March 17, 2010
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Quackless Ducks, Impotent Ducks & Mallards
With 35,000 waterfowl hunters, Iowa is duck country. Yet until recently, duck dining here was isolated to Chinese restaurants and wild game dinners. No more. Thanks to expanded domesticated duck businesses, reader’s have been asking questions about breeds, sexes and even sexless-ness on their duck plates. We dutifully investigated.
PF Chang’s offered only one duck option. None would have been better. Their VIP duck presented half a dry bird, not as crispy as one expects in Chinese restaurants, with scallions, flatbread and a very sweet, very salty plum sauce. My server had no idea what breed or sex my duck was. Since Chang’s prides itself on recipe authenticity, it’s safe to assume it was a Pekin (aka Nanking), a mallard breed that originated in China, became Long Island duckling in America and is closely related to 95 per cent of all domesticated duck in America, and nearly 100 per cent in Asia.
At Alba we found a fabulous duck breast that came from an Indiana company that raises Pekins and distributes duck breasts. It was plated with a wonderful wild mushroom risotto, squash, cranberries and mint.
Chef Jason Simon also served a marvelous duck terrine, with his famous homemade crackers.
At Phat Chef’s (now sadly closed) I found chef Hal Jasa’s corned mallard (Pekin) duck, a duck brined as if it were corned beef brisket.
He served it with a home made black mustard plus little ramekins that layered foie gras mousse and foie gras.
Be still my heart.
At Django, restaurateur George Formaro told me that an alpha diner had recently canceled an order of duck after learning it was a Pekin. So I called Fox Hollow Farm’s Tai Johnson-Spratt, who raises free range Pekins, low fat White Muscovies and Mule ducks, which are a impotent cross between those other breeds. She supplies Django, Sbrocco and Bistro Montage with whole ducks.
“Andrew (Meek at Sbrocco), Bill (Overdyck at Django) and Enosh (Kelley at Bistro Montage) all assure me they use the entire duck, that nothing goes to waste. Otherwise I would sell breasts and not know what to do with the other parts,” she explained.
I fact checked that. Meek offered foie gras, plus a pan roasted duck breast with a duck confit, mushroom-tart cherry risotto, and duck demiglace. Django went further with: potatoes fried in duck fat; duck liver served with apple fennel compote: roasted duck breast in duck demiglace with spaetzels, walnuts, apples, leeks and prosciutto;
confit of duck leg quarters served with duck demiglace, root vegetables, cabbage and bacon; and a duck leg cassoulet with sausage, bacon and white beans. Duck foie gras found its way into their filet Rossini (beef tenderloin, truffles and Bordelaise sauce) and a Django dog. The café even offerred a “foie gras of the month.” All those dishes were superb but Django had run out of Fox Hollow ducks and new supplies are months away.
Bistro Montage still had Fox Hollow mallards and Kelley served a duck breast with braised winter greens and turnips stuffed with fig compote – the best dish I tasted on this job. He also used the confit of leg quarters in his cassoulet. Formaro and Kelley both said they don’t care about duck breeds. They prefer anything Fox Hollow has to anything they can get from more distant suppliers.
Johnson-Spratt said that sex matters more than breeds. That’s why she raises quackless Muscovies and Mules. Those males and females are more uniform in size than mallards, in which females might be only 60% as large as males.
“Mallards rule though. Low fat duck misses the point of duck,” she offered.
At Le’s Chinese BBQ I found a choice of whole ducks in natural shapes, or whole ducks flattened before smoking.
The latter method produced crispier skin usually associated with the famous Peking duck. Le’s was the only place that sold whole ducks including heads, necks and innards. That’s important during the fortnight following a lunar new year, which began on Valentine’s Day this year. That’s when consuming foods that are less than whole is considered unlucky by a billion or so people. Le’s whole birds, with tofu, cost about $10 less than a breast entrée anywhere else did.
