It's a duck that can do everything while excelling at nothing, like a good infielder.
In late 1975 I was sharing an apartment in Toronto with my brother and two other friends. I was in my first year of university. One of the room mates, my friend Calvin (still a dear friend to this day) decided he wanted to cook duck a l'orange. He bought a frozen duck and a bottle of Bols orange liqueur and had at it. None of us had prepared or even eaten duck before, and none of us was prepared for the volume of fat rendered from that duck. There was scarcely any flesh left!
Not really, I'm a consultant but I know almost everything about a couple of things, but am almost useless on everything else. Like an infielder who is 99% perfect on medium hop ground balls to his left, but falls down if the ball is hit in the air or to his right.
I guess I'm an SME duck.
A lot of the duck sold is coming from duck raised for their liver and overly fattened to get big, bloated livers. Not a lot of muscle and plenty of fat indeed.
In my view, there are three interesting parts in duck: the filets (magret) which are best served medium rare, the liver once turned into foie gras and the gizzard. The meat of the legs is just ok, not anything great, and requires to be cooked a long, long time to turn soft.
With gizzards (they can be bought in big cans in France), there is a caloric bomb recipe going like that:
- prepare a julienne of vegetables, quickly roast it in a pan with duck fat. Put it at the bottom of a dish.
- on top of the vegetables, put gizzards, cut into two flat parts.
- on top of that, spread some duck confit, cut into small pieces.
- top the dish with mashed potatoes.
- cover in bread crumbs, drop some more duck fat on top and put in the oven.
A good nap is necessary afterwards.
Available all year round in Tesco - next to the butter
When we visited Germany goose schmaltz was served every morning with bread.