Magret de canard, my way
“Wow.”
In my experience, the word “wow” is used mostly to express happiness and enthusiasm. Thus, it can be unnerving when your culinary school instructor, who has been speaking in a steady stream of French all morning long, can only manage to utter a stunned-sounding “Wow.” when he sees what you have done to a poor, innocent duck breast.
Okay, it wasn’t just me. I think there were four of us, each attempting to evenly trim the fat off a beautiful magret de canard before making Five Peppercorn Duck Breast in Orange Sauce. Chef demonstrated for us by expertly skimming off various layers of fat and crisply scoring what remained. “Just don’t cut the muscle; this will dry out the duck.” Then he left us alone with our knives.
When he returned, all that remained was a mangled pile of scraps. I don’t know what happened to the other students, but when I tried to start cutting, my hands slid all over the place as the canard’s fat promptly began to melt. My forearms were slick with grease, and my knife skidded around crazily, finally coming to rest deep in the garnet-colored muscle. Ooops. Chef’s model duck was symmetrical, trim and tidy; mine was lumpy, translucent and wounded. But thankfully, so was everybody else’s. Wow.
Our model. Even it has a bald spot!
Pressing in the pepper.
We got to use my beloved Szechwan peppercorns.
Cooking up some mangled duck. It still tasted fine.
In my experience, the word “wow” is used mostly to express happiness and enthusiasm. Thus, it can be unnerving when your culinary school instructor, who has been speaking in a steady stream of French all morning long, can only manage to utter a stunned-sounding “Wow.” when he sees what you have done to a poor, innocent duck breast.
Okay, it wasn’t just me. I think there were four of us, each attempting to evenly trim the fat off a beautiful magret de canard before making Five Peppercorn Duck Breast in Orange Sauce. Chef demonstrated for us by expertly skimming off various layers of fat and crisply scoring what remained. “Just don’t cut the muscle; this will dry out the duck.” Then he left us alone with our knives.
When he returned, all that remained was a mangled pile of scraps. I don’t know what happened to the other students, but when I tried to start cutting, my hands slid all over the place as the canard’s fat promptly began to melt. My forearms were slick with grease, and my knife skidded around crazily, finally coming to rest deep in the garnet-colored muscle. Ooops. Chef’s model duck was symmetrical, trim and tidy; mine was lumpy, translucent and wounded. But thankfully, so was everybody else’s. Wow.
Our model. Even it has a bald spot!
Pressing in the pepper.
We got to use my beloved Szechwan peppercorns.
Cooking up some mangled duck. It still tasted fine.
posted by cindym at 11:52 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home