Idle Hands Part 2: Things Get Real

****Warning This Blog Post Contains Graphic Images of Dead Duck****

Our time at the farm in Portugal has come to an end but before we left, we busy bees got up to a few more things. A lot of our todo was what ado about ducks. There were a lot of duckies and they were increasingly becoming middle-aged, which in Duck terms means their meat gets tougher as their muscles develop more and more. So several were called up to fulfill their purpose of the farm, that is to feed and nourish those who work and live there.

The first task was to butcher the animals. With the guidance of Andrea, the farmer, Brandon preformed this job. The cleanest way to do this is pierce the space between the jugular vein/throat and the spinal column with a sharp knife. Then turn the knife down and cut the vein and throat and finally separating the head from the body.

 

Faithful wife Jennifer catches the blood to be mixed with wine and used later for cooking

 After the body relaxes it is time to pluck the duck. We first plucked it dry which was slow going.

With the second and third ducks we dunked the ducks in boiling water which made the feathers come off a lot easier but made for a messier affair.

A blowtorch helps remove the small feathers

Once the feathers were all off it was time to remove the "nasty bits"

Brandon proud of keeping the entire digestive tract intact

But what do you do with three dead ducks?

With the first duck we made Cantonese roast duck. This involves boiling the duck for a few minutes, drying it, filling the cavity with a liquid marinade and then sowing the duck shut, putting a honey glaze over it then hanging it up to dry for a few hours. After all that we roasted it.

t

Final product served with scallion pancakes and tahini turnips

With the second and third ducks we worked on preserving the meat for as long as possible. Brandon made duck rillette, duck pancetta, and the Holy Grail: cold-smoked duck bacon.

Rillette is meat that is chopped up and slow cooked in its own fat and salt. Can be shelf stable for a few weeks.

First step to the rillette was to render all the fat from the two ducks.

Sweet delicious golden duck fat (two jars full)

 

 

For the pancetta we made a salt mixture of salt, thyme, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, and cumin seeds. The duck breasts were covered in the fat and then left to hang for 1 week. Unfortunately, we left the farm prior to trying the pancetta.

Ready to be hung

The most fun was making the bacon. We put two duck breast in a salt brine for 6 hours during which time Brandon made a cold smoker!

The bricks on the left are the beginnings of the smoke chamber where the duck will be. On the right is a hole where the smoking pear wood will be placed. An underground channel connects the two chambers to direct and cool the smoke

Look at those breasts

On the right is where the pear wood was smoking (covered in dirt to trap the smoke). The wood on the left is covering the chamber where the duck is smoking. The bucket with the fire on the far left had a hole in the bottom which was used to draw the smoke toward the duck.

Rotate!

All the work was worth it. The Duck bacon was delicious after soaked up smoke for about 5-6 hours and the farm smelled of rotisserie chicken for the next two days.

On non-duck related events Jen made calendula salve on her last day of work. She had had calendula sitting in olive oil for a month prior.

Melting beeswax and lanolin into the calendula oil

Tinning the salve

She added thyme and rosemary to spice it up.  It makes lovely lip balm!

We have now left the farm and have spent an incredible last few days in Portugal, and are now sitting in Madrid on the eve of our next chapter in Morocco.