In the Hands of a Chef (39 page)

One 5-pound Long Island duck

STEAMING MIXTURE

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger

2 tablespoons 5-spice powder

¼ cup honey

¼ cup dry sherry

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

¼ cup vegetable oil, or as needed

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Honeyed Quince Compote (recipe follows; optional)

Spicy Duck Glaze (recipe follows; optional)

DO AHEAD:
The duck can be rubbed with spices, steamed, and cut apart a day before pan-roasting if you’re facing a time crunch on the day of serving, but don’t pan-roast it until you’re ready to serve it. In an ideal world, the best thing to do would be to rub the duck with the mixture of steaming spices and then let it sit uncovered in the refrigerator for a day before finishing the recipe. The Honeyed Quince Compote can also be made a day ahead, then warmed before serving.

STEAMING

1.
Remove the paper sack containing the gizzard, heart, and liver from the cavity of the duck and discard or reserve for another use. The neck may be in the sack or in the cavity of the duck; in either event, discard it too or reserve for another use. Rinse the duck inside and out. Pat dry. Cut off the last two segments of the wings and discard. Cut off the fatty flaps around the neck opening and trim the fat from around the opening of the body cavity. Discard the trimmings. Carefully poke the skin of the bird all over with a fork or skewer. Try not to penetrate beyond the fat layer into the meat—if you go too far, the meat juices will run out during cooking as well as the fat. Approaching the skin from a sharp angle instead of straight in will help.

2.
Mix the ginger, 5-spice powder, honey, and sherry together. Rub the mixture all over the duck, inside and out. Sprinkle the duck liberally with salt and pepper, inside and out.

3.
Set the duck breast side down on a rack, preferable a V-rack, in a roasting pan. Add 1 inch of water. Bring to a boil on top of the stove. Lower the heat to a simmer. Cover (use foil if your roasting pan doesn’t have a lid) and steam for 30 minutes. Flip the duck and steam for another 30 minutes. Remove the duck from the pan and allow to cool.

PAN-ROASTING

4.
Cut the duck into 4 pieces (see How to Break Down a Duck, page 250).

5.
Heat an. -inch layer of vegetable oil in a large sauté pan over high heat. The pan must have a thick heavy bottom so it conducts the heat evenly; hot spots will cause the duck skin to burn. A nonstick pan will help alleviate the chance of sticking, but it's not necessary if the pan is heavy and you wait to add the duck until the oil is quite hot. If the oil is not hot when you add the duck pieces, the skin will stick and burn. Sprinkle the duck pieces liberally with salt and pepper. When the oil is hot, almost smoking, add the duck pieces skin side down—do not disturb them once you have set them in the pan—allow them to sear
for 1 minute, then adjust the heat to low, cover the pan, and cook until the meat is tender and the skin is crisp, 50 to 60 minutes. Check every 15 minutes to be sure the skin isn’t burning. Pour off excess fat as it accumulates. An instant-read thermometer should read 180°F when inserted into one of the thighs when the duck is finished.

6.
Meanwhile, make the Honeyed Quince Compote and the duck glaze if using, and keep warm.

7.
Place a duck breast and leg/thigh piece on each plate. Place 2 honeyed quince quarters on each plate, if using. Sauce the duck with the glaze, if using. Serve immediately.

T
he quinces take on a
lovely rose color in this sweet syrup. Although I’ve suggested that the fruit accompany duck, it goes well with just about any strong, dark meat, including dark-meat turkey, goose, quail, and venison.

¾ cup water

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice, plus additional to make acidulated water

⅔ cup honey

½ teaspoon 5-spice powder 1 cinnamon stick

1 star anise

2 ripe quinces, peeled, cored, and quartered (if preparing ahead, store in water acidulated with lemon juice)

1.
Combine everything except the quinces in a small nonreactive saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low and add the quince quarters. Poach until tender (a knife should slide through the fruit easily), about 30 minutes. The fruit will have a lovely pinkorange hue.

