This is the duck version, which can of course be easily modified to process geese (tasty but *very* expensive) and chicken. Up to about 50 years ago, the entire duck was used when preparing confit, though as an eater the “cuisses” were the preferred pieces. Duck confit now refers to just the legs as the duck breast (which isn’t particularly good as confit) is now prepared by other means.

As with all properly-prepared confits, it keeps incredibly well after it’s made by leaving it submerged/sealed in fat. Actually it tastes a whole lot better if you leave it to set up and reintegrate – the stuff “mellows” and develops a nutty flavor.

The best results are obtained from Moulard duck legs, which are the legs obtained from ducks used to produce foie gras; they may be obtained from good bouchers such as Boucherie Claude et Henri in the Atwater Market and elsewhere, including online sources in the United States. Duck legs from Pékin ducks (those are the ducks produced under the Lac Brome banner in Québec), are okay but don’t give the best results because the skins are thinner and the legs carry less fat.

Ingredients

• duck legs (drumstick + thigh)
• coarse sea salt
• turbinado sugar
• black peppercorns
• juniper berries
• dried thyme
• dried bay leaf
• duck fat
• potatoes
• garlic
• fresh flat-leaf parsley

Preparation of the duck confit

Wash leg quarters, pat dry with paper towel and place in a glass dish in one layer.

Add 4 tablespoons coarse sea salt, 1 teaspoon sugar, 12 peppercorns and five juniper berries to a mortar and pestle. Grind the mixture until it becomes a coarse even powder. Add 1 teaspoon dried thyme. Mix thoroughly. This mixture can be scaled up (follow ratios) if there are many legs to process.

Sprinkle the salt cure over the duck, ensuring that the entire surface (skin and meat) is coated. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 6 hours to overnight. Remove duck from salt cure, quickly rinse in fresh water to remove excess cure, and pat dry with a paper towel.

Melt duck fat in an oven-proof pot (a Le Creuset or Corning Vision dutch oven works well) until it is just liquid (do not boil!). The amount of fat required is the volume necessary to submerge the duck entirely in fat once placed in the pot. Add one bay leaf and a couple of peeled garlic cloves to the fat. Carefully add the duck legs to the duck fat. Once all the leg quarters are immersed in oil, cover the pot and place in a 167ºF / 75ºC oven (use an oven thermometer) for 7-8 hours (check for doneness).

Alternate method: seal duck legs, bay leaf, garlic and duck fat into a plastic bag and place in a 158ºF / 70ºC circulating water bath for 10 hours.

Remove pot from oven and transfer duck into a glass container in a single layer. Sieve duck fat over the duck so that the the legs are again submerged in fat. Let cool until fat is cloudy, and then refrigerate. If using sous-vide, immediately ice down the bag in a container of ice water. For best results, confit should be left to set up at least 48 hours before service.

Preparation of the potatoes

Place the potatoes into a steamer and steam until almost cooked (note: steaming is not part of the traditional method but it cuts down overall cooking time). Remove from steamer, cut into thick slices and fry potato in duck fat until both sides of the potato slices are browned and crisp (the inside of the potato should be fluffy and fully-cooked). Use either alternative to finish potatoes.

Alternative 1:

• Remove potatoes from duck fat and sprinkle with fleur de sel or other flaky sea salt.
• Make a persillade by finely mince two or three large cloves of garlic and a large handful of flat-leaf parsley. Add several tablespoons of melted liquid duck fat (or olive oil) and a little salt and pepper.
• Spoon persillade over potatoes.

Alternative 2:

• Finely mince two or three large cloves of garlic and a large handful of flat-leaf parsley.
• Add several tablespoons of melted liquid duck fat and a little salt and pepper to the potatoes in the pan.
• Add garlic and parsley to the potatoes and shake to coat potatoes.

Service

Remove duck from fat and reheat in a low oven (e.g.  225ºF / 107ºC); this step will take at least 20 minutes, which should be adequate to finish the potatoes. To brown/crisp the skin, either place the duck skin side up under a broiler or salamander or pass the flame of a blowtorch over the skin.

Plate the potato and and place duck over or beside potato.

