Moules Frites (or A Return from Kitchen Exile)

First breakfast, and now a lunch in a new house. It's a slow work up to making a dinner, but now that I'm just about settled in a dish that involved deep frying on a stove without any type of ventilation seemed like an appropriate way to check out what it'd be like to clean up a little bit of a mess.

Regarding mussels, years ago I spent about five months in the Netherlands. Those mussel connoisseurs were pretty serious about only eating mussels in months that have an "r" in them. While that policy seems more relevant with certain oysters that don't seem to improve in warm water, it stuck for me, so I loosely abide by it.

Making the mussels was pretty simple, starting with a quick trip to Kate's Fish at the West Side Market, where I was reminded how economical a choice mussels are. When I got them home I melted a bunch of butter (Stutzman Herdshare) in a cast iron pan along with some minced shallot from the garden. When that was all hot and fragrant I added the mussels and a bunch of basil leaves. The pan was covered, occasionally shaken, and taken off the heat when all the mussels opened up (they all opened). It smelled wonderful. In an effort to get out from under a mountain of tomatoes I meant to throw some diced tomato into the mix, but it was not meant to be. While I think they would have been a nice addition, they weren't particularly missed.

The mussels were dumped into a bowl with some toasted baguette. Another unremarkable baguette picked up on the West Side of Cleveland. It wasn't poisonous, but wasn't what it could be. The toasting helped though.

And the frites, made while preparing the mussels. Julienned garden fingerlings twice fried in duck fat in a wok. The wok is great for deep frying small quantities of foods using a minimal amount of fat. I cooked the potatoes in hot fat until they lost some moisture, removed them with a spider onto a plate lined with a paper towel, and then fried them again, removing them from the fat when they were crispy and quickly seasoned them with salt. Next to try them with some horse fat, or more likely, rendered beef suet (tallow).

Clean up was a breeze, and I think the Benelux folks would respect this rendition of their dish. Hopefully the basil didn't hurt anyone's feelings.

Breakfast Potatoes

Potatoes, onion, paprika, cayenne, cumin, salt and pepper, and rosemary. I started by briefly sauteing the onions in duck fat. I added the potatoes and seasonings, sans rosemary, and put everything in a 425 degree onion for a bit, then cranked it up to 500 for a little extra browning. Towards the very end I added the rosemary. It was very nice with eggs over easy and some toast. Who doesn't love breakfast potatoes?

As for the weather:

Duck and beans revisited

It was time to try this one again, this time without the pressure cooker. The new version takes a bit of time to come together, but doesn't require doing anything too difficult. I quick soaked (brought to a boil, turned off the heat, and allowed to rest for about an hour) the white beans before draining and cooking them in boiling water. For flavor I added some shallot, garlic, and diced double smoked tasso that I picked up at the West Side Market to the boiling beans.

When the beans were about half cooked I browned seasoned duck legs in an enameled dutch oven. Once the legs were browned I added some tomato paste to the dutch oven and cooked it down a bit. To the legs and tomato paste I added the partially cooked beans and the accompanying water, garlic, shallots, and tasso, and added a bay leaf. I also added a few glugs of white wine (The whole thing is cassoulet inspired.). A cover went on the dutch oven, and it all went into a 325 degree oven.

Every now then I checked on the pot to see how things were coming. The idea was to have fork tender duck legs without the beans being over cooked. When the beans were about right I seasoned the mix with salt and pepper. The legs were about 3/4 submerged during the entirety of the cooking, with the skin side up (I never had to add any extra liquid, but if I did it wouldn't have been a problem.). Once the legs were done I took them out and left the beans and flavorings in the remaining liquid in a covered pot off the heat--the beans absorbed most of the remaining liquid.

So now everything is resting in the fridge, quietly waiting for a quick trip under broiler to crisp up the skin on the duck legs and heat the beans through. Judging from the approximately 50 pounds of beans I consumed while checking for doneness, I think this will be a great heat and eat meal.

