Duck you

A bit of background on me and ducks
I used to breed ducks on a hobby farm in Dardanup just south of Bunbury.

Not that my then husband and I were much cop at the self-sufficiency thing. First came The Great Eggplant Glut of 1988, followed closely by the fateful day I injected myself with Tasvax Five-in-One sheep vaccine and spent an anxious few hours praying for the Poisons Information Line to get back to me to confirm whether or not it was a live vaccine as I waited for the symptoms of Black Udder and Barber's Pole Worm to emerge.

I did, however, get to see one hell of a lot of ducks – dead ones mostly, dangling from our Hills Hoist after a run-in with the pointy end my father-in-law's axe.

Because we were city slickers and foolishly sensitive about such things as abattoirs, we came up with the idea of giving our animals names to remind us of their ultimate purpose in life and hence, I guess to lessen the trauma to us when they eventually joined the Choir Invisibule.

There was Sweet the pig and her brother Sour, (steak) Diane the cow and Al the stud muscovy duck, who was actually a permanent fixture but nonetheless named after that most famous of French retro classics, duck a l'orange.

Duck a l'orange (the dish, not the duck) has been around since the days of Catherine de Medici, an Italian noblewoman who moved to France in 1533 to marry the future Henry II and widely credited with introducing the sophisticated food of her homeland to the bourgeois French.

These days, no self-respecting French cook would be without his or her favourite recipe for duck a l'orange. Anne Willan includes a recipe for duck with orange sauce in Basic French Cookery, the book spawned by her famous Parisian cooking school, La Varenne.

More recently, the internationally renowned French chef Paul Bocuse, who famously championed the cause of nouvelle cuisine in the late 20th century, included a recipe for braised duckling with orange in his landmark publication The New Cuisine.

Larousse Gastronomique also gets in on the act, calling the dish Canard a l'orange Lasserre after the exclusive Paris restaurant of the same name which serves the dish to this day.

This State's biggest distributor of game birds is Mahogany Creek, and while the company processes a few bigger ducks – muscovies mostly – around Christmas time, by and large the duck which finds its way onto Perth tables is the Pekin – a fast-growing, fine-fleshed bird ready to eat at eight weeks with a dressed weight of 1.4-2kg.

Ducks in this size range feed two to four people, but for the purposes of duck a l'orange I've suggested you go for a No.15, or 1.5 kg, bird and allow a half per person. As to buying your duck, Mahogany Creek Managing Director Terry Fawell says we need to look for an even-coloured skin and a nice, plump breast. If the breast bone is protruding, it usually means the bird is too young and will lack both flavour and meat.
(From 9-12 weeks the birds are growing small pin feathers which can't be machine-plucked and are a pain in the proverbial to remove, so breeders tend to process their ducks before this stage.)

Cooking duck a l'orange
There are two quite separate things going on in duck a l'orange and it's useful from an ease-of-cooking perspective to consider them separately.

First there's the cooking of the duck itself, which is roasted more-or-less conventionally but with a decent dollop of butter for flavour and a lot of turning and pricking during the cooking process to ensure a nice crisp, golden skin.

Then there's the orange sauce, which can be made almost entirely in advance and is sometimes referred to as sauce bigarade, although this is technically correct only when Seville oranges – a rarity here in the West – are used.

It's important to taste your sauce as you go – you want a balance between the tartness of the juices, the sweetness of the caramel and the savoury richness of the stock. It was also Erwin's idea to whisk in some butter at the end, adding a luxurious satin gloss and a pleasing creaminess to the finished sauce.

I find it also helps to think of the sauce ingredients as flavour-based building blocks. There's the caramelised sugar bit, the stock bit, the citrus juice bit and, of course, the booze bit. Each of these components can be prepared in advance and finished off with the pan juices while the duck is having a little lie down after roasting.
And because good stock is integral to the success of this dish, I've included a really simple recipe for veal stock and urge you to give it a go – it will make the world of difference to your duck a l'orange.

Which is more than can be said for Al the stud muscovy, who tried to mount the chickens once too often and ended up doing the Hills Hoist shuffle with all the rest.

Somebody should've told him to duck.

Eat me's step-by-step guide to classic duck a l'orange
Serves 4

What
The duck
2 x 1.5 kg ducks
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons butter

The sauce
45g caster sugar
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
700 ml veal stock
Juice of three oranges
Juice of one lemon
Four oranges extra.
Pan juices from the duck
One tbsp Grand Marnier or brandy
75 g cold butter cut into cubes.