Butter Event Variation

The Butter Event‘s “Autumne” element was a multi-part dish that paired duck confit with pommes sarladaises with deconstructed cassoulet. This variant used steamed blue potatoes that had been hollowed out to carry butter, duck fat, duck confit and persillade in a very compact package. Apart from the thrill of eating something blue, it can make interesting party snacks.

Wine pairing

The traditional confit wines are from appellations of the South-West, but Bordeaux, Cahors and Pinot Noirs from several regions also work very nicely.

As it turns out, while there was voting there eventually wasn’t a choice as some timely lobbying from both sides resulted in our host electing to make both. Both! Jackpot! Two different dishes with haricots Tarbais. Two different dishes with pork and duck. Serious eats to separate the real gastronomes from the poseurs.

There were eleven eaters up for the challenge, including my butter-loving pal. This is really a menu with his name on it because the classic wine pairing for cassoulet and garbure is Madiran AOC and that’s his favorite wine. But eleven. Eleven brave eaters as there was actually a whole lot more food than I had anticipated. The weather even cooperated with the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida bringing along lots of precipation and dreary skies to pump up the anticipating of warming hearty fare of two similar yet different culinary examples of the Sud-ouest.

But wait! There’s more. As in charcuterie. A cheese service with seven varieties of cheeses from France (including several very interesting chèvre including a tomme). Salad. A dessert that carried the only butter in the entire meal.

And me? I’m definitely getting old and lethargic because my wussy system was already signaling “full” after some bread and a couple of pieces of charcuterie (uh-oh). But never mind my wimpy ways and back to describing “la bouffe”.

Garbure

Until this event, I have tried garbure twice and was underwhelmed both times. The first one was a bean and cabbage soup made with goose confit (I like the confit and thought the stew was meh) while the second one was bean, potato and cabbage, which looked and tasted like an abominable nightmarish vegan interpretation of this dish.

This garbure was nothing like those. Nope.

This is the recipe (in rough), but the end product is definitely not what the recipe suggests it will be.

• 400 g demi-salé (lightly-salted pork belly)
• 1.5 L chicken stock
• 300 f peas
• 300 g haricots Tarbais
• 1 turnip
• 2 carrots
• 2 leeks
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 bouquet garni
• 1 small cabbage
• 4 yellow-flesh potato
• 4 confit duck legs
• 3 tablespoons duck or goose fat
• bread and cheese (for the gratinée)

Cut the demi-salé into large pieces, place into a pot with cold water and bring to a simmer for 10 minutes. Skim, drain the meat and set aside. Heat the stock in a dutch oven. Cut the carrot and leek into large rounds and add to the pot. Add the peas, beans and demi-salé to the pot and cook for 1 hour. Separate and blanch the cabbage and cut into rough chiffonade. Cut the potato into large rounds. Add the cabbage and potato and cook for an additional 45 minutes. Add the duck or goose fat and cook for another 10 minutes. Heat the confit. Plate individual portions, top with bread and cheese place under the broiler to make a gratinée. Serve immediately.

The gratinée couldn’t really be easily done because there were a lot of people and no salamander oven or blowtorch to help speed things along but I didn’t miss that.

There were also tiny little flourishes: much more meat, plenty of nice vegetables, a Savoy cabbage instead of regular green stuff, sourdough bread and Emmental. And a very large end piece of pata negra jamón just to add “a little bit of flavor”. Okay… just a little bit over the top as flavor booster (and this coming from me, a guy who ages mojamas for 6+ months to bring out umami).

The finished plate:

We were given an option to have the garbure with out without the confit. If you’re wondering the correct way is “with”, as the saltiness and meatiness from the confit adds additional depth to the garbure.
 

Cassoulet

This was served after the garbure because it’s a heavier dish and the recipe (again in rough) only generally outlined what was the end result.

