Duck Rillettes

White Pekin Duck

I am one lucky cook. I had a bowl of gorgeous slow cooked duck meat and another of beautifully scented duck fat from my New Jersey neighbors at D’Artagnan on my kitchen counter. Why was I so fortunate? Because I had made duck demi-glace to anoint beautiful little Scottish grouse that I’m doing next week and had these luxurious leftovers after slow cooking the stock for 10 hours. What did I do with it??? How about duck rillettes!

One of the most heartbreakingly delicious breakfasts of my life was an omelette filled with duck rillettes and crème fraiche that was served with bread fragranced by a wood fire toasting. The filling flowed from its egg envelope with a dark molten splendor as I sliced into it. I think my eyes rolled back in my head.

This is great duck. D’Artagnan’s meats and poultry are all raised organically and humanely which all good cooks know makes for better tasting food as well as a better stewardship of the land. Being NY based, I have used their products for 20 years and have never been disappointed (through the wonders of the internet… you can too!).

This is one of the easiest things in the world to make if you have the raw materials. Rillettes were first made with pork and are a specialty of Anjou and Le Mans in France, but are now done with game or fish as well. The meat is salted and scented with warm spices and fresh herbs. I warmed it up even further with cognac and Madeira and then brightened it with green peppercorns. I bet you could do it with leftover chicken thighs as well but you do need the fat to make it work. It is wicked and delicious….something all women aspire to, yes?

Duck Rillettes

Leftover duck meat

Leftover duck fat, melted

Salt to taste

1 clove garlic minced

pinch of coriander, nutmeg, pepper

& mace *

½ pinch of cinnamon

1 t fresh marjoram, chopped

1 T MAISON SURRENNE cognac **

1 T Boston Bual Madeira

1-2 T green peppercorns in brine

* The amounts of spice will depend on what you’re able to get off the duck. Assuming you get 1 c of meat and nearly the same of fat, the recommended spicing will work. If you did a few ducks and have a lot more meat and fat, expand the amounts accordingly. Taste and see what you think. This is not an exact science. This is a great dish for using what is left and not wasting any of your great duck.

Take all the leftover meat from the duck carcass you may have leftover from making a duck. Cook at a very low heat in the duck fat. When it is meltingly tender after an hour or so, remove it from the heat and shred the meat. Combine with the garlic and spices and liquor and green peppercorns. Put into a crock and try to have the fat cover the meat. Let it sit for a day or two to meld the flavors. Serve at room temperature on bread. You can also serve it with cornichons and mustard if you wish.

I made that omelette again. Although my rillettes aren’t as dark as the one I remember… the taste was there… to die for. I can also see this as a filling for ravioli with cream. It was great as a filling for lasagna (I put a little raclette in the béchamel and mmm it was good!).

** I want to recommend the cognac from Germain-Robin. I got their MAISON SURRENNE Ancienne Distillerie 100% Petite Champagne when I was working on the absinthe post and finally cracked it open… it is spectacular and a great buy for cognac.

Thanks to everyone who has been clicking on my Google Ads(anything that sells something) on the side and bottom of the page… I have almost made $10 this month which is 10 times better than usual… at this rate I might get a night’s stay in Oxford courtesy of LostPast… how great is that!!!

check out D'Artagnan's Facebook page... Lostpastremembered is there!!!

Thanks to Designs by Gollum for Foodie Friday

Morels ~ Creamed and Deep Fried with Beef on Pastry

The first time I saw a morel mushroom I thought it was a monster from space and couldn’t believe it wasn’t poisonous or an alien invader. It didn’t have that classic ‘toad stool’ mushroom shape and it surely did not have the soft brown texture I was used to in cultivated mushrooms. No wonder, the morel or Morchella is an Ascocarp like the truffle and not technically a mushroom. What I also didn’t know is that it should never be eaten raw as they have a small amount of toxins in them that are removed through cooking. Once cooked… they are heaven.

Morel Mushrooms

I have had the good fortune to get my hands on a package of dried morels thanks to the savvy folks at Marx Foods. The lure is that if I can make something sublime with these dried puppies I can win the motherload of a passel of fresh morels. Now that is a challenge worth going to the mat for!