2.
Remove the quince pieces. Reduce the poaching liquid to a syrup, then return the quince pieces to the pan. Serve the quinces warm in their syrup.

¼ cup honey

¼ cup dry sherry

1 teaspoon 5-spice powder

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Combine everything except the lemon juice in a small nonreactive saucepan and bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer. Cook for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice. Pour over the duck just before serving.

A
ny cook can blunder her
way through a few bad roast chickens until she manages to produce an edible one; with a shoulder of veal, though, there are too many variables that need to be right, or relatively right, to create a glorious finale. The process is comparable to the difference between riding a bicycle and driving a car with a standard transmission: you can learn to do the first on your own; for the second, you need an instructor. This chapter is a short course in traditional meat know-how.

A selection of grilling and pan-searing recipes, the simplest approaches to meat, will appeal to straight-ahead carnivores. But the heart of the chapter is in the methods for cooking meat slowly—braising and roasting. Braising, or long, slow cooking in a moist environment flavored with wine and aromatics, reduces even the most recalcitrant cut of meat to spoon-tender succulence. Roasting, by contrast, caramelizes the exterior of the meat, and the recipes in this chapter demonstrate the variety of effects possible with marinades, rubs, and crusts.

I hope a few of these dishes will lure you into unfamiliar territory. Thin-Sliced Calves’ Liver with Greens, Dijon Mustard Sauce, and Vinegared Grapes should make it clear why liver on the French side of the Atlantic is a bistro staple—it’s simple to prepare and tastes great. If you’ve ever
hesitated about taking the plunge and trying to cook venison at home, Peppered Venison with Sherry Sauce and Dried Fruit Chutney will get you started.

Before you launch into these recipes, you may want to consider investing in a few kitchen essentials. An instant-read digital thermometer is indispensable for determining doneness, especially with roasts. If you combine the use of a thermometer with testing grilled or sautéed meat by poking it with your finger, you will soon be able to tell the doneness of a steak or other thinly cut piece of meat by feel alone. Two pieces of cookware are necessary for successful sautéing and braising: a heavy-bottomed skillet or sauté pan (two would be ideal), and a large Dutch oven or cast-iron casserole. Heavy-bottomed cookware conducts heat evenly; by preventing “hot spots, “ it ensures that the pot’s contents cook evenly, which is necessary for pan-searing or sautéing. The Dutch oven, as large and heavy as you can afford (6 quarts is good; 8 is better), must be both capacious enough to contain several pounds of meat, vegetables, and braising liquids and, again, heavy enough to conduct heat evenly for slow, even cooking over several hours. Finally, a seemingly common item that all of us have—except when we need it—is butcher’s twine, essential for holding stuffed pieces of meat together or helping thick medallions to maintain their shape in a sauté pan.

S
irloin tip steaks are cut
, as their name suggests, from the bottom tip of the sirloin. They’re a moderately priced cut of meat with a great sink-your-teeth-into-this texture and beefy flavor that takes well to marinating and pan-searing or grilling. Supermarkets tend to package them cut into either cubes (for skewers) or strips 4 to 6 inches long, about an inch thick, and a couple of inches wide. If you have an agreeable butcher, ask him to cut 1½ to 2 pounds of sirloin tip into just four pieces, which will make them about double the ordinary width; otherwise, just buy them in their usual strip shape. By the way, some stores sell sirloin tips as “steak tips, “ while others see “steak tips” as a more attractive way to market stewing beef. If you’re at all uncertain, you can’t go wrong by simply substituting the slightly more expensive flank steak for sirloin tips and cutting it into four pieces yourself at home.

Treating meat to an anchovy marinade, pan-searing it, and then serving it with a flavored butter is a classic French bistro formula for handling an inexpensive cut of beef. It’s also my husband’s favorite recipe for sirloin tips or flank or skirt steaks on the grill during the summer. Cold leftovers make excellent sandwiches on crusty bread; or add cut-up pieces to tomato sauce and serve over pasta.