duch a l’orange
les halles cookbook, page 194
I live on a lake, with ducks, I live on a lane named after a type of duck, Mallard lane to be exact, so I couldn’t help but think twice about consuming one of these fine feathered birds, worried that their wild brothers could attack me at some point. You saw Birds, right? What you don’t know is that Hitchcock had another script, one that was axed by the producers due to its horrifying content, titled Ducks. It’s true. I just read about it on Wikipedia.
As the local farmer’s markets have picked up, along with our twice weekly visits to stock up on produce and local meat I’ve begun to pay more and more attention to grocery store butcher prices. Buying local, grass fed organic has been only marginally more expensive (and often not at all) than buying at WF especially in the smaller quantities needed in order to serve two. With that, we realized we most likely were not going to find duck at any markets (yet…I’m betting on September…) and set out to pick one up, hopefully not too outrageous in weight at the grocery store. At $11.99/lb we were slightly concerned. Soooo, a duck, which serves “two reasonably hungry adults,” according to Bourdain and weighing, on average over 5 lbs would cost us around $60. Tough to swallow. Thank god for Uwajimaya’s wonderful freezer section crammed full of fowl of varying degrees of size and quality. $12 total and we were on our way to Duck a L’orange. Now if I only had an orange shag rug and some velvet paintings to round out our evening that could of taken place in 1963.
The cooking process for this duck was something of an exercise in patience, filled with seemingly asinine steps meant to confuse, taunt and generally poke fun at my obvious lack of education on the art of fine French fowl-cooking. 25 minutes at 250 degrees, take out of oven and let duck come to room temperature. Pump up the temp to 350 and go for an hour and a half. Huh? Why? What does the resting do, besides add about an hour of cook time to an already laborious evening. I like to think it’s just a French thing, meant to propagate the idea of slow cooking and mess with the minds (and schedules) of over busy Americans (cause it’s all about us isn’t it?).
I have develped a bit of a food crush on duck. The game-y-ness of the meat, the succlence of the meat, and can we talk about the skin? Move over pork rinds. I’d say one of my biggest culinary regrets is not trying peking duck in China.
My only hang up with this recipe was the construction of the sauce. Classical French cuisine is built on sauces. Escoiffier had a mind boggling recipe collection of them, used to add richness, flavor, and eye-appeal. At some point in the California cuisine revolution of America, sauces were thought of as heavy, excessively rich, and cloying the natural flavor of the meat. But done right, sauces elevate flavor and appeance of the dish. But please explain to me, senior Bourdain, how to make a light caramel from sherry vinegar (it was supposed to be red wine-Ed.) and sugar. Didn’t happen. Let us also talk of the delights of deglazing the pan with Grand Marnier, while it didn’t “flame up and set my hair and eye lashes light,” it did set a streak of panic in me as I watched flashes of my mother in law’s new $40,000 kitchen burning to the ground.
Recipe Ease 7
Time 8, suprisingly quick, just under 2 hours.
Make Again, 8, depending on the price of duck.