Duck and Mushroom Pasta in the Style of Carbonara

How's that for a name? After a cold day and not so good lunch a comforting dinner was in order, but a trip to the store was not. So in an endless quest to make sure nothing goes bad in the pantry and fridge (and to use Plum Creek Poultry's great eggs), this is what I came up with. It's fettuccine, duck confit, reconstituted dried morels, and an egg/parmesan sauce. I would have used cream instead of the egg sauce, but I didn't have any, and I'm glad I didn't. Here it is:

Ingredients:
- Duck confit, shredded*
- Morels, soaked cut in half**
- Eggs
- Parmesan, grated (pecorino)
- Pasta (fettuccine worked well here)
- Sage, chiffonade
- Salt and pepper
- Butter
Method:
- Cook pasta
- While pasta is cooking saute mushrooms in butter with salt and pepper
- If you started with dried mushrooms, once the mushrooms are cooked and just slightly browned add the water you used to soak them (as noted below)
- Once mushroom water is cooked down, or when mushrooms are cooked if you're not using the liquid, add sage
- Separately stir together nearly equal parts parmesan and egg
- Add cooked pasta to mushroom mixture and also add shredded confit
- Stir well and then turn heat way down (or off)
- Add egg mixture and a season to taste, stirring well until mixture firms up (Keep in mind that the eggs will keep cooking for a little bit, but not too much, when you're serving.)

It's a satisfying cold weather meal. Any roasted poultry could be substituted for the confit (quail works great--also available from Plum Creek), and I imagine most mushrooms could be substituted for the morels, but since dried morels are just about always available, I'd try to get those.

* Duck confit - There are lots of duck confit recipes on the web, so I won't spend too much time here discussing mine, which is a mixture of the ones I've seen. I sprinkle duck legs with these Herbs de Provence, salt, and pepper, and layer the legs in a to-be-covered plastic container with a few garlic cloves (cut in half) mixed in there. I leave that in the fridge overnight, and the next day brush the mixture off (but not too well) saving the garlic cloves. I then submerge the legs with the garlic in rendered duck fat (That's a whole 'nother blog entry, and getting a good quantity of duck fat around here has become tricky--it wasn't just a few years ago), in an uncovered sauce pan, and place in a 225-250 degree oven until they're just about to the tenderness I want. I then remove the duck legs and strain and reheat the fat (on the stove or in the oven) to get any water/duck juice moisture out of it (The garlic cloves left in the strainer may be the best things ever.). I then pour the (hopefully) water and juice free fat over the legs to cover (If the fat's not pure things get a little ugly in storage.). If there's leftover fat it's not hard to find a way to use it. The legs keep covered in fat in the fridge for a longer time than it should take you to eat them.

** Morels - I love them, fresh and/or dried. There are good reasons to enjoy these mushrooms dried, most notably, because they're seasonal (and the flavor is intense). I was lucky to move from one area plush with morels (the Pacific Northwest) to another (shockingly to me, the Midwest--there are tons in Ohio and Michigan). With the fresh ones, before cooking I like to soak them in lightly salted cold or room temp water. It's just how I learned to do it, and it also drives out the worms that love to hide in the honeycomb-like mushroom. With the dried ones, I reconstitute them in hot salted water in a bowl covered with plastic wrap. The plastic wrap keeps the moisture in so you don't have to weigh down the mushrooms, but I still turn them over a few times to keep the soaking even. (This technique also works with porcinis, which I've never had the chance to enjoy fresh.) Please, save the water and somehow incorporate it in the dish, i.e. the sauce or braising liquid with meat, the cooking liquid with risotto, or just with the cooking mushrooms themselves. Also, note that morels are great with milk fat, either cream or butter. This is the time to use either one (or both) liberally. These mushrooms are a real treat, just be sure to cook them--I don't think raw is the way to go with this one (see here).

Here's another shot:

One duck . . .

Two meals. Pictured above is one of the breasts from the duck that was kind enough to provide its legs for a previous meal. The body will be used for stock, so maybe I should have written three meals. If I had the time, the stock would have been cooked down and used to sauce this meal (Or maybe as the cooking liquid for the legs and beans recipe below.).

