bottle is going to work. I have noted the steps that I consider especially important.
Opinionated Red Wine Vinaigrette
Start with really good olive oil and the best red wine vinegar you can lay hands on. I make my own wine vinegar, so I can’t help you with brands, but it’s essential that it be aged in oak and have a full flavor. The steps fit into general kitchen preparation, so you can do lots of other things while marinating the alliums.
Chop allium: 1 clove garlic chopped very finely, or one small shallot sliced finely, or half a small onion sliced finely. Put the prepared allium of your choice in a small bowl and add half a teaspoon of salt and 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar. Stir around, and let sit at least 15 minutes. The “sit” is essential to get the right flavor. After this brief curing, add a teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves chopped and half a mashed anchovy fillet or a dash of colatura (my preference.) If you are vegan, or an irredeemable anchovy hater, you can substitute one or two pitted oil-cured olives thoroughly mashed in a mortar and pestle to give the meaty-umami undertone that helps tame bitter leaves like radicchio. Grind in fresh pepper, about 6 turns of the mill, and stir in half a cup of really good olive oil and a tablespoon of roasted walnut or roasted hazelnut oil. Taste and check for salt (remember, it should be on the salty side to season the veggies properly) That’s all there is to it. For other uses you may want to add a little Dijon mustard, vary the herb(s), use lemon juice instead of vinegar, or any of a million other variations, but this is the basic. The worst offenses that I taste in vinaigrettes are mediocre olive oil, bad wine vinegar, and a general excess in seasoning. No amount of herbs will make up for poor basic ingredients. I also dislike drippy, overdressed salads. As I see it, if you can’t taste the leaves and florets, why have them on the plate?
Since young adulthood I’ve cherished a story someone told me about seeing Alice Waters dining out in San Francisco; the eager voyeur insisted that she ate a large salad with her fingers, and then licked them. I have no idea whether it’s true, but if it is, more power to her. I’ll bet that was a good vinaigrette.
4 Dec
Goat milk in the morning, and a great goaty book
My goat does Magnolia and Cocoa are out being bred right now, and the back of my property is depressingly silent, with none of the constant cross-talk that occurs as they stand on the roof of their goathouse observing the antics of the rest of us. It makes me realize how much they’ve become part of our daily lives. In their absence, I’ll talk about some things that I do with goat milk.
Of course I make cheese, mostly soft cheese and halloumi. I plan to discuss cheesemaking in some later post, but for now let’s get on to the fresh milk. You will hear it said that goat milk tastes just like cows’ milk, to which I say “Not so fast.” On day 1, goat milk tastes much like cows’ milk but even when impeccably fresh it has a tangier flavor profile. However, it contains lipase that works on the lipids and changes the flavor. On day 2, it’s good but you will know that you’re drinking goat’s milk. On day 3 it’s quite strong and only good for making stronger cheeses, and on day 4, as far as I’m concerned, it’s chicken food (they love it, by the way.) So the goal is to use it up by the end of day 2.
I’m always looking for nutritious, tasty, and interesting things to eat for breakfast. They have to be very quick, because getting to work in the morning is not optional. And they have to hold me for hours so that I’m not tempted to snack.
One of my favorite breakfasts is a sort of warm pudding of goat’s milk and rice. The flavors are based on an Indian drink of warm milk sweetened and flavored with saffron that I read about in my early twenties. I recommend cooking this in an unglazed clay pot for the ineffable earthiness it confers, but do use a flame-tamer device or a simmer burner, because scorched milk adheres to clay like stucco. You can make several days’ worth at once and it will keep in a good cold refrigerator for up to a week.