How
The duck
1. Pre-heat oven to 425F/220C.

2. Wipe the inside of the duck with paper towels and pull away any loose pieces of fat. Cut off the first wing joint.

3. Lift the neck skin and cut out the wishbone – this makes the breast meat easy to carve in neat slices. Prick the skin all over with a fork, paying particular heed to the legs and neck cavity. And remember the golden rule: lots of pricks.

4. Season the bird inside and out with salt and pepper and tuck a thick slice of orange into the cavity. Smear outside with butter.

5. Lie the duck on its side in a baking dish and roast until it just starts to sizzle - 15 to 20 minutes should do it.

6. Remove from oven, baste with pan juices and tip off excess fat. Turn duck onto other side. Return to oven and continue roasting for another 20 minutes.

7. Remove from oven, baste with pan juices and tip off excess fat. Turn duck breast-side up, reduce oven to 200C and roast for further 30 minutes.

8. Remove from pan, cover loosely with alfoil and allow to rest for 15 minutes.

9. Pour off all remaining fat from pan, reserving the pan juices for the sauce.

The sauce
It's not a bad idea to do this a bit in advance, while you're still capable of speech.

1. Peel the four whole oranges with a sharp knife, being sure to remove every skerrick of white pith. Holding an orange in one hand, cut down towards the core on either side of the segment walls, easing each piece of flesh gently from the orange. The idea is to end up with a pile of orange segments free of membrane. Repeat with other three oranges and put to one side.

2. Retain the peel of one orange, pare off the white of the pith, cut the orange-coloured peel into fine (julienne) strips no wider than a matchstick – even skinnier if you can manage it. Cover these with a little hot water and one teaspoon of sugar and boil for three minutes until softened. Drain and set aside.

3. Put the sugar and vinegar in a deep, heavy-based pan and cook over a very low – repeat – very low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Continue to cook until you have a bubbling, deep golden caramel.

4. Immediately pour in the veal stock, orange juice and lemon juice, stirring well.

5. Turn up heat. Continue cooking and stirring until the caramel has fully dissolved and the sauce boils.
6. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 35 minutes, giving it a stir every now and then and skimming the surface to remove any scummy bits.

7. Add the pan juices to the sauce and simmer for a further 15 minutes. Sauce should now be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon lightly. If not, cook a little longer.

8. Add Grand Marnier or brandy and cook, stirring, for a few minutes more without boiling.

9. Pass the sauce through a sieve and season to taste with salt and pepper. If you're serving it immediately, whisk in the butter and, once melted, add the drained orange segments and julienne. Otherwise add the butter and orange only after the sauce has been reheated, right before serving.

To serve
Cut duck into two halves and arrange on warmed plates. Spoon over sauce, making sure everyone gets a few bits of orange. Serve with whatever takes your fancy – most root vegetables work well with duck.

You want to make your own stock, you mad creature, you? Here's a classic, lightish veal or beef stock perfect for the duck.

Veal stock
What
2 kg veal or beef bones, sawn into small pieces
1 tbsp olive oil
2 onion, roughly chopped
6 cloves of garlic
2 carrots, sliced
1 leek, sliced
3 sticks celery, sliced
2 tblsp tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of thyme
6 black peppercorns

How
1. Preheat oven to 220C. Place bones in a baking dish and sprinkle with oil. 2. Roast for 30 minutes.

3. Turn bones over, add garlic and vegetables and roast for another 30 minutes.

4. Tip contents of pan into stockpot, being sure to scrape out any bits from bottom of pan and adding these to stockpot.

5. Add tomato paste and cold water to cover. Bring to simmering point.

6. Skim well, and when no more scum rises, add herbs and peppercorns.

7. Simmer uncovered very, very gently for eight hours, skimming and adding extra water to cover as needed. (The idea is to slowly cook the bejesus out of the ingredients so that all the flavour ends up in the liquid.)

8. Strain and cool, pressing down on debris to extract as much liquid as possible. Leftover stock (this recipe will make around 2.5 litres) can be kept in the fridge for three days or frozen.

9. Allow stock to cool and remove fat from surface.

Note: Never add salt, children. Once stock has been reduced further in the sauce recipe, it may well be salty enough but you won't know until it has, so don't. You can always adjust seasoning once sauce has been sieved.