Part deux: Duck fat in Deutschland

Khatir told me to be back at the warehouse first thing in the morning. "I'll be here at six," he said. "I won't," I replied. 

Nine was the best I could do and as it turned out, much better than he could manage. "I am stuck in zee fahking trafeek, poutain merde," Khatir said when I called to announce my arrival. "I weel be zer een feefteen minewts." 

True to his word he pulled up a quarter of an hour later and we pulled the duck legs out of the refrigerator. They were covered with a thin layer of dew - the moisture we sweated out of the meat with the salaison.

He instructed me to wash each of the legs in cold water until they were free of the salty herb coating, dry them and stack them on a plate. I did this while he ran into the city to grab a new gas canister - turns out Samir had taken the only one they had to warm the wagon while out pedaling their wares at another weekly market across town.

Clean legs, a full can of gas, an enormous aluminum pot and we were ready to bust out the product that had brought us together in the first place: the duck fat.

this is not ice cream

He pulled eight ice cream container sized tubs of duck fat out of the fridge. Two of the containers had a fine layer of mold on the surface, he threw these out explaining that although it was heart wrenching to have to part with it, the risk of salmonella was too great.

duck fat jello removal

He turned the containers upside down, one by one and scraped of the bottom layer - sometimes a  thick layer of duck fat Jello, sometimes only a think speckling of impurities.

and other impurities

Once the block was clean and looked like an enormous pat of sweet butter, he tossed it into the 20 gallon pot that sat atop a small portable gas stove. Six butter bricks later and the pot was nearly half full, though the level continued to drop slightly as the fat began to liquefy.

And as it did, the atelier began to smell like Thanksgiving. The smell of a bird in the oven slow cooked over the course of a long lazy afternoon. And once all six bricks had fused into one bubbly caramel soup of holiday memories, we dropped the duck legs, clean and dry with no idea what was about to hit them, into the pot. 

"Reviens dans duex heures", instructed Khatir. Come back in two hours. 

too bad there is no such thing as scratch-and-sniff-o-vision

our "gas stove"

fully submerged, fully sick

Exactly 120 minutes later I returned with my friend Lowri and an appetite, having purposely forgone breakfast and lunch (it was 2 p.m.) to make sure I would be huunnnnggggrrry and have enough space in my stomach for all of that duck fat. Samir poured the wine, the butcher from next door set the table and I played waitress, collecting the legs from Khatir as he pulled them out of the pot and delivering them to the table. They are done, he explained, when the meat pulls away from the bone on its own.

In our exuberance, we neglected to throw a couple of potatoes into the duck fat, and instead settled for a crusty baguette and some spiced French mustard. And of course a full glass of red wine.

a taste-o-vision function would serve you well right now

Remember how I mentioned before the importance of getting this dish right? Look at the plate. There is no where to hide a mistake here. It's just a duck leg. And this duck leg was done so right that I couldn't bring myself to put a condiment like mustard on it. It would have been an insult. The meat was so subtly flavored with the mixture of nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and juniper so as to create a sort of deja vu-like sensation, like, Haven't I tasted this somewhere before? No, I realized, I had tasted the spice elsewhere in other dishes. But not like this. The texture I can only properly compare to a roast that has been braised in vasoline. The meat slid off the bone when I merely picked up the fork and thought about taking a bite.

We washed it down with a 50 year old truffle cognac that tasted a bit like cough syrup that someone had buried in the backyard, forgotten about and unearthed in the next century. Not exactly my cup of tea but definitely not boring. As a parting gift, a souvenir and confit diploma, Khatir handed me four legs vacuumed packed - the French love their sous vide machines - to take home.

My first French cooking lesson was over. But if Khatir was serious about his offer to take me on as a pupil, it may be just the beginning of a French culinary education.

Duck fat in Deutschland

 

I had been trying to track down some duck fat - a task I hadn't realized at the undertaking would be so difficult. As it turns out, duck fat basically DOESN'T EXIST in Germany. Or so I had more or less been told. Every butcher shop or poultry store I have hit up has been unhelpful at best, down right condescending at worst. "Duck fat?" they balk. "What do you want duck fat for? I have gänseschmalz (mostly goose fat). Why don't you just use that?" And when I INSIST that I MUST HAVE duck fat, they turn back to whatever it is they were doing or the next customer while sarcastically wishing me luck. "Have you LOOKED at a duck lately? They have almost NO FAT. Why don't you buy a couple of whole birds - you might manage to squeeze a bit of fat out of them."

Undeterred, I decide to go straight to the source - the cannot-fail-surefire-if-they-don't-have-any,-I will-finally-concede-defeat source of duck fat: the French. There is a superfab French stand in my favorite bi-weekly market in Hamburg, Délice de France, with this very charming (in the Frenchest way possible) man selling patés, foie gras, cheeses, brioches, etc. Pinning all the hopes in the world on this one little food wagon, I stroll up, wait my turn in line as he charms the Hamburger hausfraus trying to decide between a creme forestière and rillette du porc, and when he turns to me with his signature, "BONJOUR MADAME! Que est-ce que je peux faire pour vous aujourd'hui?", I lay it all on the line. "Est-ce que vous avez.." I begin and then trail off because suddenly I cannot remember the word for duck fat in French. "... Duck fat?"

