Inspired by Rillette of Confit I made, I decided to make a Cassoulet and serve it.

I pressure cooked a bag of white beans, added sausage and vegetables.

Sauteed it all, heated the Rillette in the oven and served it on top with a splash of the duck fat.

Ahh, perfect ducks rendered of all their excess fat and seasoned to perfecto!

I posted previously on my team building day the Pike Place Market for the 100th year celebration and I dissed the pigs, my argument being that they are "not" representative of Seattle. Even so, I bid on one of them and when the other bidders crapped out, it was mine. These things are huge and so my son and I rented the UHaul and picked up Metro-Natural pig and loaded it into my greeting area of the living room. The family loves it and yet for some odd reason the Wife is not so happy. He sits over 4.5 feet tall, I think is it cool and one of kind. I really like the DVD embedded in it with the screen in the back and it will make for a great party piece.

So we are still digging into Duck and I put up the duck breast Prosciutto today.

Remove it from the salt, rinse and pat dry...

Then we lay the pieces out on a cheesecloth, separate them and hang them in the fridge for a week to cure...

For dinner, we did pomme frittes cooked in the duck fat. We served with braised Tallgrass short ribs and green beans from the Pike Place Market. It was a sweet dinner.

Tonight I tackled the Confit (done in a Rillette style) and rendered the final duck fat. I always try to modify the process to try to add something or shave off time. I did something not traditional to the dish and pressure cooked the legs mid process and it sped up the time.

The first step is to remove the legs we packed in Salt, Sugar and Thyme from the day before and rinse and pat dry. The meat is firm and takes on a very reddish hue.

Then we take a shallow pan and heat our duck fat up to 275 or so and I place the legs into fat.

After 40 minutes, I moved the legs into the pressure cooker for 15 minutes under high pressure to infuse the flavors (I added some of duck stock) and sped the tenderization of the legs. The then placed them back in the fat and finished them up. I cut the cooking time in 1/2 this way.

I then plucked all the meat, packed into ramekins and covered with filtered duck fat. I tasted some of it and it is awesome.

You don't see a lot of home cooks diving into preparations of Duck anymore and it has a bit of a bad rap for the uninitiated. It is not hard to cook with, but you have to understand the characteristics to really pull out the awesome flavors and dishes.

I ordered 6 Heritage, Aylesbury ducks from Heritage Foods USA and they describe the qualities of this duck breed on their site. They are elongated and less meaty than production ducks.

I am going to make four separate preparations of these six ducks...

• Duck Confit - Duck legs cooked and stored in the rendered fat
• Duck Prosciutto - Cured duck breast, awesome flavor and easy to make
• Peking Duck - Classic preparation
• Duck Demi-Glace - Quad reduced demi-glace from the duck stock.

I boned out three of the ducks to remove the breasts and legs.

The first task is to start the stock from the carcases and render the excess removed skin and fat for Confit.

With the stock and fat working, I then packed the breasts and legs in salt, thyme and sugar to cure the meat for Confit and duck breast Prosciutto.

I then prepared the remaining three ducks for preparation as Peking Duck this weekend. I used salt, sugar, some cayenne and five spice. I worked it in and then vacuum sealed for marinating.

In my next post I will explain in detail how to make Confit.