We also have been cooking. We've eaten duck a couple of times this week. It's duck leg-and-thigh pieces cooked as confit, which means it's slow cooked in duck fat as they do it in southwestern France.
This is a photo of a cuisse de canard confite that has been taken out of the duck fat it was cooked in and lightly browned in a hot oven.
The whole southwest of France is known for duck and goose dishes.
In northern France, cooking is based on dairy products including butter and cream. In southeastern France — Provence and the Nice area — the cooking is based on olive oil. And in the southwest — centered on Toulouse — it's all about duck and goose fat.
Yesterday I made pommes de terre sarladaises to go with the duck. Sarlat is one of the main towns in the Périgord region, four or five hours south of here by car. It's also one of the most beautiful, though it can be overrun with tourists. The potatoes in my photo are sauteed in duck fat after having been cooked whole in a steamer pot and then sliced. We had some garden-grown kale as a side dish, as you can see above. And the parsley comes from the greenhouse.
The other common accompaniment for duck or goose in southwestern France is white beans. The beans of choice are called lingots blancs, which are very similar to, or even exactly the same bean, as Italian cannellini beans. These cost 1.10€ per 500-gram box, so 2.20€ per kilo, at Intermarché.
Earlier in the week, I cooked a kilogram of dried lingot blanc beans in the slow-cooker. I soaked them briefly (three or four hours) in the crockpot the then turned it on and let the beans cook in the soaking liquid for 10 hours on the low temperature setting. I seasoned them with black pepper, thyme, onion, garlic, and a few allspice berries, but no salt until they were fully cooked to keep them tender.
The beans came out exceedingly tender and with the texture they call fondant in French — melt-in-your-mouth good. I put some of them in a baking dish, laid two duck legs on top, and covered the dish with some bread crumbs before putting it in the oven for 30 or 40 minutes to make a quick cassoulet.
Do you know of which part of France is the most healthy? Butter, duck fat, or olive oil? Here in the states fat seems to be our biggest problem. For my last meal I want pommes de terre sarladaises. No need for anything else. :)
ReplyDeleteThey say that people of SW France, the duck-fat eaters, have some of the lowest cardiac disease rates and fewest heart attacks of any place in the world. As for the fat problem in the U.S., I think it has as much to do with sugar and a sedentary lifestyle as anything else. Soft drinks! Too much driving, and not enough walking. And too much sugar in general, which is often combined with a lot of fat like butter.
DeleteOh I agree, weight/fat/sedentary lifestyle, and yes, too much sugar .. they ( manufactureres) put sugar in the craziest things ! Fresh food is so so much better for you than canned, packaged stuff from the markets. But not everyone can eat fresh all year but we can all cut down on the sugar and fat and move our butts a little more.
DeleteLiving in a city has that bonus, you walk much more than in the burbs/country where you must take a car in order to do anything.
So I guess we could explain to everyone that We have to go to live in the South of France because of our health :)
Yummmschious.... this post has made me very hungry.... the rumbling is NOT the cats purring.
ReplyDeleteWe invested in a slow cooker three years ago.... mainly because we'd read so much about your use of one....
I think it has got to be a must have for any kitchen.... beans done in it are wonderful!
I love things made in the slow cooker, but also things sauteed and browned.
DeleteNo sign of duck meat or fat in our supermarket in Texas. Having read so often about both on your blog, I decided to order a jar of the fat from Amazon. It's now my fat of choice for sautéing anything. A small amount seems to go a long way too.
ReplyDeleteIt does go a long way, and it has a lot of flavor. The closest equivalent, I think, is probably clarified butter.
DeleteLooks and sounds delicious. Maintenant, je suis aux pièces! Too much to do.
ReplyDeleteBon courage !
DeleteOh, you must get a great sense of satisfaction, putting together a wonderful meal (or two) like that. Beautiful!
ReplyDelete: ^ )
DeleteLooks wonderful! Those cannellini beans are expensive here.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised at how inexpensive the lingot blanc beans were at Intermarché. I'm going to go back and buy some more this morning, just to have them on hand.
DeleteNo salt on the beans until they're cooked? Does adding salt make them tough? I've not come across that before, but then I don't cook beans from scratch all that often.
ReplyDeleteThat's what they say about cooking dried beans. Never put any salt in the pot until the very end of the cooking process. Salt before that makes the skin of the beans toughen and stay tough.
DeleteI've also discovered over the past few years is that it's not a good idea to salt rice or potatoes when you cook them. Salt makes the rice gummy, and it makes the potatoes split and fall apart. Salt them at the end. We all probably eat too much salt anyway.
I didn't know about salt in cooking rice or potatoes, but since I am a no salt cook because of my swelling legs, I never had that problem. The only salt I use is in my bread.
DeleteVinegar in the beans' soaking and cooking water seem to be working great for those unintended side effects.
In N.C. we always dribble some vinegar onto our beans at the table. We put vinegar on many foods, actually — seafood, cucumbers, pork, tomatoes, collard or mustard greens, okra... when do I stop?
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