Duck Baguette – Smoked and Sous Vide
A few weeks ago I was chatting with a group of friends over Whatsapp when we received a message from my sister. She was disturbed to discover that her son, not quite two years old, had started saying the “F” word. Of course, all of us, (not being the highly principled and responsible adults we should have been) thought it was cute and asked her to take a video and send it to us.
While my sister’s first reaction was worry that he was going to get kicked out of day care, I thought it was quite amusing. I remember when my Mom first told me about my other nephew had learned a few bad words from some friends at school, he was probably around three then. I pulled him aside one day and whispered to him to tell me what bad word he knew. He said a few curse words and we had a good laugh over it. After that, I told him never to repeat it again. I haven’t heard anything like that from him since. The thing with kids is that they eventually learn to use their judgement about what they can and can’t say… sometimes even better than adults.
I read this article the other day about how parents react differently to use different strategies to curb the use of swear words. Some will ignore, others will explain to them what they’ve said is inappropriate and others will ban the use of certain gadgets like the ipad. In my sister’s case, I’ve noticed she’s also taken to substituting swearing for other words. Now I hear her say “Far out!” and it’s also rubbed off on me.
Her husband though, I think he is in denial.
The other day he took my nephew over to say hello. As we were chatting, my nephew was running around the house saying, what to me sounded like “F@$k”.
“What did he say?”, I asked his father.
My brother looked at me sheepishly, and shrugged his shoulders. “I think he was saying duck.”
Yeah right.
Duck Salad – with candied pecans, cherries and mixed greens
The next day I went to the butcher to get a few duck breasts, no doubt inspired by my nephew’s expanded vocabulary. No recipe this time, just a few notes on how I prepared the duck.
First, I marinated them in a maple/soy sauce mixture. Two tablespoons of maple syrup and three tablespoons on light soy sauce, allow to marinate for around 2 hours.
Then the duck breasts were vacuum sealed and placed in a water bath. I am loving my new sous vide machine which allows me to make the most tender duck I’ve ever tasted. I cook the duck breasts at 57c for an hour and they come out amazingly tender every time.
After, I smoked them using my second favourite kitchen gadget, my stove top smoker. This is a twenty plus year old machine donated to me by my Mom. I smoked the duck breasts using hickory sawdust over a low temperature for 15 minutes.
Finally, the duck breasts were pan fried to get the skin all nice and crispy.
Duck – Sous Vide, Smoked and Pan Fried
The duck can be served in so many ways. Sometimes I have with as a salad. My two favourites are with some mixed greens, candied pecans and cherries over a vin cotto dressing. I also like it with figs, and hazelnuts.
Duck Breast Salad with Figs and Hazelnuts
The duck breasts are also amazing on a sandwich. Imagine the most meltingly tender duck breast, crispy skin and a hint of hickory over a crusty baguette spread with some butter, mustard and mayonnaise. Far out!
Duck Baguette
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The duck look wonderful.
Dang! (Is this a curse word?) I am so jealous of all your kitchen gadgets! Oh, and your duck looks reallllyyy good! So…you guys in Oz are starting to replace bad words, too? We do that a lot here, like “Shut the front door!”
omg your duck looks amazing. The maple glaze has such a wondrous sheen and colour. And it’s funny how people use alternative words for swearing. On the latest season of Amazing Race US someone kept yelling “cheese and crackers!” everytime something went wrong. This of course just made me laugh and hungry at the same time. lol.
My sister and I, when we were about six and seven, went away to Brownie camp and came back with new knowledge of the word ‘crap’. Not knowing that it was comparably inoffensive, only that this wa a word you shouldn’t be saying all the time or you’d be told off, we, giggling, asked my mother what ‘the c-word’ word. You can imagine the next awkward phase of the scene as my horrified mother tried to, as delicately as possible, explain to her six and seven year old daughters what the other, highly offensive and unacceptable C-word meant. She says she sweated her way through this ordeal and when she found out we were only asking about the word ‘crap’ her first thought was ‘Oh shit, I’ve gone and taught my children the worst word there is’ and her second thought was ;Now they’re going to go to school and tell all their friends about this new word and I will never be invited anywhere by their parents ever again!’
Of course, we did go to school the next day and tell everyone about this fantastic new word and to this day the few friends I’m still in contact with from primary school love telling the story where my mother by association was guilty of teaching everyone the real c-word.
I love smoked duck and sous-vide duck, but I’ve never done both yet since I thought that would overcook them. How do you smoke at a low temp?
Gosh this looks stunningly delicious!
Wow, the duck looks so perfect! Really nice touch to smoke it before crisping up in a pan, love the idea of adding such a depth of flavour to the meat. Think I would try adding some star anise or orange peel to the smoking chips too.
Amazing duck. Your slicing skills are top-notch.
Lovely! Thanks for the post! x
Nice segue into duck…..and that duck does look delicious.