Thursday December 25
We've been telling everyone that
if the weather allowed, we were going to smoke a duck for Christmas. Today we walked out to the garage to set up
the smoker, and found that we had herb twigs, wood chips, and everything -
except charcoal. So rather than drive
out to yet another grocery store (enough of that yesterday), we decided to go
another way.
Holt broke down the duck,
with the breasts curing in salt, thyme, and allspice for tonight, the legs and
trimmings for crispy parcels tomorrow, the spare skin for grievenes, and all the rest for the stockpot.
Our side dish was a good
counterpoint to rich, oily duck: rich, creamy turnip gratin. We tweaked the original recipe a
bit. We used under 2 pounds of white
turnips from the last farmer's market, nutmeg instead of cayenne, and did its
first stage of cooking in the oven for 10 minutes UNcovered (contrary to the
original recipe), using duckfat instead of butter, which gave it lovely crispy
edges as well as browning the bottom.
As for the duck breasts, once the
turnip gratin was resting, we seared them in duckfat and butter for 2 mins. per
side, then added a little duck broth and cooked under cover until they came to
135º in center. They rested a bit while
we added chopped green peppercorns in brine and dried pink peppercorns to the
juices in the pan, for that Christmassy feel.
Deglazed with a touch of white wine, and poured the sauce over the
meat.
Served with cranberry chutney, it was so seasonal, you could plotz.
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