• 600 g haricots Tarbais, soaked overnight
• 1 large piece of pork couenne (pork skin)
• 800 g saltback (salted pork belly)
• 7 onions
• 3 cloves
• 200 g carrots
• 10 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 bouquet garni
• 1 kg lamb neck
• 1 kg pork (leg)
• 50 mL oil
• thyme
• 400 g tomato
• 1 Toulouse sausage
• 8 pieces of duck confit
• parsley
• breadcrumbs

Line the pot with the couenne. Add the soaked haricots, saltback, 3 cloves garlic, carrots and bouquet garni. Stud 3 onions with the cloves and add to the pot. Cook over gentle heat for 2 hours. While beans are cooking, cut the lamb neck and pork into fairly large pieces. Brown the meat, add 4 onions, 2 cloves garlic, thyme and roughly-chopped tomato. Add 50 mL water, cover and cook for 1 hour. Remove the bouquet garni, onions and couenne from the beans. Cut the couenne and onion into small pieces and return to the pot. Add the Toulouse sausage and the contents of the pot containing the lamb and pork. Mix and cook an additional 20 minutes. Rub garlic onto the bottom of a cassole (or a large tagine). Arrange the beans and meat into the dish. Top with remaining minced garlic, parsley and breadcrumbs and place in a 210ºC oven until the top is browned.

Did I mention that he had the Toulouse sausages (in plural) also prepped as confit for this dish?

There was a precision to this dish: in the eating you could tell that care was taken to properly cook every element so that each would be at is savoury best.

This cassoulet was by all means a superior dish in every aspect to what I have made myself.

Wines

I wasn’t able to count the number of dead soldiers but let’s just say that drink options weren’t lacking.

My contribution to the bottle count:

• 2000 Château Montus Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh Sec; brought along as a white alternative for the garbure but mercifully left unopened as I at least was getting tanked.
• 2004 Domaine Arretxea Irouléguy Cuvée Haitza. A Basque appélation consisting of a tannat and Cabernet blend; took a risk on this and gambled wrong – CellarTracker indicates that this wine’s drinking window starts 2018 and the bottle had already shut down. Didn’t get a whole lot from it so hard to tell if it was good or not.
• 2004 Domaine du Pech “Le Pech Abusé” Vin de Table Français. Formerly classified as a Buzet until the vinters started their mini-war with the association; they can no longer use the appélation. In all honesty, the bottle smelled of used sweat socks when I popped the cork, but the funkiness blew off after being carafed for a couple of hours. Massive tannins on the palate which essentially overwhelms the underlying fruit; this bottle could have slept at least a decade in the cellar.

The others I at least have photos of:

• Segura Viudas Cava Brut Reserva; several bottles of this – I did not catch the vintage but it’s a smooth sparkler with tiny bulles.
• Roederer Estate Brut Anderson Valley; several bottles of this too – I also did not see which vintage but Roedere’s California production has always been good stuff.
• 1996 Château Pontet-Canet; typical Pauillac cedar, tobacco and lead pencil elements on the nose which opened up after about 20 minutes in the glass. A bit young but very nice and developed floral and fruit notes in glass. Opened after dessert and available with cheese.
• 2004 Château Bouscassé Madiran Vieilles Vignes; the first of the Madiran my pal Butter Boy had brought along. Carafed for close to 3 hours but could have used another 5. This wine is really nowhere near its drinking window but showed a lot of complexity and spiciness underneath the tannin hit. Declared to be the wine of the night (I’d concur).
• 2004 Domaine Labranche-Laffont Madiran Vieilles Vignes; the second of BB’s Madiran. Carafed for the same time, but still very tannic. Suffered a little bit by being somewhat too warm but still demonstrated a fruity spiciness along with a whole lot of wood. Not as well-received as the Bouscassé but this would have stood out more had we drank the bottles in progression.
• 2005 Henri et Laurent Miquel Saint-Chinian Larmes des Fées; not opened only because everyone’s taste buds had been obliterated by the more massive reds beforehand.
• 2008 Boschendal Chardonnay; an atypical Chardonnay from South Africa.
• 2008 Maison Nicolas Vin de Pays d’Oc Merlot Reserve; did not taste.
• J. Nusbaumer Vieille Prune eau-de-vie de fruit; only 42% alcohol content (sic) but a very nice mellow eau-de-vie with a very complex aroma that developed as it warmed in the snifter.

Photos

Did I ever mention how I love shooting with the LX3? Good thing too since after all this food and drink I wasn’t particularly stable. I also had to shoot the cheese and salad services pre-service because I was pretty certain ahead of time that I would be imitating a Weeble by the time those rolled around.

