Sunday Best Duck Confit

First, what is Duck Confit? I know that anything French produces slight intimidation in the home cook, but it really shouldn’t as the explanation of this divine dish is, well, divinely easy. Duck Comfit comes from the Gascon region of Southwestern France and involves salt curing duck legs for several days, and then slowly poaching them in fat. This method preserves the duck allowing you to use the rich, tender meat in other dishes later on. My streamlined recipe is a Sunday cook’s best friend. Cooking the duck in a slow cooker renders the fat and flavors the meat. Finish the dish in a sauté pan to crisp the skin. You can eat the duck right away, or transfer to an airtight container for later use. Pair with a dry, crisp white wine like Sauvignon Blanc.                                                                                  

So what got me thinking about duck? A recent trip to the Watauga Farmers’ Market led me back to my favorite vendor, New Life Farm and Jenny, the matriarch of the family and foodie extraordinaire. Her special this week is Muscovy Duck, which she touts to be less greasy and more like veal than poultry. We got to talking and the French delicacy, duck confit came up. Jenny mentioned that in between family and farm duties, she planned to embark on a tutorial to cook the classic dish. As it is one of my most favorite things, I too rose to the challenge. I posed the question, could I come up with a recipe that produces delicious duck comfit that every home cook can prepare?

Using my trusty slow cooker, and a packet of Jenny’s fabulous duck portions, I think I may have done it. Check out the recipe below and let me know what you think. You’ll notice in this photo, a duck breast with the leg/thigh portions in the slow cooker.

 

Using this recipe is not the way to cook the breast. I did it only to produce additional fat, as Jenny had run out of legs by the time I barged up to her stand. To cook the duck breast, slit the skin, season it, and cook the bird skin side down in a sauté pan until the skin is nice and crisp. Transfer the pan to the oven and cook just until the duck is rare (about 135°).

If all of this is just a little much, but your taste buds are in “must have duck confit” mode, go to D’artagnan.com and order it already prepared!

You’ll notice that I call this recipe Sunday Best Duck Confit. I do this as a sneak peak and preview of my new e-book, Sunday Best Dishes, A Cookbook for Passionate Cooks due out this spring. I’m looking for recipe testers now, so if you like dishes like this one, send a note to Jorj@Jorj.com and I’ll give you more info!

Sunday Best Duck Confit

Serves: 4
Prep Time: Slow cook the meat up to 5 hours; actual hands on time, about 15 minutes

4 duck thigh/leg pieces

1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme
4 large shallots thinly sliced
6 large garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced

Season the duck with salt, pepper and thyme. Place the shallots and garlic into a slow cooker. Place the duck legs, skin side down on top of the veggies. Set the slow cooker on the low setting for 4 to 5 hours.

Transfer the duck legs and fat from the slow cooker to a sauté pan over medium high heat. Cook until the skin crisps, about 5 to 8 minutes.

Suggestion: To store the duck for later use, place the legs into an airtight container. Cover the meat with the remaining fat. Seal and refrigerate for up to one week. To serve the duck later on, cook it in the remaining fat (or you can add duck fat to the pan). If you have extra fat, it is wonderful for cooking potatoes and vegetables. Use duck comfit as a substitute for pork belly in Pork Belly and Sweet Potato Hash, or as an additional ingredient in Roasted Butternut Squash and Pear Strudel.

 

 

 

 

 

Tricks for These Treats

A Candy Maker’s Kitchen Must Haves, Chewy Caramels & More! 

We’re plowing through October, leaving fall leaves in our wake. Is it just me, or is 2012 wrapping up faster than a re-gift? All joking aside, have you thought much about the upcoming holidays? My chewy caramels are not just fun to have on hand Halloween night, but make nice Christmas presents too. Whether it’s now or later, rolls of wax paper showing up at the house can mean only one thing: Mom is making caramels to wrap up like penny store candy!

Not to knock the candy companies, but the incredible sweetness and goodness of homemade caramels cannot be matched, and that’s why this post focuses on tricks for these treats; making them with ease is a matter of two Kitchen Must Haves: 1) a candy thermometer and 2) poultry shears that do double duty cutting through the chewiest of cookies, caramels and bars you’ll be making this holiday season.

 

I like to use my slow cooker or double broiler when I make caramels—the deeper the pot the better. As your confection bubbles away, you’ll want to stick the candy thermometer in for a reading of around 250 degrees; this is the temperature that allows you to dredge a spoon through. Note: you’ll be looking to see that the track of yummy caramel doesn’t fill back up immediately—then it’s time to spread your treasure into the baking dish you’ve coated in vegetable oil spray and wax paper—or better yet, a Silpat Liner; a priority Kitchen Must Have since I started in the cooking biz. Once the caramel cools, you can cut pieces for wrapping later on, or….