The man looks as though I have just asked him if he can score me some smack. He must not have heard me correctly. He looks to his left and then right and finally narrows his gaze on me.  "Why?" he asks with enough suspicion to make the innocent feel extremely guilty. I tell him I need it for a duck confit. He asks me how much I need and I tell him I don't know. I don't have the recipe on me. A kilo? I offer, figuring I would err on the side of excess. And then he laughs. "How many duck legs you wanna make, one?" hawheehawheehaw. He leans across the counter and practically whispers, "You want duck fat? I will give you an entire vat of it. For free."

So I'm all, what's the catch? "Come to the slaughterhouse on Tuesday at 4 pm. I'll bring the duck legs and the fat. You bring the wine. Two bottles. And I will teach you everything you need to know (subtext: you poor ignorant American fool who I am only taking pity on because I like anyone who asks about duck fat)."

  

Khatir Sayad had invited people to his warehouse before to learn the tricks of the trade - tricks that he had learned while working in the kitchen with Bernard Loiseau, a five Michelin star French chef (and for you trivia fans, the basis for the chef character in the Disney movie, Ratatouille). But no one had ever shown up. Until I did. Tuesday afternoon at 4 p.m. as instructed, armed with two bottles of decent French wine, a notebook and a digital camera. Khatir, his brother Samir and their partner Khader were part astonished part amused when I called from the gate of the warehouse complex - which houses mainly meat packing and food shipping companies. Khatir drove out to the gate to pick me up. I stood waiting for someone to arrive on foot- so when a strange car pulled up along side me and the driver motioned for me to get in, I retreated. Until he rolled down the window and yelled, "Tu viens ou tu viens pas?" Are you coming or what?

  

Khatir Sayad

  

His brother Samir

 

His atelier was not what I expected. There were no ducks waddling the premise awaiting the slaughter. His ducks - and geese, and pigs - were already stored away, en sous vide, neatly stacked in the fridge. There was a gorgeous old wooden table in the center of a very industrial room with white tiled walls, neon lighting, stacks of crates, an old armoir filled with moutarde and old copies of the menu from the French restaurant Khatir used to run in Hamburg, and a wine locker with bottles ranging in age from five to 50 years old.

I learned more about his background in what was part diatribe against the German character and cuisine and part declaration of love for anyone who appreciates good French food and the time and attention it takes to prepare it. He was amused by this random American woman who timidly inquired about duck fat in order to make a dish that she had no clue how to even attempt. But he gleaned an adventurous culinary spirit, an appreciation for classic French cooking and a brazen ambivalence toward large quantities of animal fat. He approved.

They invited me to sit down and poured me a glass of wine, nodding approvingly at the two bottles I had brought as an offering. We talked for 10 minutes or so and when I mentioned the duck, fearing perhaps they had forgotten WHY I had come, Khatir batted the topic away with his hand, "We'll get to that."

  

Four hours and several bottles of wine later, we got to that. And when we did, the process took maybe 15 minutes. Because all we did was the salaison - rubbing the meat in a mixture of salt and herbs, covering and putting it back into the fridge for the night. Khatir explained that duck meat is typically quite dry because of their diet. In order to draw the little moisture that there is in the meat to the surface, you salt it - "just like ice on zee sidewalk" he explained.

  

paprika

 

a mixture of fleur du sel, juniper berries, bay leaves and quatre epices: cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and black pepper, a four-fingered pinch of each, mulched together

  

The thing about a dish like confit is that it's so naked. Technically, yes, it's easy. However, if you fuck it up, it is painfully obvious because all you have there in front of you is a duck leg. There is no hiding your mistake under a sauce or complimenting your mistake with a side dish. There it is, SCREAMING at you from the plate. No way around it, no avoidng it.

  

After the salaison, I ignorantly declared, "THAT'S IT!?!? That's all there is to a confit? But that is so EASY!" Khatir looked a bit amused, a bit like he'd like to slap silly, arrogant little me. I quickly back-peddaled, blamed my inadequate French and said, "What I meant is, YOU make it LOOK so easy!" He shook his head and smiled in an I'm onto you but I'll let that one slide because you are right, IT'S MY MAD SKILLLLZZZ. And then said, "Tu es tres intelligent, Madame." Yes, a wise woman is always prepared to stick her foot in her mouth. Especially if that foot is followed by the leg of a duck.

 

"Come back tomorrow", Khatir said. And with that - four hours, a salaison and an embarrassing number of empty wine bottles - my first French cooking lesson came to a close. 

Part deux (the part where the duck fat comes into play) to follow on Thursday...