D is for Duck Liver Pâté

Once upon a time a blogger bought and cooked a duck.

Many moons later she blogged about it.

Two point five moons after that she finally got around to doing something with the duck liver.

Sooooo, I was _planning_ on following this recipe I found on epicurious pretty darn closely. Because making a pâté seemed like a fairly complex undertaking.

However, typically, I didn't have all the ingredients I needed, (FAIL!) so I had to make a couple of substitutions on the fly. (Remind me later to tell you about the time I got halfway through a batch of Toll House Cookies before realizing I was out of eggs. Sigh.)

What I Did:

bacon fat (approx 3 ounces)*
1 shallot
1 duck liver (approx 3 ounces)*
1/4 teaspoon herbes de Provence
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon sweet vermouth
toast

*I had to guesstimate the amount. Unless the ingredients in question are coming from a can, 'ounces' aren't a recognized unit of measurement in my kitchen. I used an glob of bacon fat that appeared to be about the same size as the liver and crossed my fingers.


1) Place bacon fat in a skillet, and cook over medium heat for 4 to 5 minutes, until the fat melts.

1.5) Chop the shallot, garlic and liver while waiting for the fat to melt.

2) Add the shallot to the fat, cook for about 30 seconds, stirring once or twice.

3) Add the liver, herbes and garlic, and cook over medium heat for two minutes, stirring occasionally.


**This is about when I realized that no part of making the pâté would be visually appealing. It smelled really good, though.

4) Add the salt and pepper. Remove from heat.

5) Throw everything into the food processor, add the vermouth, and blend until liquefied.

6) Cool in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Make toast during the end of this time.

How Did it Go?
Not too bad. Yeah, I think I can say that. It wasn't a pretty food, but it was definitely yummy. (Maybe this is where I should mention that I like braunschwager, just to give you a reference point for my taste.) It was probably a bit flat compared to Professional Pâtés, but I'm working from memory here, so I can't say for certain sure what the difference was.


What Would I Do Differently?
Where to start? Um…

- The original recipe called for a much longer cooling time. So I'd be interested to see if that was different taste-wise, or was just a texture thing.

- I'll admit that serving this on toasted pre-sliced sandwich loaf felt a little ghetto. If sharing with guests I'd definitely get a schmancier bread involved.

- Given duck livers enough and time, I'd try making several pâtés with several different alcohols. The vermouth was fine, but I find myself wondering about scotch…

D is for Duck Liver

Ok, hold onto your hats, kiddos. I think I'm going to try a little duck liver pate this evening.

D is for Detour

Ok, . . . guys? It's the end of August and I'm drowning in zucchini. In the interest of actually blogging here again, I hope you'll be tolerant of my skipping ahead a bit and letting you know how I'm dealing with the squash overload. Because I'm looking at pickling and, frankly, I'm a little scared.

D is for Delayed Duck

Remember that frozen duck? The one from five months ago? That one?

Yeah. What can I say? It's been a busy busy spring/early summer.

So let's jump in the wayback machine, and travel back to a more innocent time: Late March, when the duck finally thawed.

I did the google thang per usual, and read recipes from Food Network, Epicurious and Cooks dot com, besides consulting my perennial favorite for large poultry roasting, The Joy of Cooking.

The big concerns in duck roasting seem to be
a) getting rid of the fat, because there is apparently a lot of it, and
b) avoiding "off-flavors" (I'm assuming they mean "gaminess" here...?)

Some people also seem to really, really long for an extra crispy duck skin. However, since this was my first duck, I wasn't going to push myself too hard.

What I Did:

one duck, fresh or thawed
salt
pepper
shallot

0.5) Preheat oven to 450 degrees

1) Rinse duck and pat dry

2) Place duck, breast up, on a rack in a shallow baking pan

3) Score the duck:
- make a series of shallow, diagonal cuts along one side of the bird torso
- "shallow" in this case means you should cut through the skin, but not the fat
- cut along the duck on the other diagonal, creating a diamond pattern.
- repeat on the other side of the torso

4) Rub the duck inside and out with salt and pepper (you could go with herbs here as well, I imagine)

5) Put a shallot inside the duck cavity (the recipes inform me that citrus fruits, root veggies, etc, would work just as well for this)

6) Place pan and duck in the oven

7) Reduce the temperature immediately to 350

8) Cook 20 minutes per pound of bird

9) Remove from oven

10) Allow to rest for ten-ish minutes, discard shallot from cavity, carve and serve

How Did it Go?
Great! The duck was juicy but not greasy, the flavor was mild, and life was good. It is fair to note here that Mr. Husband found the taste a bit odder than I did, so duck is not likely to become a household staple.

What Would I Do Differently?
Blog about it in a more timely manner. :-p Sorry about that, y'all.

D is for Duck

Duck achieved!

It turned out all I needed to do was ask someone in the meat department. Fancy that. They led me across the store to the freezer case and, et voila, I now have a duck.

Of course, I have no idea what I'm going to do with said duck yet, but, well, it's frozen solid, so I figure i have a couple days to make a plan.

D is for ?

Hey there, food fans.

I'm working on hunt-and-pecking up my fourth and final recipe for C and am at a bit of a loss for what ingredient to play with for D.

May I ask for your suggestions?