You COULD skip the cooling and cutting, and dip up to 10 apples in the caramel while it’s still hot and melted in the pot. I think offering caramel apples is the ultimate TV viewing snack when ABC puts on its annual It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” I’ve checked TV listings and the exact date is not yet available, but do touch base with me on Facebook to see my near daily notes (and admitted obsession with) sitting down to this sixties classic with an apple on a stick. I think it’s airing somewhere around October 27^th this year.

I’ve decided to make a make a day of prepping a half dozen apples or so before show time—and my readers, especially the ones who cook with kids—might want to do the same. It’s got great memory making potential! Whether you prepare the caramel the old-fashioned way, or tear open a bag, the Youtube instructional video you’ll find posted to my Nana Network gives the best dipping and decorating 411 on candied apples you’ve ever seen. I hope you’ll visit the page next time you’re on Facebook, “like us” and submit a fall photo for the contest we’re running until Halloween. The prize is a $25 gift card to Yankee Candle—where candied apple scented tallows are bound to be on sale!   

P.S. Nothing wrong with paying a local treat shop to do all this—I love the Confectionary at Disney that lets you custom create your candied apple! But if you decide to save a ton of $$ and make your own, feel free to write me with your experience. And don’t forget to count the apples in the Charlie Brown special! I think the party dunks for a few…          

Chewy Caramels

Makes approximately 3 pounds of caramels
Prep time: about 30 minutes

2 cups dark corn syrup

1 cup milk
2 cups sugar
½ cup butter (1 stick)
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
8 ounces unsweetened chocolate

Confectioners’ sugar

Place all of the ingredients into a large deep pan. Heat over medium high heat stirring constantly. Remove the caramel mixture from the heat. Cool to room temperature.

Spray a 13X9-inch baking dish with vegetable oil cooking spray. Line the sprayed pan with wax paper. Spray the waxed paper. Pour the caramel mixture into the pan. Let the caramels continue to cool until they are firm.

Turn out the caramels onto a cutting board. Remove the waxed paper.

Use poultry shears to cut the caramels into ½ inch squares and drop them into a bowl of powdered sugar.

Wrap each one in wax paper twisting the ends.  

Being a Vegan is Easy?

Well, my recipe for Quinoa Tabbouleh is, anyway!

 

When likeminded professional foodie, John Tanasychunk (of The Sun Sentinel) talks, hungry people listen. He wrote about “The Vegan Poet” and her upcoming appearance in a Broward County library. About 200 people showed up. I know it’s a bad pun, but Holy Cow!

As a cookbook author myself, I can’t afford to ignore how popular vegetarian/vegan lifestyles are becoming. Sublime Restaurant is a smashing success in my home base of Ft. Lauderdale, on the periphery of every savvy South Florida diner. In fact, veganism is such a lingering hot topic that when I started my food blog in 2009, I was encouraged by other bloggers to climb aboard the vegan train and try for the astonishing number of followers they seemed to have over us meat eaters.

 

Well, I said then “welcome to my uphill battle” and I still say it. As a meat lover on the same wave length as Anthony Bourdain (who dismisses veganism as “a first world phenomenon; completely self-indulgent), I still take note when I run into articles hypothesizing that climate change could present meat lovers with real problems by the year 2050. Read about it on Blisstree). So I looked to the Vegan Poet, aka Butteflies, for proof that becoming a vegan is easy.

 

Whether it is or it isn’t remains to be seen. Members of the audience were treated to a 9 minute clip of a documentary called Earthlings, which deemphasized our place in the food chain, and just about chastised those in the room who think farm animals belong outside. The disappointment was palpable; the notes takers with celiac disease and faulty gall bladders left their pages bank. It was easy to get the idea that most had come that day to learn about where to find vegan ingredients (the unusual stuff like agave syrup and tempeh), substitutions in lieu of dairy and meat products, and see if it was practical to give the lifestyle a try. If there hadn’t been food and plant based-hypoallergenic samples available (pictured here), I feel sure 90% of the audience would have walked out.

 

 

A fair number stuck around and paged through Butterflies’book. She’s a chef in New Zealand, currently touring the U.S. She’s got 6,000 followers on Facebook, and as someone who has worked very hard just to climb to 2,000 fans on the Nana Network, I can appreciate how interesting her subject matter must be to people. Her food that day had a super fresh, unprocessed taste. You could identify each and every herb from its Hari Krishna inspired spice rack, and there was also that comfort that subsequent heartburn was next to impossible.