Start with eight cups of fresh goat milk. Add half a cup of unwashed uncooked basmati rice or jasmine rice. Start the burner on low, and as your clay pot warms up, increase the heat gradually to medium. Add half a cup of agave nectar (important for its low glycemic index), a half teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of saffron crumbled between your fingers, and a half teaspoon of cardamom crushed finely in a mortar and pestle (please don’t use the preground stuff.) For the first half hour you will need to stir frequently, scraping the bottom of the pot well all over with a wooden spoon so that the grains of rice don’t stick and scorch. Once the milk comes to a good simmer, turn the burner down as low as possible and add the flame-tamer under the pot. Add a large handful of raw shelled pistachios or slivered almonds. Let simmer, uncovered, for 4-5 hours. Stir occasionally. When a milk-skin forms on the top, stir it in. The rice will swell and the milk will cook down. You are aiming for something about the consistency of half-and-half, although naturally it will be lumpy with softened rice grains. It will thicken as it cools. Eventually you will have what looks like a cream-soup of a beautiful creamy-gold color. Turn off the burner and let it cool. Taste when cool, and add a little more sweetening if needed, but keep in mind that this is a breakfast, not a dessert. Store in a container in the refrigerator and ladle out into pretty little bowls, heat gently in the microwave (I use two minutes at the defrost setting for two bowls) and eat. I like to pour a tablespoon or so of extra fresh milk across the top for extra gleam and “juice.” It turns breakfast into a little ten-minute island of luxury, and the boost from my own chemical-free hormone-free alfalfa-fed goat milk is considerable.
Goats are compact, hardy, and economical, and the amount of milk they produce relative to body size is prodigious. It’s no surprise that they were among the earliest domesticated animals (although well after dogs) and that they still help people eke out a living in marginal circumstances all over the world. They are the ideal dairy/meat animal for small properties. And yet, rarely are the meat or milk seen in American cookbooks. This book changes all that, with scores of carefully composed recipes for the meat, milk, and cheese that goats produce. Buy it if you have goats or access to goat products. If you don’t, it’s still a great read, full of stories about the authors’ interactions with these highly interactive animals.
Also, checl out Mark and Bruce’s marvelous blog about making and eating real food, Real Food Has Curves.
16 Oct
Our Local Mushrooms
Recently I was asked to do a blog for our local newspaper weekly for a month (you can see the first post here) which has left limited time for my own usual blogging. But I did want to throw out a quick reminder of some of our best local delicacies. Among my favorites are the lovely pearly oyster mushrooms from Exotic Edibles of Edgewood, available at the downtown growers’ market and at both Albuquerque branches of La Montanita Co-op.They are delicious roasted and served over polenta.
First make polenta by your favorite method.I like to put one cup of good organic polenta (not any other type of cornmeal) in an unglazed clay cookpot with 3.5 cups of water ad a teaspoon or so of salt. I set the clay pot over medium-low heat, covered, and after ten minutes or so I increase the heat a little, to medium. At some point 15-20 minutes later when the pot is simmering, I stir well and turn the heat to very low; you may need a flame-tamer device if your stove runs hot. It now simmers slowly, covered, for a couple of hours while I do other things. I don’t stir. It’s very like the well-known oven method but relies on the kindly heat of clay. When ready, either stir in some grated Parmesan or pour it into a pan to solidify. You can then cut thick slices to grill and use as “landings” for all kinds of food.
I buy oyster mushrooms by the pound, and a pound is the minimum amount that you need to serve 4 people. Personally, if four hearty eaters were expected at my table, I would get two pounds of mushrooms and double the seasoning ingredients. Pick them over and cut off the tough stem end. I don’t wash them, since I have seen the operation and have no concerns that anything unwholesome is on the mushrooms, but suit yourself. Toss in a large bowl with 3 large or 5 small chopped cloves of garlic, 1/4 cup of olive oil, a tablespoon of soy sauce, and a little chopped celery leaf if you have it. The soy does not add an Asian taste, it just gives a rich meaty savor. Spread the mushrooms on a baking sheet in one layer and roast in a 425 degree oven until they are cooked, somewhat browned, and have exuded juices. Put the mushrooms in a bowl, and if there’s half a cup or less of pan juices, pour it over the mushrooms and serve over hot polenta with shavings of good Parmesan. If you washed your mushrooms, there may be a lot of juice, in which case boil it down in a little saucepan until reduced to half a cup, then proceed as above. A thick pat of very good butter on top of each serving adds a wonderful touch of richness and flavor. If you want to add herbal notes, you can garnish with some finely chopped celery, or you can add a couple of teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves to the raw mushrooms with the other seasonings. Any way you choose to proceed, it’s a wonderful dish for fall, and the main ingredient comes form one of our most interesting and waterwise farm operations. Scott and Gael, the mushroom people, have to truck in all their water, and they don’t waste a drop. For more about their operation, see my website.
My urban homestead 