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When Martine Saunier moved from her native France to Northern California in the 1960’s, she was disappointed by the duck. Accustomed to a cuisine where duck is not reserved just for special occasion cooking and restaurants, as it is in much of the United States, she sought to make traditional French recipes at home using duck available in the supermarket. When she could find it, she couldn’t stand the flavor. It did not match the taste of the duck she ate in her youth during the summers spent at her family’s house in Burgundy. So she bought a gun, and learned to hunt.
Martine is the founder of Martine’s Wines, the first Frenchwoman-owned wine import business in the United States. For a time, she was also my boss. Forty years after she established her business in California, I worked for Martine building name recognition of her portfolio in New York, selling her particular taste for excellent wine to ambitious sommeliers and demanding shop owners.
When Martine told me the story about learning to duck hunt, it made perfect sense. In many ways she did the same thing with wine. When she moved to the United States, most Americans who drank wine were used to paying a couple of dollars for mass produced swill. However, there was a growing appreciation of quality wine, with a small group of pioneer winemakers in Napa and Sonoma leading the way. Still Martine could not find Pinot Noir on the level of her beloved Burgundy. So she flew to France, met with winemakers, and began importing the kind of wines that she liked to drink.
Before I learned to make duck in cooking school, my experience of eating it was relegated to restaurants. It was just not the sort of meat I tripped across in grocery stores and no one I knew cooked it. Yet oh how I loved the taste - a confit of leg over a bowl of French lentils scented with grainy mustard, or the sweet, crackly skinned breast of a Peking duck rolled up with spring onions in a floury pancake.
In school, duck quickly became one of my signature dishes. Seared breasts required some attention but little action for crisp skin and a juicy pink interior. Legs, braised slow until meltingly tender, were as forgiving to cook as they were a hedonistic pleasure to eat. Meanwhile all that rendered duck fat, liquid gold, transformed potatoes from mundane to magical.
In California these days you can find good duck many places, fresh or frozen, in specialty grocers and Asian markets. And thanks in part to people like Martine, drinking great Pinot Noir, no longer requires a passport. If, like me, you get a craving for duck and don’t want track it down at a restaurant, try cooking it at home – you’ll be surprised how easy it can be for delicious results. No hunting required.
Recipe
Spiced Crispy Duck Legs
This is one of those weekend cooking projects that requires a little work up front, then you just kick back, pour yourself a drink and read a book while the legs braise until silken. Like many fatty braised meat dishes, this is also better cooked the day before. If you go that route, cool it completely before refrigerating. Skim the hard fat off the top the next day before reheating in a moderate oven. Save all that duck fat – it is liquid gold. Swap it in for the oil in your next batch of roasted potatoes.
2 T. vegetable oil
6 duck legs*, about 2 lb.
Salt
Pepper
2 large onions
1 lb. carrots
2 cups dry red wine
2 cups chicken stock or water
1 bay leaf
2 star anise
1 piece of ginger, peeled and cut in lengthwise in thick slices
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Place a large, metal roasting pan over two burners on the stove set to medium high heat. Add oil. Pat duck legs dry with paper towels. Season the meat side with salt and pepper and place skin side down in the hot oil. Brown on one side, about five minutes, then flip and cook on the opposite side for another (Alternatively you can do this in a heavy bottomed casserole, you just might need to brown the legs in two batches to avoid over-crowding).
While duck legs are browning, peel and chop onions and carrots into a small dice. No need to be too small or perfect with this dice, they will soften and shrink down while cooking.
When duck is browned, remove to a plate. Poor off all but a couple of tablespoons of the duck fat (reserve the poured off fat for the vegetable mash). Add onions and carrots to the roasting pan and reduce heat to medium. Sauté for 5 minutes until onions are softened but not brown. Add wine and chicken stock to the pan along with the bay leaf, star anise, and ginger. Season with a bit more salt and pepper. Nestle the duck legs back in the pan, skin side up. Raise the heat to medium high again and bring the liquid to a strong simmer.
Place roasting pan in the oven. Braise for about 1.5 hours until the leg is easily pierced with the tip of a paring knife. Check periodically and if the liquid is reducing too quickly, add more boiling water or chicken stock so it does not dry out.
To serve, pick out and discard the bay leaves, ginger and star anise. Place one duck leg propped up against a mound of wild rice, mashed potatoes or polenta. Spoon the carrots and onions and a couple tablespoons of sauce around each plate.
*Note on where to find duck legs. It is still much easier to find duck breasts at specialty shops than duck legs. If you cannot find them locally, D’Artagnan in the United States is an excellent source for everything duck and specialty meat related. I’ve found duck legs in the freezer section of my local H-Mart.
To Drink…
Growers Guild Pinot Noir, Oregon 2022
A Oregon Pinot for under $20? No, this is not flashback pricing from Martine’s early days. In an era where it is difficult to find any decent domestic Pinot retailing for less than $40, winemaker David O’Reilly has leveraged relationships with vineyards throughout Oregon to produce a quality everyday drinking Pinot. What it lacks in the depth of a single vineyard Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, it makes up for in the easy pleasure of juicy red fruit on the palate and cozy aromas of toasty oak.
From $16 direct from the winery or through various retailers, like Wine Connection in Del Mar.