Duck Confit

This weekend I am making duck confit. Since I am using someone else's recipe (in this case Alice Waters' from the Chez Panisse Cafe cookbook), I am not going to post it verbatim. Go out and buy this exceptional book! Confit is basically an old way of preserving meat: salt and season the meat overnight, then slowly cook the moisture out in a crock of fat (in this case goose fat). Since you do it at low temperature you can reuse the fat, either for other cooking (it will be salty, unlike pure rendered fat), or to make another batch of confit. Since we have modern means of preserving meat (freezers and the like), it is something that is only done for the aesthetic reason of having yummy confit. It does keep much longer than raw or simply cooked meat, so it does make a great convenience food. Twenty minutes max on day one, then it cooks slowly with a minimum of supervision on day two for an hour and a half. To heat it, you toss it in a hot skillet for five minutes on each side, and you have a yummy meal (that is especially good in cold weather).

Since Waters' recipe calls for just duck legs, I went to my favorite poultry shop and bought legs. If I had to buy whole ducks, then I would have either made the breasts into confit, or would have made duck breast prosciutto, which is a great treat to have on hand. I was surprised at how cheap it was to buy a big bag of duck legs with thighs attached. Since it is so rich and can last so long as confit, I think that I am going to make a policy of always having a crock of it on hand.

One can eat it traditionally, or one can make rillettes, or one can make amazing tacos with it:

Take your chopped duck confit and add a chopped chipotle pepper with plenty of its adobo sauce. Add some onion, some toasted and ground cumin seeds and heat it on the skillet. Put it on heated corn tortillas (don't fry them, for a more authentic taste), top with salsa, chopped onion, pieces of avocado (or a dollop of homemade guacamole: avocado, onion, lime juice, salt, maybe some salsa for color and flavor and cilantro) and cilantro. Serve with beer or margaritas.

For margaritas, I use a good 100% blue agave tequila (usually reposada), the juice of a freshly squeezed lime, triple sec (or Grand Marnier for a special occasion). I shake it on cracked ice and serve it straight up in glasses whose rims have been coated with lime juice and a light dusting of Comarguese sea salt. Once you have a margarita like that you can never go back to a mix, to non-100% agave tequila (like that awful Cuervo), or those wretched slushies that pose for margaritas among the chimichanga set. For a very special occasion you can float a layer of Grand Marnier on top of the ladie's drinks. Men should not do that on their own drinks, however, as that is very girly.

After duck confit tacos, the dessert should be simple, as the dish is so rich. I find that mango sorbet or gelato does the trick.