DUCK CONFIT.

Besides the usuals, Orange duck, Civet de Lapin, Coq au Vin etc..., Duck Confit is a very traditional frenchy dish. If you had a French guest and you fixed him this dish, he absolutely would be impressed. He would say to himself:"This guy is deep!". To some people who knew a little bit about French cuisine, this dish sounded pretty intimidating.

The word "confit" in french means "preserved". The pieces of duck meats( in this case, legs and thighs are used almost exclusively) are heavily seasoned with coarse salt( sometime herbs like thyme or rosemary are added, but not necessary) and let set in the refrigerator for 24 hours. The tricky part of this dish is to collect enough duck fat to cook them which make it special, "the duck cooked in its own fat"! When you prepare this dish for the first time, you will have to render as much fat as possible from the fat that you collected when you cut up the duck, then you have to add some olive oil, enough to cover the duck pieces. Cook them in low heat(about 160F), covered, for 2 hrs. They are fork tender when they are done and you will see the meat pulled up from the legs. Make sure to wash the marinated duck pieces thoroughly under water and pat them real dry before submerging them in the duck fat. After 24hrs of marinating in the salt, the meats would be very salty if you did not washed them. Now you can let them cool down and put the whole thing in the refrigerator until you are ready. Be sure to filter the duck fat to rid of the solids. That is the beauty of this dish, you can prepare and "preserved" them days ot before you need it.

Now, part Deux, on the day of, remove the duck pieces from the fat and fry them in a non-stick pan on medium heat, covered, skin side down, until the skin very crisp, about 15 to 20 min. Make sure to keep an eye on the skillet, not to let the duck burn. I don't think any side dish that goes with duck confit better than just plain boiled potatoes with a little salt and some butter.

At first look, this dish seemed to be rather complicated to prepare. Not really! If you think about it, it does not need any fancy seasoning and the first part is simply stewing the duck legs, in their own fat, and the second part is pan fry them. Think pan fried chicken, but with very little shortening. Finally, there is nothing that can be more simple than boiled potatoes. You can prepare the first part days before, then when the day you have guests, you just whip the duck pieces out and fry them in the skillet as you do burger!