Marx Food Mushroom Challenge

I tried to remember all the wonderful morel dishes I’ve been lucky enough to make or taste and went to Mr. Mushroom, Jack Czarnecki to jog my memory. I have had his Joe's Book of Mushroom Cookery for 20 years.

I did remember that it was best to hydrate the day before, strain and save the water and put them in the fridge wrapped in a towel… they will nearly have the texture of fresh. I can’t remember who told me this but it works.

One of my favorite morel dishes is simple creamed morels on toast with asparagus on the side. It’s a classic. However, since this is a contest, I figured that I would up the ante and make it my own with a few well-chosen additions.

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Ross ashby thinking cap

On goes the magic thinking cap. My ex’s mom, the wonderful Marion, surprised me once by making her version of strawberry shortcake. I am a mid-western girl and she was a southerner from Lookout Mountain. She made the dish using piecrust “cookies” instead of a fluffy biscuit underneath that mound of cream and berries that I grew up with. It was delicious and these “cookies” have become a workhorse of my pantry. I make a dozen and keep them in the freezer. I take them out and pop them in the toaster oven and use them to dress up leftovers, make nearly instant potpie crust or slather them in jam or berries for dessert. I decided to use them with my morels. Morels and beef in a cream sauce with fried crispy morels on top and asparagus on the side because, well I love asparagus and morels and asparagus go together like angels and singing. It is also a combination that screams Spring Is Here!

The really fun website The Great Morel.com had some wonderful tips and suggestions about a zillion ways to fry morels. I looked through their suggestions and one of them raved about an English [I went to Heston Blumenthal to get a little help with proportions] batter for fish with rice flour and vodka and beer that they used for morels--wow. I think the unctuous creaminess of the beef and morels and the crisp top and bottom are a devastating combination. The batter makes the most shatteringly delicate crust you have ever seen… like the world’s best tempura! I fried some parsley in it and I used it with shrimp, it worked on everything I tried.

18^th c pewter plate

Morels and Beef on Pie Crust w Cream Sauce & Deep- Fried Morels

Serves 3-4

Piecrust Cookies.

Preheat oven to 375º

1 c flour

¼ c whole-wheat flour

½ t. salt, fresh marjoram

2 T lard (from Flying Pigs )

8 T butter

¼ c ice water

Blend the flours, salt and marjoram in the food processor. Add the frozen butter and lard in small pieces and pulse a few times. Remove from processor and add the water, a little at a time stirring to blend with a fork. Add enough water so the pastry holds together when you grab some and squeeze. Put ¼ c four on a piece of wax paper. Grab 6-8 handfuls of the dough and place on wax paper. Take each and smear. Pile up the flattened pieces and stack them into a mound—flatten slightly. Place in fridge for 1 hour in the wax paper. Remove from fridge. Roll the dough out to your favorite thickness (less than ¼”). Using a cookie cutter, cut out circles and place on cookie sheet. Prick the cookies with a fork and bake 15 minutes or until golden. This makes 12 -3” cookies.

Fried Morels (this batter can do many mushrooms with left over for many other good things!)

Batter

1/4 c flour

1/4 c rice flour (I whirred brown rice in the coffee mill)

1/4 t baking powder

1 T powdered pecans (same coffee mill trick)

1t. honey

¼ c vodka (* you can add more, but make sure it isn’t too much, it drips off the mushrooms!)

¼ c lager. (*you can add more, but make sure it isn’t too much, it drips off the mushrooms!)

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl. Add the vodka and stir. Add the lager just before using. Dip the 8 morels in the batter and fry in 2 “ of vegetable oil till brown and crisp. Do this after the rest of the dish is all ready to go or do it and put them in a 200º oven on paper towels over a rack till ready to use.

Creamed Beef and Morels.

1 pound beef in 1” pieces **

1-2 T oil for frying

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

a few sprigs fresh thyme

1 T peppercorns, crushed

1 c red wine

3/4 C stock (chicken, beef or veal)

¼ c morel soaking liquid, strained

1 oz dried morels (re-hydrated) all extra water gently squeezed out – about 2 cups, reserve 8-10 for frying

2 T butter

1 large shallot, chopped

2 T cognac

1 T madeira (I used The Rare Wine Company'sBoston Bual)

1 c cream

1 T ancho pepper that has been re-hydrated and pureed

Chopped parsley and Thyme or Marjoram

1-2 T Green Peppercorns in brine

Salt the beef, then sauté in oil till browned. Remove from pan and sauté onion and garlic. Add thyme and peppercorns. Deglaze pan with wine and add stock and mushroom liquid. Return the beef to the pot, cover and cook the beef in a 250º oven for 2 hours, remove thyme.

