DUCKS!

Living in the Southwest means that ducks are a very important part of the regional diet. Each year our neighbor order 50 fatted ducks from a producer in the Dordogne and for 2 days processes them into confit, rillettes, conserved foie gras, and fat. This year we ordered 2 ducks to learn the process. Here is how we spent the weekend.

The fatted ducks (always male) come from a woman in Lalinde who raises them and does all the work. She grows the corn she feeds them and does the gavage herself. She also slaughters and cleans them, so that when you buy a duck from her it is ready to process. This winter there were terrible storms in the Southwest and Lalinde was in the area worst affected by them. This had a stressful effect on the ducks so they were smaller this year. We thought the size was just fine for our needs.

When the ducks arrive they are cut up in a very particular manner. The manteau is taken off the carcass and you have to be extremely careful not to cut into the tripe or the gall bladder when removing the foie. The magrets are put in the freezer, the legs, wings, and gizzards are salted and rest overnight for confit, the foie are left in lightly salted water overnight, the fat is cut up to be cooked down the next day, and the carcasses can be cooked in the fat for rillettes or frozen to make soup. Very little of the duck goes to waste and the products are either frozen or conserved depending on how much space you have in the freezer.

The ducks arrived about 6 PM on Friday. We watched Isabelle cut up several ducks and then plunged in and did our own. We got our work for step one finished up in a couple of hours but Isabelle worked until midnight getting hers ready to sit overnight. See you tomorrow at a "tres bonne heure".

Our phone rang about 7 AM the next morning. It was Isabelle saying all of her foies were out and ready to process come! We put our tea in travel mugs and rushed across the street for the next step.

The rest of the day was spent watching Isabelle as she assembled 2 magrets with a foie in the middle in large canning jars, put the foie on its own in canning jars, grind the fat to render for the confit and rillettes, and then going home and working our own ducks. Isabelle regularly came by to make sure our fat was not cooking at too high a temperature and to suggest improvements to our techniques. By the end of the day we had frozen the magrets and carcasses, made confit with the legs, wings, gizzards and neck, set aside a slice of foie for dinner to eat with an apple compote, used some of the foie for a terrine with Pinneau des Charentes. We conserved the rest of the foie in jars, made rillettes, and ended up with 6 jars of duck fat. This was a great experience and hugely successful thanks to Isabelle's tutoring. Next year we are thinking of ordering 10 ducks. For more photos go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/petillant