 

I wrote this post so that my fans could have one-click access to some very good shortlists on how to stock up your vegan pantry: Here they are.

http://www.vegkitchen.com/tips/vegetarian-pantry/
http://www.mightyvegan.com/2011/08/09/my-10-vegan-pantry-essentials/

 

There’s also this cheat sheet/palm card I’ve typed up for you here:
• Nuts of all varieties
• Quinoa
• Chia seeds (for fiber)
• Oatmeal
• Dates
• Beans of all varieties
• Hummus
• Tofu
• Non diary milks (i.e. almond or soy)
• Nutritional yeast

 

And there’s my foolproof recipe for Quinoa Tabbouleh that functions almost like a currency among New Age eaters. I whipped this us last night and found that it has spot-on portions of the ingredients that make tabbouleh, tabbouleh: mint, parlsey, lemon juice, garlic….and the English cucumber that makes you feel special and refreshed just looking at its super-skinny, shrink-wrapped shape. Try it before September’s over—it’s National Yoga Month after all, and the enlightened eaters are more on our radar now than ever. Namaste, everyone.

Quinoa Tabbouleh

Quinoa looks like a grain, acts like a grain and tastes like a grain, but for all those gluten-free types, the good news is that quinoa is really a seed akin more to spinach and beets than to wheat. Using quinoa in tabbouleh is a brilliant way to add a bunch of protein to your salad.

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

1 cup quinoa

1 teaspoon coarse salt, divided
Juice from 1 large lemon, about 2 tablespoons
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
½ teaspoon yellow mustard
½ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon coarse pepper
1 large English cucumber, diced into ¼-inch cubes
1 pint cherry tomatoes, cut into quarters
4 to 5 green onions, thinly sliced, about ½ cup
½ cup chopped, fresh Italian parsley
½ cup chopped fresh mint

Place the quinoa into a saucepan. Add 1 ¼ cups water and ½ teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan with a lid and simmer until the water disappears and the quinoa is tender, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Whisk together the lemon juice, garlic and mustard in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in the olive oil. Season the dressing with ½ teaspoons salt and pepper.

Transfer the quinoa to a bowl. Stir in half of the dressing. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes (or overnight). Add the cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, parsley and mint to the quinoa. Toss with remaining dressing.

 

Just another Sunday Dinner With the Fam

Not really…these BBQ’d pork tenderloins were SMOKIN’!!!!!!

I don’t review cookbooks, so much as act them out—so when I fell in love with Adam Perry Lang’s best seller Charred & Scruffed, I asked my cousins, who were visiting me for one last vacation this summer, to come on out to the Blue Ridge Mountains to taste some truly inspired PREMIUM barbecue. You could say we were the GRILLS next door; these ladies and cherished friends traveled far to be with me, so of course we had to make the most of it. When we get together it’s not about site seeing or shopping, it's about gabbing, gossiping and goofing around. What made our conversation flow better than anything? I’d say a few good sips of wine and a couple of over-the top meals helped.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and I needed—as a meat lover—to read something by a fellow carnivorous foodie.  While I used many of Adam Perry Lang’s techniques to create this most memorable dish, it did of course feature my own twists and tweaks. Sunday Best Grilled Tenderloins were born. It’s an entrée that’s going to star in an upcoming cookbook I’m writing about meals that are best reserved for those lazy Sundays after church. You know…those uber-laid back weekends where friends who identify with your love of fire, salt and meat gather round the grill. I love those Sundays. Before long you’ve got the whole neighborhood jealous of those heavenly wood smoke smells coming from your backyard.

My grilled tenderloins, pictured above, are EXTREME in flavor, tenderly brined and skillfully basted; these are simply the best pork tenderloins you will ever slice; served with creamed spinach and au gratin potatoes; in these you have a pig that tastes like a Kobe steer!

For side-dishes (what my muse Adam Perry Lang calles “co-stars”), I served creamy cheesy au gratin potatoes and velvety creamed spinach. My niece, present for this Extreme BBQ gave me this compliment: “No one does au gratin like J-Mo.” Aw, thanks Megan. Of the pork tenderloin, my sweet girl also enthused:

“It was juicy and tender with loads of flavor. She tried this new brine and board-dressing technique where you baste the brined meat on the grill with butter and garlic using a brush made of tied together sage, rosemary, thyme (and other herbs) then finely chop herb, garlic and the juice of a lemon on the board you leave the meat to rest on. Once you take the meat off the grill you roll the tenderloin(s) in the herbs and then let it rest and soak up the flavoring.”

Megan isn’t the only one I wanna thank. The whole crew deserves a round of applause for their tirelessness at clean-up. The dishes were sky-high after our over-the-top feast, but all of us cousins rose to the occasion like an enactment from The Big Chill, blasting “I’ve Had the Time of my Life” from my husband’s iPod . I didn’t know it was possible to dance and dry dishes at the same time—at least without breaking any. Thanks again for making everything sparkle after such a stupendously messy and delicious meal; it certainly wasn’t the only chargrilled indulgence that weekend: we also had (pictured above left) Grilled Rib Eye & asparagus, sautéed mushrooms, and spicy onion rings. For dessert there was ice box cake, and you’ll have to private message me to get my sister’s family recipe.

That’s all for now. Enjoy the food porn, and have a great rest of the week!