Duck, duck, goose.

Wherever you go, you see, hear, smell and taste things that can bring you back home.  Looking at ducks and geese in Vietnam did that for me.

Eating and preparing duck (and to a lesser extent geese) is something I only really learned living in France. The southwest of France is most famous for its fowl (especially in the form of foie gras), but you can find good sources across the country.

Confit de canard is duck that has been very slowly braised in its own fat, after having been cured in salt, thyme, bay leaf...It is impossible to overstate how succulent it is.  Confit de canard is traditionally served here in the Languedoc as part of a country-style white bean cassoulet, or stew. I'm not overly crazy about it, to be honest. Maybe I've come across it too much, maybe it's too heavy for me, I don't make it.

But the confit de canard itself, well, that lends itself to nearly anything, especially in the winter. I've even had it to delicious effect in a crisp fried Vietnamese-style spring roll. And the easiest (if slightly time-consuming) modification of a straight-up confit? Rillettes de canard.  A farmhouse kind of meat spread, to be eaten like a crostini, ever so yummy with an Alsace Riesling...

It is the dish you make when the sky is unbearably low, while the kids are doing homework, when the sun has set far too quickly, when there are a few confit legs left over from the big dinner with the neighbors (I compulsively make more food than necessary).  It is a recipe to be made by taste.  To the four duck legs' worth of flaked meat, I added about two tablespoons of duck fat and the same amount of the jellied, flavorsome duck broth.

Also a tablespoon or two of Cognac, a few grinds of pepper, and then everything got worked in by hand.

As the ingredients are kneaded, the texture changes.  Enjoy the process: keep tasting and seasoning until it seems about right.  There should be just enough fat to bind and just enough extra flavor to amplify the duck's inherent savoriness. The finished meat goes in small dishes covered with a preserving layer of duck fat (which isn't eaten).  Keeps for weeks, but think about handing some out to friends and neighbors.  They'll be more than happy to spread some on hearty slices of toast.

I actually made these last week, intending to keep them for a good while.  But we woke up to snow this morning.

I lit a fire in the kitchen stove, and by the time noon arrived, it seemed like the perfect day for rillettes and a steaming bowl of barley vegetable soup. 

After a couple of slices of locally made cheese, we dug into a generous gift of macarons and finished with green tea. 

 Happy sunday, happy day-dreaming, wherever you are.

In·sh'al·lah, or divinity in the Provence.

Time keeps slipping by. More friends are on their way and summer is hot on their heels, so I headed to the Provence to preemptively top up the farmhouse inventory with some well-made (yet definitely easy on the wallet) wine. Outside of Avignon, former home to the Popes, there is Chateauneuf du Pape about which I've written earlier. A wine town par excellence (where I lunched at the sunny Mule du Pape across from the fountain in the photo below), it was the former drinks supplier to the aforementioned Popes. Not too far north of Chateauneuf du Pape, there is the village of Violes, one of the named Côtes du Rhône Villages, known for its AOC Plan de Dieu, or Plan of God.
The forty-four hectares of ground known as God's Plan around Violes (apparently linguistically evolved from God's Plain, a moniker first applied in the Middle Ages) only produce red wine. The wine is made with fixed percentages of the following varietals: Grenache 68%, Syrah 19 %, Mourvèdre 5%, Cinsault 5%, and Carignan 3%. The terroir is thick with creamy-white craggy rocks--to an average depth of 13 meters--and has a (fixed) low average return of 35 hectoliters per hectare. A Plan de Dieu has a deep red hue and a subtle nose. No "fruit bomb" by any means, it is easy on the tannin, well-rounded, with a velvety fullness that is nicely nuanced rather than being sun-baked.
I enjoy the wines of Violes' small-scale Domaine de l'Espigouette (as does the vinicultural Guide Hachette, where its name regularly appears and which in 2008 gave it two stars--Robert Parker's a committed fan too, for what it's worth). In fact, a lot of people seem to like the easygoing, well-balanced l'Espigouette wines: upon chatting with the owner Bernard Latour, I discovered both Harrod's and Selfridge's carry his wines in the UK (see the caricature below). Domaine de L'Espigouette wines have been produced by the gregarious Latour and his son over the last thirty years--and before then by Bernard's father. The Latours produce a very drinkable Plan de Dieu, a solid Côtes du Rhône, and a Vacqueyras, which is the most sophisticated (and most expensive by far) of the trio at 9 euros. You can contact M. Latour at espigouette@aol.com if you are interested. But oy. What to serve with an almighty Plan of God? Have you ever tried confit de canard? This is a divinely luscious specialty of Southwest France which has become such a standard it's available vacuum-packed or canned across France--across much of Europe for that matter. To make it yourself, allow duck legs to macerate in dry, heavy salt rub for 24 hours. Rinse off all the salt, pat the legs dry. Cook them over an extremely low flame for two hours, fully submerged in gently melted duck fat with a fistful of thyme and rosemary. Doesn't sound magnificent? If you aren't feeling compelled, it may be because you've never tasted the result: a profoundly flavorful, head-shaking gorgeousness. And the fat's all culled, drained off, discarded. The first time you taste this, I'm fairly certain the planets will realign for you. The main challenge is placing a leg whole on the plate, the meat's that tender. At the local market, confit de canard just waits for me to toss it into my shopping basket for unexpected drop-ins or must-keep-gardening-can't-be-bothered-to-really-cook evenings. It is worth hunting around your area, I promise. In the US, they can be ordered from D'Artagnan for an anything-but-frugal feast. For people looking for close to the same result with much less effort and cost, I trolled the ether and came up with this at Simply Recipes and this at City Cooks. And why not savor this heavenly dish with a side of well-roasted rosemary potatoes and a generous glassful of a southerly Côtes du Rhône Villages--such as Plan de Dieu.