A few days ago, while at BJ's, the girls and I spotted ducks in one of the coolers in the food section.
It was too difficult to resist.
It was too difficult to resist.
Once home, I poured through recipes, trying to find one that seemed doable. My historical cookbooks did not have anything I could use so, on a whim, I turned to Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. There I found Caneton Rôti (Roast Duckling), and thought it might work.
One thing the recipe called for was string with which to truss the duck, and it was something I didn't have. I did my best with dental floss (kitchen twine is on the shopping list), but after looking at this picture, days later, I saw that I did not truss the duck properly.
The duck did not cook completely, so I tossed it into the crock pot with the juices I had been diligently removing from the pan while it had been in the oven.
The next day, I picked the meat from the bones and used it to make duck Pad Thai, a favorite in the family, using the Super Simple Pad Thai recipe.
The carcass did not go to waste: the bones and the vegetables from the Caneton Rôti went back into the crock pot with some water, a trick I learned from this website. The next day I strained the lot and brought the resulting broth to a boil and pressure-canned it. Mrs Beeton would have been proud...
Even the liver et al did not go to waste: using the recipe from Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen, I made pâté which was wonderful on some freshly baked baguettes.
All in all, it was a great and delicious learning experience, and one which I would be eager to repeat, though with some proper twine...
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