My completed duck confit
Currently, I am working on a project to find the best donut in Toronto (as if I could afford to gain any more weight), and so far, it has had a definite impact on my cooking.
Early in the planning stages of my donut pilgrimage, I decided to set some standards for comparison. I thought about what I like best in a donut, and what I think a good donut should taste like. To make this easier, I mentally deconstructed a very standard donut into two categories: “pastry and procedure,” and “accoutrements.”
The pastry and procedure category includes things like dough, texture and cooking methods, and the accoutrements category includes things like toppings, fillings, glazes and decoration.
Experimentation is no doubt a common trend in contemporary cooking in Toronto, and baking is no exception to that rule. As there are endless combinations of donut accountrements, I have decided for the sake of my health and my reader, to focus on the “pastry and procedure” category and the most basic aspect of any donut: dough.
To free you from this horribly long and misguided donut introduction to a piece about duck confit, I will cut right to the chase. All donuts are made with some sort of dough, and the best ones have a consistent texture – slightly challenging, crispy exterior, and a soft, dense interior.
And that, ladies and gentleman, is the same texture that I most currently have been striving for in the kitchen.
There, finally, I spat it out. If you’re still reading, I’m sure I’ve already lost you to your iTunes library or YouTube at least once by now, but that’s OK, I don’t have any sponsors to answer to. Don’t feel bad, it’s my fault for writing such a poor lead.
***
Craving something savoury and warm, I went out to buy some duck and duck fat to make confit. I headed straight to the St. Lawrence Market, dealt with the usual bullshit from butchers trying to monopolize (“Nope, I don’t have duck, and nobody in here does. I do have some great Canadian chicken, though!”) till I finally found someone selling both duck legs and duck fat.
As soon as I arrived home, I pulled out my slow-cooker and set it on high, threw in the duck fat, waited for it to melt and slowly simmer, and I threw in the legs. Altogether, the legs were slowly cooking in the fat for about 5.5 hours.
To join the confit on the plate, I parboiled potatoes, sliced them into medallions, and then fried them on high heat in duck fat to give them a nice crispy shell and remain soft and warm inside (get it? That’s the donut texture I was yammering about earlier!). For a sweet contrast, I added some chopped shallots and whole snow peas to the mix.
When the potatoes, snow peas and shallots were ready, I removed the legs from the fat and seared them quickly in a frying pan to achieve the same crispy-outside-soft-inside texture I’ve been playing around with ever since I first decided to go hunting for donuts.
Delicious!
Well, not much to say here, but I thought it would be good to post a picture of the bird we ate last night for dinner. Though, it may look fairly basic, it wasn’t. Before going to the oven, my father soaked the entire 22lb turkey in a brine of sea salt, water and brown sugar for about 6 hours.
