Duck

"To me, duck conjures up images of wonderful, rustic food, enjoyed slowly, in quiet places." Gile Meller/River Cottage A-Z

I continue to check out potential foodie subjects as I walk, and today I am presenting a piece of graffiti that I found. Actually twice - for there it was again just around the corner. What does it mean? I guess the unimaginative, but probably correct answer it's just that it's the graffiti-ist's tag, although why he or she chose it is another mystery. Or is he/she exhorting us to duck? Hide from the horrors in the world.

Not only did I find it a prompt to write a blog about duck, but it also made me think about the need for man to make sure we know that he was here and to do it in a creative way - because I actually thought it was a relatively stylish, even minimalist tag. However, I think that's another potential post, so I'll just leave you with that thought.

However the rest of Gil Meller's quote reminded me of a long ago meal. First the quote - illustrated by the nearest picture to his description that I could find:

"I remember cooking duck breasts for the first time, for instance, over the embers of a barbecue in an overgrown walled garden down in the South of France. I slashed the fat and cooked the meat slowly with rosemary and salt, the smell of figs and parched earth all around me. There are some meals you never want to let go - that was one." Gil Meller/River Cottage A-Z

The memory is of a very long ago holiday when just David and I toured from the north to the south of France and back again. It was one of those trips where you make it up as you go along. We ended up in a rather glorious Gîtes de France establishment in the Aveyron in the middle of France, seemingly miles from anywhere, but they didn't do dinner so we went to a recommended one on the edge of the Trou de Bouzols - a spectacular almost circular canyon, and a restaurant on its edge - I think the one below - that fireplace rings a bell.

I had the duck. There is duck everywhere in this part of the world, and because David doesn't like it very much we never have it very often. Anyway it was delicious, although I cannot remember quite whether it was confit, or roast. The thing I do remember however, is that for the next 24 hours or so I was sick as a dog, it rained and we were just holed up in our beautiful farmhouse collection of gîtes. But that didn't diminish the rather wonderful evening on the edge of a precipice. My memory was not at all of barbecueing duck with rosemary in a Southern French garden, but nevertheless those words revived that long ago moment - well moments. That's what food does.

The word duck also brings back another memory - a favourite funny story of our youth. Before we were married, David was living in a shared flat, north of London's Baker Street, in a block that was also occupied by The Who. Which is irrelevant but ... Anyway one night David and his flatmate decided to host a dinner party and invited two other university friends, as well as I and Ralph's then girlfriend, their third flatmate and his girlfriend. There must have been another couple as well - maybe Mike and Sue?, because I definitely remember there were ten of us. And they chose to cook duck. One duck for ten people. Have you ever cooked a duck? It looks big, but has very little meat. Ralph began serving it with a flourish at the table and then realised the horror of there not being much there, so he took it out to the kitchen to finish so that he and David ended up with skin. Fortunately, Helen - Ralph's girlfriend and I had prepared heaps of potatoes so nobody starved. But it was a bit of a disaster. And you don't learn. The postscript to this is that, I think for our first Christmas dinner as a married couple I decided to cook a duck for the two of us. And even then there was barely enough for us both. But gallons of fat. Well that's what it felt like. Maybe those two experiences are why David now maintains that he doesn't like it very much and probably why I have never cooked it since.

But I should, because there are so many interesting duck recipes out there above and beyond Duck à l'orange, and confit - both of which I have written about before. Duck eggs too. It seems to me you can go two different ways with duck - the French way and the Chinese way - because these are the two nations which seem to have claimed the duck as their own. Although I imagine that most other nations of the world have at least one duck dish in their repertoire, because I imagine that virtually all nations that have water - so maybe not in desert nations - have ducks of one kind or another. Ducks were first domesticated in China around 2000 BC and they - and eventually the rest of us - have been eating them ever since - with Peking Duck being the most famous of their methods for dealing with it.

Hence there is lots of tradition when it comes to eating ducks, so I decided to review what the 'new' fusion and experimental cooks were doing with them. So forgive me for sticking to my favourite sources. The first two come from Ixta Belfrage who wrote the brilliant Mezcla from which comes this recipe for Duck with mexicorn sauce and spring onion salsa - reproduced on the Jono and Jules website where they call it Duck with pepper sauce and green salsa. Several bloggers have tried and raved about this one. I have just bought her latest book Fusão which I am still perusing, but found a very tempting recipe called Duck in golden tomato broth, although the recipe is not yet online.

Most of the others that I found were variations of roast duck with various fruits, and or variations on Peking duck, so I've picked just three - Duck confit with shallots and pomegranate - Yotam Ottolenghi - he is not alone with this combination; Duck maryland jungle curry - Charlotte Binns-McDonald/delicious.; and Sweet duck legs cooked with plums and star anise - Jamie Oliver

I suspect that today the ducks you buy to cook have been bred to provide more meat than those skimpy ones I encountered long, long ago. And you can buy the separate bits these days, so maybe I should give one of Ixta's recipes a go - maybe the one with the tomatoes and watercress. Hard to choose though.

TO SHARE

This is just a photo that Abercrombie and Kent featured in an ad for their very expensive small group tours to the world, But I just thought it was magnificent. Nothing to do with food of course.

When I was at university I used to collect photographs from magazines that caught my eye and made very rudimentary collages on the wall of my student room. This would have made it to that wall.

YEARS GONE BY

September 21

2024 - 'Eat' - marmalade chicken

2023 - Deconstructing tomates provençales

2022 - Holiday's end

2021 - Shopping part 2 - supermarket minefields

2020 - Missing

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Nothing

2017 - Quinoa

2016 - Smell - the underrated sense