** Should you desire you could use Filet Mignon. If you choose to use this, cook it very little. Reduce the sauce on the stovetop and only add the beef again to warm at the end. Strain the beef and reserve cooking liquid.

Melt butter and sauté shallot. Add morels and stir gently until water is removed. Add cognac and Madeira and deglaze. Pour in the reserved cooking liquid and reduce. Add the cream and pepper puree and the beef and cook about 30 minutes on a low heat (if you are using the filet option, only put the beef in after the sauce has reduced—then just warm the beef through—keep it medium rare). Add chopped herbs and green peppercorns.

Serve over pastry rounds and top with fried mushrooms.

I wanted to thank Sarah at All Our Fingers in the Pie for this lovely award.

I’d like to share it with a few of you who have really been wonderful blog inspiration and who have shared great stories and encouragement and or expanded my international horizons!

Barbara @ moveable feast

Moira @ tertulia des sabores

Lee Ann @ powderate

Sarah @ four pounds flour

And a new one I love, from the wonderful former editor of House & Garden, Dominique @Slow Love Life

reading it is like having coffee with a wise and brilliant friend in a sunny window seat on a perfect Spring day.

Sea Urchin with Madeira, Cream & Pasta

The Washington Post’s Tom Sietsema calls sea urchin "the foie gras of the ocean". I agree with him, but it is also so much more. I once got a date to eat urchin with me when he did not want to get near the “vile stuff” by telling him it was achingly voluptuous and its taste filled your mouth with the pure soul of the ocean.

I wasn’t making that up.

Purple Sea Urchin, SMBayKeeper

The name urchin is an old name for the round spiny hedgehogs that sea urchins resemble and is used in many cultures (riccio in Italian, erizo in spanish) to describe the bristly Echinoderm.

Hedgehog in the palm of a hand, defines cute

Sea otters feed on sea urchins.

Sea Otter

They are found in the North Atlantic and on the West Coast of America as well. In Maine, sea urchins are impolitely known as whores' eggs. In the Orkney Islands of Scotland (home of night-less summers and ‘simmer dim’) urchin was once used instead of butter. *

Julia Moskin of the NYT’s tells us “Sea urchins evoke the flavor of caviar, the trembly texture of panna cotta and the briny but bracing strangeness that comes with eating live oysters.”

Sea Urchin

“They are one of the few remaining delicacies that must be harvested from the wild and cannot, for most purposes, be frozen. They are hand-cut by professional scuba divers — or, in some parts of Korea, by women who train from childhood to hold their breath and dive in cold water. These haenyo, or sea women, dive as deep as 50 feet with no gear other than a mask and a knife, gathering sea urchins, abalone, seaweed and conch. (Women are better able to tolerate cold water, and it became traditional for them to support their families by selling their catch.)"

Urchin in Shell

“An aphrodisiac in Japan for thousands of years, sea urchin, or uni, as the Japanese call it, is not the roe. It is the gonads of this hermaphrodite sea creature that are scooped out of the urchin’s spiny shell in five custard-like, golden sections.

From a nutritional standpoint, sea urchin is one of the most prominent culinary sources of anandamide, a cannabinoid neurotransmitter. Does this mean that eating uni will produce a similar effect to ingesting marijuana? Probably not, but it is possible that uni activates the dopamine system in the brain, humans’ built in “reward circuit” reports Eat Something Sexy

I really felt validated when I read that. The sublime taste and texture of urchin always puts me in the mood for romance!

Eric Ripert at Bernadin has a great recipe for a sea urchin pasta sauce that Robin at Caviar and Codfish blogged about. The recipe was in Eric Ripert's book On the Line. Did I mention I love Eric Ripert?I remember particularly a soup at Bernadin with hot and cold urchin… I nearly passed out from pleasure. Eric Ripert is a genius.

I just had to try that pasta and it was delicious… just not as delicious as it could be because my urchin wasn’t as good as it could be… a little old, I think. Claudia at CookEatFret raved about Catalina Offshore Products So I gave them a call and was not disappointed. They have some of the best urchin I have ever seen in the US or Japan. It is fresh and firm and full of that briny sensual quality that I have loved when I’ve had it at great restaurants. The stuff I had a few weeks ago was a pale ghost compared to this (and it arrives the next day after you order it!).