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Aftermath

It is almost 24 hours since the haricots Tarbais event and I am just beginning to stir from my caloric stupor. There is an episode I mentioned from Dotch where junior entertainers were told not to eat for 48 hours before coming to studio: in hindsight I should have heeded that advice.

This was well worth it – a really fun evening with a lot of laughs and plenty of deliciousness to indulge in. And a lot of singing. I did capture a small video clip of everyone singing a cava-fueled version of the Goldcoast Singers’ Plastic Jesus (!) but I’ll have to find the best way to compress the file should anyone want it posted. I was also a bit lost because I don’t know the music of Beau Dommage and when they were talking about the folk movement and the music of the early 70s I was imagining my pal sporting an afro and a ZZ Top beard while dressed in a nehru jacket and bell bottoms (coulda happened).

“I don’t care if it rains or freezes, ‘long as I got my plastic…”

Food? Mmm… It’s very rare that one gets a chance to have either dish and we were spoiled by getting both. Nothing but big “wow” on the flavor front.

I was told that both were “plats rustiques” but the cooking was very deliberate and measured to ensure that all elements were properly cooked and worked harmoniously; I am very happy and quite fortunate to have had both. As I look back on the photos I’m kicking myself for not joining Butter Boy in having seconds.

In all honesty if there had been a choice I’m not sure which I would have chosen: it was one of those situations where you will be happy with the decision but you’ll also regret not picking the other because you know you’ll have miss out.

Uh? That actually reads Kon’ya no gochūmon wa dotch?, or “which dish will you order for tonight”? It’s the catchphrase of the Dotch Cooking Show and its successor the New Dotch Cooking Show. It’s a great competitive cooking series with a really simple premise: hosts Sekiguchi Hiroshi (関口宏) and Miyake Yuji (三宅裕司) each try and sell you on the merits of the dish their respective kitchens are making for the evening. One dish per side, each side gets a special ingredient to use and lots of effort all around to make you want to eat that dish because you can only eat it today. The catch? Invitees vote for the dish they want.

Democracy is good right? Well, yes, but just not on this show. Voting doesn’t seem too bad until you realize in a schadenfreude-laced “sucks to be you” epiphany that the invitees who voted for the losing side get to spend the last segment watching the winners eat the winning dish. Again, doesn’t sound too bad except that Yomiuri TV had guests show up at the studio without having eaten so losing could become pretty miserable after several hours of taping.  And then there were the special theme shows, such as inviting alcoholics “hard drinkers” to not imbibe for 24 hours before showcasing dishes that go particularly well with booze (with Sekiguchi and Miyake drinking said booze to taunt them during taping) . Or having five junior entertainers not eat for 48 hours before proceeding to cook two of the most aromatic dishes in the Japanese repertoire. Ah, fun. Watching Dotch always makes me hungry.

So what does a Japanese cooking show have to with white beans? I’ve been invited to a dinner that will showcase haricots Tarbais in light and airy culinary classics from the French south-west.

Of course, light and airy will have nothing to do with this – I don’t know what the final choice will be since it will ultimately depend on what is available at the market, but I do know that everyone was invited to choose between either cassoulet or garbure.

So. On one side, cassoulet. Probably the heaviest dish in the entire French culinary repertoire. There is nothing subtle about this dish: it’s big and out there (ooh – a Sir Mix-a-Lot lyric) to crush dieters into submission. I continuously try (and fail) to make a dainty version, but the dish as its heart is a white bean stew that’s loaded with Toulouse sausages, pork, confit goose, confit duck, pork skin (couennes) and sometimes a few other meats for good measure.

There is garbure on the other. Garbure is theoretically a soupy bean and vegetable variant of cassoulet with as many variations as there are households in the Sud-ouest; the version I’ve had used goose confit and cabbage to complement the beans and the potato. I do know that the one proposed will include leeks, cabbage, haricots Tarbais, duck confit , confit sausages and ”poitrine de porc” (breast of pork but essentially pork rib meat), so it’s obviously being constructed as a nice light snack.

