Relearning Duck Confit and My Recipe Philosophy
Duck Confit...
I love duck confit, legs (usually) salt-cured and cooked slowly in fat. I order it whenever I see it; I try different recipes at home.
But the duck confit at Jojo is my benchmark. I rarely find duck confit as good as Curt's, even when I make it myself. When we ate there for New Year's Eve (one of very few restaurants I'd eat at on that night), I mentioned this to Mary Jo, and she suggested I ask Curt to teach me. So I did, and he said, "Sure."
Now don't get all excited; I'm not going to share his recipe. That wouldn't be very nice, since I didn't ask for permission and anyway, there is no top-secret recipe, as you'll see. But I will share one lesson that I learned from Curt, because it touches on my personal philosophy.
"When I teach duck confit," said Curt as he trimmed duck legs in the restaurant's back area, "I use it as an exercise in balancing flavors." He started adding spices to a bowl: highly aromatic spices. The smell of each flooded the small area. As he added handfuls of this and that, the mixture's aroma evolved and changed. He had me smell it at various points and identify the components that stood out. He adjusted amounts and tried again.
Suddenly, the mixture changed. It didn't smell like anything, really. Just an aromatic, spicy blend in which you'd be hard-pressed to identify any of the pungent spices he had added. Everything was in balance.
It was amazing. It was like when you taste a perfectly balanced wine and you suddenly realize that this is what most wine is merely trying to achieve. It happens so rarely that you forget it for a time, until out of the blue it happens again, and you rediscover the sensation.
...and My Thoughts on Recipes
You may have noticed that I don't include recipes on this site. Partly this is laziness—testing or asking for permission to reprint takes lots of time and energy. But the main reason is that I believe there's a limit to what you can learn from recipes, and there's a limit to the kind of cook you can become if you rely on them.
Don't get me wrong: I learned how to cook gourmet food out of Bon Appétit and the Silver Palate Cookbook. But eventually those recipes lost their ability to teach me. Think about what you learn from a recipe. How to follow instructions? Most of us are pretty good at that by now. If you learn new techniques, you won't have the context you need to recognize them in other recipes.
Cooking is a sensual activity. Use your nose to determine if something smells right. Use your taste buds to evaluate it. Use your eyes to see how it looks. Look at the dish you made, evaluate it, think about what you might do differently next time. And when you need a recipe, look to books like The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, which actually try to teach you something other than how to parrot a recipe writer's whim.
How'd my unreciped confit turn out? I found the balance of the spice aroma. The seasoning was great, maybe a touch saltier than Curt's. I'll adjust it down a bit next time. My meat wasn't as tender, perhaps because I didn't cook it long enough, perhaps because he uses the legs from foie gras ducks while I use regular duck legs. I paid attention, thought about it a bit, and I know what I'll do differently next time.
But here's the thing. I also made pork belly confit shortly after my lesson with Curt. I didn't follow the author's recipe for a cure: I looked at the spices and mixed them to find a balance. Maybe those were close to the same amounts the authors mentioned; maybe not. But the flavors did what I wanted in the final product.
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