Also in the picture are some of the potatoes that made a cameo appearance in the background of a tomato picture a few posts ago, and the greens are arugula (rocket) thinnings. I planted some arugula, lettuce, and green onions in a pot a week or so ago, and figure they'll produce for a little while. The seeds are small, and I wasn't too careful planting, so there's a lot thinning to do, although I'm not sure it's worth bothering this late in the season. It is nice having access to fresh sprouts though, and the slightly bitter arugula worked well with the rich duck.

Ingredients:
- Duck breast, fat scored in criss cross pattern (Here I made a rectangle out of the breast, and saved the cut off meat and skin with the carcass in the freezer for stock.)
- Potatoes, peeled cubed (These were russets, grown from some accidentally sprouting organic ones from the grocery store.)
- Arugula thinnings (optional)
- Thyme, still on stems
- Butter
- Salt and pepper
Method:
- Preheat a nonstick pan and add butter
- Add cubed potatoes, salt and pepper
- Preheat an uncoated pan
- Place duck breast, skin side down, in hot uncoated pan and leave it there until the skin is crispy
- While duck is cooking (It takes a little bit of time.), be sure to be stirring the potatoes so they cook evenly
- When potatoes are softening, add thyme
- As fat is rendering from the duck, pour it into the pan with the potatoes
- Once the duck skin is crispy, turn the breast over and cook unskinned side
- When the other side of duck is cooking, which should only take a few minutes at the most, pour all remaining fat into pan with potatoes and turn up heat under potatoes, stirring often
- When duck is to your liking (don't be afraid of rare or med-rare--think steak, not poultry) remove it from pan and leave it to rest
- Get potatoes to how you like them, then lay a bed of potatoes on a plate, leaving thyme stems behind
- Place duck, sliced or not, on bed of potatoes and add sprouts if you have them
- Enjoy

If you're not a fan of duck, you should be. The legs can be buttery and tender, especially now that duck confit is available at just about every restaurant. Think best chicken ever. And the breasts taste more like a ribeye steak than just about anything else. So if you like chicken, and/or you like steak, you like duck.

Pressure Cooking

This was good, but since this was the first time I used a pressure cooker I'll spare listing out the recipe like I usually do--it was enough that it turned out pretty well in the end.

The duck was from Plum Creek Poultry, a local farm run by a husband and wife team that produces honey, eggs, humanely raised veal, soap, and, of course, a variety of poultry. They even have Christmas trees. The bad butchering job is mine, not theirs.

In discussing the subject, the wise Mark Bittman once said, "[i]f you can find duck legs in the store, go with those."* I'm not sure if I agree. There are plenty of places to get duck legs around here, from Kaufmann Poultry in the West Side Market (Mentioned in the 8/28/07 Liberty Steak post below) to myriad Asian grocery stores in soon to be booming Chinatown (And if you're not sure about my use of "myriad," and I'm not too confident about it, see here -- that Bryan Garner is pretty smart.). Still, even when the aforementioned stores have fresh legs, they don't compete with the taste of Plum Creek's. Cutting up the duck is really not that difficult, but I think it takes some practice. I was out of practice.

The rest of the dish includes navy beans, water, white wine, tomato paste, shallot, a fresh bay leaf, and salt and pepper. I forgot to add dried cherries, a bunch which I've been itching to put to good use, and didn't get the skin quite right, so it had to go.

The idea was to make a one pot braised duck legs and white beans dish. Very cassoulet inspired, but scaled down for a simple meal that can be put together after work. The legs went in the pressure cooker after they were browned with their skin on. The skin was pretty gummy when they came out--I was a bit too generous with the liquids in the (borrowed) pressure cooker. Next time I'll go a little lighter on the liquid, and, when everything is done and tender, throw the legs under the broiler to crisp the skin back up, hopefully. I'll also remember the dried cherries (Or maybe tarragon?). With presoaked beans, a pressure cooker, and an already dismembered duck, this should take less than an hour from prep to table. Add a baguette and the rest of the wine that was added to the pressure cooker and it's a pretty decent weekday meal.

* THE MINIMALIST; Duck Under Cover, MARK BITTMAN, NY Times, March 31, 2004