Rivers-Marie Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 2010. I took this photo to highlight the wine, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that I was equally excited about everything on the plate—pan-seared Moulard duck breast from Hudson Valley Duck Farm, mixed roasted potatoes from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm (it’s still hard for me to believe that one producer’s potatoes can be so much better than the rest, but still…), and roasted Brussels sprouts marking the return of Lani’s Farm to the greenmarket scene. All great. But, the Rivers-Marie is a special wine. It’s fresh and vibrant, with mostly notes of cherries, cranberries, and baking spices. While young, it’s very well balanced and oh-so-easy to drink. But the really hard to believe part is that it only costs $25… if you can find it, but it!

Moulard duck leg with lavender, honey, and asian spices along with bourbon maple sweet potato puree. Last week I posted about the duck recipe from Eleven Madison Park’s new cookbook. This weekend, as promised, I cooked more duck. This time, I used a 6lb Moulard duck (from Hudson Valley Duck Farm) and the results were fantastic. The skin crisped nearly to perfection and took on a much deeper color while the meat was more uniformly cooked to the desired temperature.

The sweet potato puree is a modification on the EMP recipe I talked about last week. For this version, I made the obvious addition of BLiS Bourbon Barrel Matured Maple Syrup and they were every bit as good you would expect.

Roasted duck with lavender, honey, and asian spices, from the Eleven Madison Park Cookbook. The duck might not be the most creative or magnificent item on the EMP menu, but from a shear eating pleasure perspective, it’s probably my favorite. I’ve been cooking from this cookbook for a couple of weeks now (I’ll post some thoughts about that soon), and this happens to be one of the simplest recipes it contains. All you do is air dry the duck, rub it all over with honey, season it, stuff it with fresh lavender, and roast it. Easy. Well, sort of. A few things make it trickier than that:

First, the recipe as printed in the first run of the cookbook is misprinted—it says to cook the duck for a total of 18 minutes at 375. Oops. But that’s OK, I have a Thermapen for a reason.

Second, the size of the duck matters if you want crispy skin and properly cooked breasts. At EMP, they use Moscovy ducks that I’d estimate to be 6lbs. My little Lola duck from Hudson Valley Duck Farms was too small for this recipe, but I knew that so I compensated by using a bit of high heat at the end to crisp up the skin. My results were really good… the flavors in this recipe are wonderful, but I didn’t get to EMP level crispiness. Maybe this will be incentive I need to finally buy a blowtorch? We’ll see what happens next weekend with a bigger duck.

Finally, what to do with the legs. At the restaurant, they carve the breast at your table, then haul away the carcass. A minute later, confit legs in creamy mashed potatoes show up. Obviously they’re not the same legs that were on your bird. So what to do at home so that you don’t waste half a duck? On my little duck, I took it out of the oven when the breast was 135. At that point the legs were only 150-155. So, after carving off the breast, I returned the rest to the oven for another 20 minutes or so until the legs were done and had a second duck course. A second duck course is never a bad thing!

Anyway, like many of the recipes in the EMP cookbook, this is a starting point for a fantastic dish you can make at home. After a couple of weeks of eating lots of duck, it should be locked in.

Update: It only took one more try. Use a 6lb Moulard duck and make sure your oven is set to convection. Take the duck out when the breast hits 125F. Unbelievable recipe.

Eight-hour duck legs sous vide. I eat duck all the time. Part of it is that I can get amazing duck from Hudson Valley Duck Farms every weekend at the Greenmarket. But, I also just love duck for it’s rich flavor that can vary quite a bit by breed, relative healthiness, and moderate flexibility. Anyway, I’ve only just started exploring cooking duck sous vide. It seems there are a couple of basic camps on what to do: either cook the duck at high heat (176-180F) for 6-10 hours or cook it low and slow a la confit. So far I’m working out of the high heat camp, and the results have been great.

If you have a setup that can keep water at 178F for 8 hours, there is no easier way to make delicious duck legs. Simply vacuum seal the legs with salt, pepper, and any herbs you might like, then cook for 8 hours. Then remove from the bath, pat dry, and crisp the skin in a nonstick pan as I’m doing in the photo. If you’re serving the duck with risotto (which you should be!) transfer the liquid that accumulated in the duck bag to pyrex cup, skim the fat, and use it in place of the last half cup or so of stock that you would’ve added to the risotto.

