Duck legs

I did say that Ed got some duck, too. I think I prefer duck breast to duck legs, but these were still pretty tasty. We braised them in a red wine sauce, and the sauce was DELICIOUS. I don't know if it would taste as good if you hadn't simmered a duck in it for two hours, but it was way better than the duck itself (sorry, Ed).

Not a light meal, by any stretch of the imagination, since we roasted some root veggies tossed in duck fat to go along with the duck, and cooked the other endive from the endives we ate with the squab, but it was good. I didn't realize I like parsnips so much...

The sauce was loosely based off a recipe I found on epicurious. The first step was to render out most of the fat from the duck skin, since these are, after all, animals that spend all winter swimming around in cold water. They have a nice layer of blubber. So with a sharp knife Ed cut some cross-crossed shallow slices in the skin, and then stuck the duck legs skin-side-down into the dutch oven, heat on medium-low. The legs sat there for a while, 15-20min, oozing out fat, which Ed occasionally poured into a bowl. Eventually they looked crispy enough, so we took them out, poured off the rest of the fat, and created the sauce.

We looked at this recipe, and basically used it, except we didn't bother measuring things. Basically, we poured half a bottle of red wine into the dutch oven, a can of chicken broth, a couple handfuls of prunes and dried cherries and dried apples, some mustard seeds, a bay leaf, and then added the duck legs back in, skin-side up. Cover and simmer for 2 hours or so. Probably longer would be better. But we were hungry.

As the duck cooked, we made some roasted vegetables to go with it. I chopped up about half a pound of carrots, half a pound of parsnips, and two shallots. I took about a tablespoon of the duck fat that we'd just rendered out of the duck, tossed the veggies with it, and sprinkled on some kosher salt. Then those went into the oven for 40 minutes, give or take, until they were browned on the bottom. Flip 'em over and brown the other side.

Yum.