Duck Confit - Part One

The cooking quest this weekend is to make duck confit.  My reading suggests that the traditional way can take a couple of days and I am a traditionalist so this is part one.  Confit is a method of preserving meat in fat which was important in the pre-refrigerator days.  One of the side benefits is that is tastes good like most cured, dried, preserved meat.  I wanted to make duck confit because I am on a quest to do a dinner with just small plates (tapas) and one of those plates will be duck confit tacos.  More about the dinner at a later date.  So we will see how the duck comes out and then next weekend will be from scratch taco shells.  So on to the duck.

Went searching for duck legs and thighs at Whole Foods but could only find whole duck.  Got it home after three people at the store asked me how I was going to cook it.  It seems that duck is intimidating to most people, me included.  Broke the duck down while saving as much of the fat as possible and put the breast up for later.  Lined the bottom of a glass pyrex dish with pieces of the fat which I liberally sprinkled with kosher salt and pepper.  To the top of that I added some crushed garlic cloves, fresh thyme and bay leaves.  The thighs/legs and wings went on top with a little more salt and pepper.  Before covering, I put some whole peppercorns for good measure.  Covered and placed in the refrigerator for the night.  Tomorrow, it goes into the oven.

My first Post

So here I am after years of wanting to blog about something and I am starting to write about cooking.  My son and I started learning more about cooking about a year and a half ago and we get more adventurous as time goes on.  It is like an addiction and I think my facebook friends are getting tired of me posting pictures of things I have cooked.

So, I will try to keep this up with things we have done and anything good that we have eaten.  If you reading this thank you.