I made 2 ducks that I got from Matt Smith, using this Gourmet recipe from 1943. I followed the recipe pretty exactly, except instead of celery in the bottom of the roasting pan, I used celeriac, and I didn’t add the orange zest to the sauce. Which was delicious even without it. Oh, yea, and I left out the marjoram (I think it tastes like soap) and just used more thyme and parsley. The ducks seemed to have a lot of pin feathers, so I flamed them with some orange liquor when they came out of the oven. That was pretty exciting. Ducks are still something of a mystery to me, at least carving – the meat doesn’t want to come off the bones. I managed to hack off both legs and thighs and the 4 breasts, and that’s what we ate. The breast meat was really, really good. After dinner, I tried to get as much meat off the carcasses as I could and ended up with a small ziploc bag with a few wisps of meat. I wish I liked duck stock – I had so much good material for it.
I just read a recipe that said to cook the duck for three hours. Maybe that’s the trick.
We also had braised red cabbage, and roasted root vegetables. I made a trifle, but I think because the duck was so rich, we didn’t eat it. I packed up a cookie box for John & Megan to take to Jake’s and had to taste test a few to make sure they were still good, this long after Xmas. They were. And that was all the dessert that I wanted.
We can have trifle tonight, after bangers and mash with duck gravy for the mash.
PS – still no room for trifle – another day.