Sea Urchin Pasta

I loved Ripert’s pasta recipe but had an idea that I wanted to try. I made the sauce as the recipe dictated, but I took 4 of the urchin, chopped them roughly and soaked them for 2 hours in 2 T of madeira and tossed it in the sauce. It was heaven. This dish is pure seduction.

For the pasta, only the best would do so I made the The French Laundry Cookbook pasta recipe.

Sea Urchin Pasta based on an Eric Ripert Recipe

Serves 3-4

1/2 cup sea urchin ( I ordered the Golden)

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened (or 1/3 c rich heavy cream + 2T butter)

1 tablespoon water (skip the water if you use the cream)

Fine sea salt

Espelette pepper powder

The Pasta

8 ounces fresh linguine, 4 oz dry

To Finish

1-1/2 teaspoons thinly sliced chives

1 T chervil leaves

1 tablespoon freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Fine sea salt and freshly ground white pepper

1/2 lemon

4 pieces of urchin steeped in 2 T Madeira ( Boston Bual - but I used a little 1937 Verdelho)

The Garnish

1 ounce caviar (I used golden whitefish he used Iranian osetra)

For the sea urchin sauce, puree the sea urchin roe in a blender. Pass it through a fine-mesh sieve, and return to the blender. Blend the puree with the softened butter or cream.

To finish the sauce, bring the water to a boil in a small saucepan. Gradually whisk in the sea urchin butter, about 1 tablespoon at a time(skip the water if you are using cream-just heat the sauce, do not boil). Season with salt and Espelette pepper and keep warm.

When ready to serve, cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente; drain.

Put the chives in a medium stainless steel bowl, add the warmed sauce and Parmesan cheese, and mix well. Season with salt and white pepper if necessary. Gently toss the pasta with the sauce and add the marinated urchin.

To serve, mound it in the center of a small bowl. Repeat three times. Squeeze the lemon juice over the pasta and place 1-1/2 teaspoons of the caviar on top of each mound of pasta. Serve immediately.

Based on Pasta Dough by Thomas Keller (this is more than enough… make it and use the rest for another great dish)

3/4 cup plus 2 T all-purpose flour

3 large egg yolks

1 large egg

1 teaspoons olive oil

1/2 tablespoon milk

Mound the flour on a board or other surface and create a well in the center, pushing the flour to all sides to make a ring with sides about 1 inch wide. Make sure that the well is wide enough to hold all the eggs without spilling.

Pour the egg yolks, egg, oil, and milk into the well. Use your fingers to break the eggs up. Still using your fingers, begin turning the eggs in a circular motion, keeping them within the well and not allowing them to spill over the sides. This circular motion allows the eggs to gradually pull in flour from the sides of the well; it is important that the flour not be incorporated too rapidly, or your dough will be lumpy. Bring the dough together with the palms of your hands and form it into a ball. It will look flaky but will hold together.

Knead the dough by pressing it, bit by bit, in a forward motion with the heels of your hands rather than folding it over on itself as you would with a bread dough. The dough should feel moist but not sticky. Let the dough rest for a few minutes while you clean the work surface.

Dust the clean work surface with a little flour. Knead the dough by pushing against it in a forward motion with the heels of your hands. Form the dough into a ball again and knead it again. Keep kneading in this forward motion until the dough becomes silky-smooth. The dough is ready when you can pull your finger through it and the dough wants to snap back into place. The kneading process can take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. Even if you think you are finished kneading, knead it for an extra ten minutes; you cannot overknead this dough. It is important to work the dough long enough to pass the pull test; otherwise, when it rests, it will collapse.

Double-wrap the dough in plastic wrap to ensure that it does not dry out. Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour before rolling it through a pasta machine. The dough can be made a day ahead, wrapped and refrigerated; bring to room temperature before proceeding. Put it through your pasta machine to the last level and make linguine.

Thanks to Gollum for hosting Foodies Friday!

*As always, most facts come from Wikipedia unless otherwise noted, and for that we are eternally grateful. The few things I know myself I contribute humbly to the great knowledge pool of the blog world.