Cooking

Maybe

I don't like Brussels sprouts. I have repeated this mantra for as long as I can remember.

And yet.

There is a picture in Thomas Keller's Bouchon that beckons me. The picture shows a piece of duck confit resting on a bed of Brussels sprouts. The skin on the confit is crisp, and the creamy-looking mustard sauce is speckled with the green of chives. The photo is captivating and beautiful. It is perhaps the best picture in a book full of good pictures. I find myself stopping at it as I flip through the book, and the book seems eager to open to this page, this breathtaking dish with its reviled Brussels sprouts.

I recently made a batch of duck confit, eight legs immersed in a wheel of creamy white duck fat. Every time I flip through Bouchon, I stop at that alluring page and think of the duck confit in my refrigerator.

My mantra resurfaces: I don't like Brussels sprouts. I could make something similar, I think to myself. But the dish is so beautiful as it is, I whisper.

I tell Melissa that I'll make dinner a few nights hence. I suggest a sandwich with duck confit. Do I already know what will happen? Is it buried in my subconscious? Is my sandwich just a delusion?

I watch as my mom opens her Christmas present, a copy of Bouchon. She flips through the book, and I see the picture again. I point it out to my mom.

Two days later, I hammer out the details of the dinner I've promised to cook Melissa that night and I come to a decision. Perhaps I made the decision long ago and I'm just now giving it voice. Perhaps fate has played a hand, and I am not actually deciding my own path but accepting the inevitability of destiny. We will have the duck confit with Brussels sprouts. Melissa is dubious; she also doesn't like Brussels sprouts. The garlic confit in the ingredient list convinces her. It's Thomas Keller. How bad can it be?

I think Thomas would approve of the changes I make. I replace the chicken stock in his sauce with the flavorful, gelatinous duck stock that separated from the fat as I cooked the duck confit. I make a tartine by serving dinner on a toasted slice of pain de mie, a dense buttery bread.

We open a bottle of wine. Of course we do. I ponder a Gruner Veltliner, a white wine that can hold its own against unpleasant vegetables. We are eating Brussels sprouts, after all. But the night is cold and rainy, and a Lirac from our wine club seems like a better choice, a warm red wine that invites you to linger at the table, safe from the chilly and uncaring darkness outside. This wine's cherry and fruit must aromas beguile and speak of the 2003 harvest, a hot year for all of Europe but especially the normally hot Southern Rhône. It's a wine that brings you back for more, suggesting new aromas and flavors each time. It has depth and complexity.

Melissa and I look at each other, take a drink, and start eating.

I don't like Brussels sprouts. I have repeated this mantra for as long as I can remember.

And yet.

Maybe I like these.

- Brussels Sprout Slaw With Apples & Walnuts Recipe
This brussels sprout salad recipe is perfect for lovers and haters of the little cabbage-looking sprout. The flavor is so mild, that it barely has any cabbage flavor. Because the brussels sprouts are shredded, guests might not even know they are the...

- Comparing Duck Legs
Photo by Melissa Schneider. Having made batch after batch of duck confit in the last few months, I'm convinced that legs from foie gras ducks produce a superior product. However, that limits your purchasing options—there are only four foie...

- Imbb 26/wbw 21: Duck Confit With Two Wine Pairings
Duck Confit with Fava Beans, Fingerling Potato Medallions, and Garlic Scapes Photo by Melissa Schneider. If this were a physical auditorium instead of a virtual one, and I asked you to name my favorite food, a few thousand hands would shoot up....

- Schneider Household Math
Photo by Melissa Schneider. To confit 24 legs from ducks raised for foie gras, you need six pounds of rendered duck fat. Trimmed fat from 24 foie gras duck legs yields three to four pounds of rendered duck fat. Confit fat can be used twice. Therefore,...

- Damn Good Duck Confit
I recently bought Bouchon, the cookbook from Thomas Keller's bistro of the same name. Flipping through it, I was drawn to the recipe for duck confit. Duck confit, made from meat that has been salted and then cooked and preserved in fat, is one of...

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