[aside: remember the new cafeteria? they're going to serve duck confit this coming Monday but I have to be off-site to go wear jeans and a t-shirt]

Cassoulet and garbure are both cold-weather treats and I am really looking forward to this irrespective of which one it winds up being. I am indeed hoping that it’s going to be freaking cold since that will help rouse me from subsequent caloric stupor that either will induce.

Being mainstays of the Sud-ouest, both dishes are best complemented by wines of the region, with Madiran AOC (an inky highly tannic wine made from tannat) generally being touted as the best match. Others being bandied about for pairings are classic-style Châteauneuf du Pape, Ribera del Duero, or Vinho de Dão. If you look at my Wine Cellar, you’ll notice that I don’t have any wines from the Sud-ouest much less a good Madiran.

I guess I’m just not that into tannat, but I am also in a bit of a hole on the drinkie side. My spidey-sense (and my liver) tell me that I should bring water. However, since the host of this event spent some happy times in the Pays Basque, I have located two non-Madiran alternatives which at least on paper are suitable pairings for this kind of food. Let’s see if my oenological instincts hold.

butter (term)

From Wikipedia: butter (bŭt’ər) is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications such as baking, sauce making, and frying.

Butter is an emulsion of butterfat, water and milk proteins which remains a solid when refrigerated, but softens to a spreadable consistency at room temperature, and melts to a thin liquid consistency at 32–35°C (90–95°F). The density of butter is 911 kg/m³ (1535.5 lb/yd³). Most frequently made from cows’ milk, butter can also be manufactured from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks. Salt, flavorings and preservatives are sometimes added to butter. It generally has a pale yellow color, but varies from deep yellow to nearly white. Its color is dependent on the animal’s feed and is commonly manipulated with food colorings in the commercial manufacturing process, most commonly annatto or carotene.

Interesting definition, n’est pas?

Wikipedia fails to mention that butter is an item that makes other items tasty, much in the way that salt (the forbidden seasoning), duck fat, foie gras, and a whole host of umami-rich foodstuffs do.

I know someone who avoids butter like the plague because it’s the one invention in the history of the world that has brought on unmeasurable pain and human suffering by being the root cause of all human disease.

Okay, so that’s quite a bit of an exaggeration on my part, but he does avoid butter like the plague because he feels that it will significantly and negatively impact his cardiovascular risk, render his LDL-cholesterol uncontrollable, shorten his lifespan and leave him morbidly obese. And yes, my nose is continues to grow longer: the first two are more-or-less correct (they’re somewhat embellished versions of the actual reasons) but I made up the last two just to keep you reading.

My butter pal is actually the only Francophile I know or am aware of who 1) doesn’t like butter, 2) didn’t train at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and 3) cook. He does do the bicycle thing but I have yet to successfully convince him to agree to do the classic Elliott Erwitt “provence 55″ pose.

Of course, “I avoid butter” is pushes all the right buttons to trigger my perseverative behaviour to have me need to serve butter. Lakes of butter. The “must-do-this” urge wasn’t as bad as the time I heard ”I don’t eat foie gras because I’m a vegan”, but… lakes of butter. Lakes.

Butter as the heart of darkness transmogrified into eleven keywords:

• golden arches
• bittersweet
• butter
• tige
• rice
• oink
• thon
• autumne
• cinnamon
• crémeux
• crystals

That’s it. Eleven.

The Menu

So. Eleven keywords. Eleven dishes. One actually mentions butter. In reality, all of them contained butter. Accidentally omit this small detail until the entire meal has been consumed. Hilarity ensues.

Golden arches: two-component amuse-bouche (an amuse-bouche is one bite! one!) consisting of spiced golden pineapple and my version of Mickey D’s Big Mac. (recipe)

Bittersweet: tomato salad in the isakaya tomato tradition. (recipe)

Butter: osumashi; a clear soup make with fish and shellfish and agar-clarified lobster dashi. (recipe)

Tige: uzura-yaki, a grilled quail kebab. (recipe)

Rice: Chilean sea bass mushimono (sake-steamed Patagonian toothfish with enoki mushrooms). A great stupid-simple dish that’s always consistently good unless you use industrial sake. (recipe)

Oink: foie gras on an apple compote with a blowtorch pancetta-wrapped seared scallop. (recipe)