Crispy-skinned lola duck breast and asparagus risotto. Duck is always great, but the asparagus is the more interesting thing here. Maybe everyone else already knows this, but I recently discovered the trick of puréeing the stalks of the asparagus in some stock and using the purée as the final dose of liquid in the risotto cooking process. The only problem with this is that the purée really has to be added at the very end for the best flavor, but the eye of a risotto master is required otherwise the rice can end up gluey and overcooked. In this photo, you might be able to tell mine is overcooked by a couple of minutes; it still tasted great but Gordon Ramsay would’ve been screaming at me. I’ll work on a recipe over the next few weeks and post it.

The wine you can barely make out in the background is the 2009 Antica Terra Pinot Noir Botanica. Antica Terrra is a relatively new discovery for me… Winemaker/ owner Maggie Harrison is a former assistant winemaker at Sine Qua Non, and now she’s making my favorite Oregon Pinots.

Pan-seared duck breast, porcini mushroom risotto, and broccoli rabe. The duck and risotto are the same as I’ve done in the past, but I wanted to comment on the broccoli rabe.

Until last week, I hated broccoli rabe; it’s bitter, either tough or mushy depending on how long it’s cooked, and really not worth eating in any capacity. This has been a small problem for me as it’s somewhat of a ubiquitous side dish at Mediterranean and Italian restaurants in the Northeast. But last week, Eugena from Lani’s Farm (profiled on Serious Eats, one of my favorite Greenmarket sources) insisted that this time of year, her broccoli rabe is “so tender, so sweet.” The sign even said so. She hasn’t steered me wrong before, so I gave in. To my surprise, it was delicious. And actually worth eating—I went back for more this week. I still plan on avoiding it the rest of the year.

To prepare seasonally delicious broccoli rabe, blanch (three minutes in salted boiling water, then 30 seconds in an ice bath) then thoroughly dry. Quickly sauté with slivers of garlic in olive oil, then season to taste.

Pan seared magret with porcini mushroom and duck bacon risotto. This is a fantastic duck dish matching the earthiness of porcini mushrooms with rich, gamey, crispy duck. I used Moulard breasts from Hudson Valley Duck Farm, but any will do, and you could probably even do this with legs if you wanted. The duck breasts were pan seared normally. I’m including my recipe for the risotto:

Porcini Mushroom and Duck Bacon Risotto
Serves 2 

Ingredients:
1/2 cup or one handful of dried porcini mushrooms
4 slices duck bacon
4 medium to large shallots finely chopped
3-4 tbsp butter 
1 cup arborio rice
1/4 cup brandy
4 cups chicken stock (or better yet, homemade duck stock), at a simmer
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Combine the dried porcini with a couple of cups of boiling water and let sit for 15 minutes. Fish out the porcini, chop roughly, and reserve both the mushrooms and the liquid.

2. Crisp and render the fat from four strips of duck bacon in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Remove and roughly chop or crumble the bacon.

3. Add the shallots to the pan with the rendered fat, with up to a tablespoon of butter if needed, and cook until tender and lightly browned.

4. Add the rice to the pan and toast for 3-4 minutes. Add the brandy, which should boil off fairly quickly.

5. Add a half cup of the porcini liquid and cook until fully absorbed by the rice. Repeat once more.

6. Add stock, half a cup at a time, allowing the stock to be fully absorbed before adding more. Repeat until the rice is done. Before adding the last bit of stock, add back into the pan the chopped porcini.

7. When the rice is al dente, stir in 3 tbsp of butter, parmesan, and salt and pepper to taste.

If scaling this recipe, increase the amounts of porcini, bacon, shallot, butter and parmesan at the same ratio as the rice. Consider adding a third half cup of porcini liquid at step 5. You won’t need to increase the stock as much.

Maple chipotle duck breast and maple roasted acorn squash. Great fall ingredients simply prepared with plenty of BLiS bourbon barrel maple syrup make for an easy midweek meal.

Duck and porcini mushroom ragu over fresh fettuccine. Despite the fact that this looks like the dog’s breakfast, the duck and porcini combination is really good. If you can find them, lola duck legs (mine are from Hudson Valley Foie and Duck), which are stronger in flavor, add a lot to this dish.  

As always, ragu is time consuming but easy. Start by searing the duck (and rendering and saving lots of fat), brown the mirepoix, then add red wine, chicken stock, tomatoes, seasoning, and put the duck back in. Simmer for at least an hour. Remove and shred the duck, add back in and simmer until thick, somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour. Serve over pasta with freshly grated parmesan.

Maple and chipotle duck breast. Not all food experiments work out, but this one sure did. I seared the Hudson Valley Duck Farms magret skin-side down as per usual to crisp and render out fat, then coated with a mixture of BLiS bourbon barrel maple syrup and chipotle and baked to medium rare. The liquid you see in the pan (concentrated syrup and drippings) was drizzled for serving.