Thon: a deceptively-simple white risotto that in hindsight would take at least seven months of preparation time if I had to do it again. Risotto plated onto a painted anchovy reduction and instant coffee granules and topped with grated dried mojama de atun and Tanzanian dark chocolate. Did I mention that the chicken stock was made with chicken only (no mirepoix) and was agar-clarified before it was used to avoid adding color to the risotto? (recipe)

Autumne: a multi-component “ha-ha” dish, comprising confit de canard with pommes de terre à la sarladaise and cassoulet (one of the heaviest dishes in the French culinary repertoire), served as micro-portions because well, it wasn’t autumn and this was a tasting menu. (recipe for confit) (recipe for cassoulet UPDATE: this one is better than mine)

Cinnamon: five-spice “roast” duck, which is actually isn’t roasted. Sous-vide duck magrets served with super slow-roasted duck skin, hoisin reduction, baby bok choy and wild asparagus. (recipe)

Crémeux: cheese of course. Creamy cheese (one of them anyway). Look to the pralined almonds.

Crystals: melon granité, because it’s always nice to have something nice and refreshing to end a meal. It’s also cold enough not to be able to detect the flake of butter hidden within.

Wines

• Canard-Duchêne Grande Cuvée Charles VII Blanc de Noirs
• Kuromatsu-Hakushika Gouka Sennenju Junmai Daiginjō

The sparkler and the sake accompanied the first five elements. The remaining six were served with wines served as blind head-to-head pairings.

Why is that you say? I don’t drink a lot because of the lack of alcohol dehydrogenase and the intake limits means that I don’t adhere to the quality-price-ratio arguments. Well, I am lazy, but the reasoning is if I don’t drink that much in the first place, why waste effort hunting for something cheaper that tastes “almost” like what I like when I can just simply buy something that I like? I have had significant discussions over how spending more than $15 for a bottle of wine is a waste of money as there are no significant discernable qualitative differences between a sub-$15 “value leader” and something costlier. Ergo, because the wines I buy generally average in the $40-80 per bottle range, I’m technically throwing my money away in the oenological equivalent to making a donation to the NDP.

I don’t say that all less-expensive wines are bad, but I almost never experiment on this end of the market. In another light-bulb moment, I decided I could make things even more interesting by putting this “value” versus “just buy it” theory to the test at the same time I was poisoning everyone with industrial quantities of butter.

This was however, harder than it looks as it is very easy to go to any liquor store and pick the absolute worst wines available (e.g. Cabellero de Chili, Jouvenceau Cuvée Héritage, Harfang des neiges etc). In reality, it is incredibly difficult to identify “the best”  for under $15 because there are lakes of wine that compete at this price point. Case in point: the SAQ inventory system lists 1155 distinct wines for under $15 for a 750 mL bottle. I had to enlist some heavy-duty help from an oenophile friend for the value leaders (his selections make my selections look like they come from the “ends” bin). To keep it fair, I selected first, taking bottles between $40 and $80 per bottle (my purchase average) and excluding ringers like a 2004 Greenock Creek Creek Block Shiraz. My oenophile pal then paired against my selection. He did a great job as he not only picked good bottles, he went out of the way to match varietal to varietal and region to region to come up with the following pairings:

• 2005 Selbach-Oster Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese versus the 2005 S.A. Prüm Essence Riesling Qualitätswein
• 2004 Clos Jordanne Le Clos Jordanne Pinot Noir versus the 2006 Château des Charmes Niagara-on-the-Lake Pinot Noir
• 2002 Au Bon Climat Knox Alexander Pinot Noir versus the 2007 Blackstone Monterey County Pinot Noir

In terms of tasting, it was pretty evident which were my bottles and which were the value leaders. The Pinot Noirs were particularly easy as mine displayed significant complexity and nuances that were absent from the competitors. 2005 was definitely a great year for German Rieslings as the Essence Riesling turned out to be a surprise treat: its acidity was very well-balanced, paired well with the food and ran very well against the Selbach-Oster. The Auslese was slightly more complementary with the food, which is probably why it edged the QbA out.

Photos

Click <here> to view the event gallery without all this blah-blah.

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Aftermath

So what did I learn? Not much of the butter front because I love butter. I was really tired by the end of the evening and cleaning was nightmarish with hand-wash everything not to mention the multiple sequential loads in the dishwasher. In hindsight, there were probably three dishes too many and the progression was not as harmonious as it could have been but every single dish was strong in its own right. And no one detected butter even when it was overtly presented.

I don’t think I would ever do blind head-to-head tastings again since it takes too many wine glasses, uses too much table space and it is really a whack-load of alcohol. There were actually two additional wine pairings (a red and a white) which I had to bail from as everyone was already loaded.

That flight to Amsterdam the next day was tough sledding.

Confit de canard avec les pommes de terre à la sarladaise (rough translation: duck slowly poached in duck fat with potatoes pan-fried in duck fat topped with persillade) is one of those classic dishes from the French South-West which has since become a bistro staple found just about anywhere.

This variation replaces the duck with quail confit because why bother with mere duck when one can make confit with micro-drumsticks; it also keeps incredibly well after it’s made (just leave it submerged/sealed in fat). A persillade is a sauce which in its most basic form consists of garlic, parsley and oil.

Ingredients

• six quail
• coarse sea salt
• turbinado sugar
• black peppercorns
• juniper berries
• dried thyme
• dried bay leaf
• duck fat
• potatoes
• garlic
• fresh flat-leaf parsley

Preparation of the quail confit

Remove the leg quarters (this is the complete drumstick and thigh) from each quail; reserve the remainder of the quail for another purpose. Wash leg quarters, pat dry with paper towel and place in a glass dish in one layer.

Add 2 tablespoons coarse sea salt, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, 6-8 peppercorns and three juniper berries to a mortar and pestle. Grind the mixture until it becomes a coarse even powder. Add 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme. Mix thoroughly. Sprinkle this mixture over the quail leg quarters, ensuring that the entire surface area of the quail is coated. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 hours. Remove quail from salt cure, quickly rinse in fresh water to remove excess cure, and pat dry with a paper towel.

Melt duck fat in an oven-proof pot (a small Le Creuset or Corning Vision dutch oven work well) until it is just liquid (do not boil!). The amount of fat required is the volume necessary to submerge the quail entirely in fat once placed in the pot. Add one bay leaf and one peeled clove of garlic to the fat. Carefully add the quail to the duck fat. Once all the quail leg quarters are immersed in oil, cover the pot and place in a 167ºF / 75ºC oven (use an oven thermometer) for 6 hours. Alternate method: seal quail, bay leaf, garlic and duck fat into a plastic bag and place in a 158ºF / 70ºC circulating water bath for 10 hours.

Remove pot from oven and transfer quail into a glass container in a single layer. Sieve duck fat over the quail so that the quail is again submerged in fat. Let cool until fat is cloudy, and then refrigerate. If using sous-vide, immediately ice down the bag in a container of ice water. For best results, quail confit should be left to set up at least 48 hours before service.

Preparation of the potatoes

Place the potatoes into a steamer and steam until almost cooked. Remove from steamer, cut into thick slices and fry potato in duck fat until both sides of the potato slices are browned and crisp (the inside of the potato should be fluffy and fully-cooked). Remove from duck fat and sprinkle with fleur de sel or other flaky sea salt.

Preparation of the persillade

Finely mince two or three large cloves of garlic, using a little salt as an abrasive to assist with mincing. Mince a large handful of flat-leaf parsley. Mix the garlic and parsley together, and add several tablespoons of melted liquid duck fat.

Service

Remove quail from fat and reheat in a low oven (e.g.  225ºF / 107ºC); this step will take at least 20 minutes, which should be adequate to finish making the potatoes. To brown/crisp the quail skin, pass the flame of a blowtorch over the quail skin. Plate fried potato and spoon persillade over potatoes. Plate quail over or beside potato.

Note: the number of quail leg quarters to serve depends on what this particular plate is being used for and how generous you feel (it’s still a lot of quail to section).

Wine pairing

Though the traditional confit wines are from appellations of the South-West, I am not a fan of these wines. This particular confit goes very well with something like a 2005 Quail’s Gate Family Reserve Pinot Noir (Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada).