I know it would be a small market, the after season is always small, but coupled with the stay home weather we arrived to find the normally bustling large hall skint- just a dozen fatted ducks total, 3 or 4 geese. But what ducks!

There was my favorite smiling vendor with four beautifully prepared mullard ducks with the foie gras intact. Most ducks are sold separated from their livers these daysat different prices per kilo. Before anyone could even talk to me, I scored these 4 ducks, a healthy 23.5 kilos of them at 6 euros a kilo, and wrangled them into our plastic shopping bags. Whew. That took all of 3 minutes and then we were off to the local for a hot chocolate and the ride home.

But it was the unexpected arret minute to show Hilary the Duc de Gascogne boutique that provided our inspiration for today’s recipe- a crumble of Foie Gras aux Pain d’Epices. We sampled the little pot of creamy foie and its topping on toast while fortifying ourselves for the duck butchery; 23 kg is over 50 lbs of meat and fat to trim, render, salt, confit, & sterilize. The 3 large livers and one smaller one totaled 2.35 kilograms or a neat 10% of our harvest. At 6 euros a kilo we paid 14 euros for the 4 livers. Why do I live in Gascony, Hank Shaw?

Breaking the work into two days, we butchered and trimmed and salted yesterday. today, we’ll dice and render fat, clean flare fat from intestines, dry, confit and pack into jars for sterilizing. We’ll make rillettes, cure and smoke some magret for ‘duck bacon’ and yes, make a little pain d’épices (my recipe here!)  to serve ‘crumble-style’ with our foie gras.

This is just one week in an artisan life creating good food while teaching how to think like a Gascon cook. Here’s some past Confit Tips…http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/01/26/fat-ducks-everything-you-need-to-know-from-confit-to-foie-gras/

This is one of my all time favorite photographs taken over the years in my kitchen at Camont by bon vivant photographe extraordinaire- Tim Clinch.  It a celebration of the marche au gras (the fat markets) in the Southwest of France, an homage to the honest cooking of Gascony, and an encouraging reminder of the season ahead. November is Confit Season.

If you have been following along or creating the wonderful Charcutepalooza challenges posted by Mrs. Wheelbarrow here for the Grand Prix finale, then you know I hold these traditional cooking and preserving methods dear to my heart.  I am listing some of the archives on making duck confit, the traditional Gascon way- here:

• http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/01/30/confit-de-canard-duck-confit-part-1-how-to-buy-a-4-headed-duck/
• http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/02/04/confit-de-canard-duck-confit-part-2-like-meat-loves-salt/
• http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/02/10/confit-de-canard-duck-confit-part-3-7-french-tips/
• http://kitchen-at-camont.com/2009/01/26/fat-ducks-everything-you-need-to-know-from-confit-to-foie-gras

Grrlchef Sarah Wong dreaming up a little duck confit at Chez Bernard Daubin. Montreal-du-Gers.

I was just going to call this Workday Soup- a 20-minute solution to feeding a small crew at Camont. I’ve been working on my homework for SAF  (actually, my homework will be your homework, you lucky Butchery & Charcuterie students who begin next month!). I hate to get interrupted when working on tables and calendars. When the Noon siren blew from the nearby village spire, I just started shouting cooking advice into the kitchen. Cut up some potatoes! Chop up that Ventreche into lardons! Throw it in a pan with the duck fat!

Twenty minutes or so later, the potatoes were creamy and tender, the duck fat broth was golden rich, and a jar containing an solitary confited duck breast was popped in a pan to warm through, crisp up and garnish the steamy thyme and bay infused broth. Eh Voila!

This is the sort of nourishing and soothing meal that might help in a hurricane ravaged moment- grab a sack of potatoes, a jar of duck confit and your sterno stove. To all my dear friends and family in Irene’s path, I dub this soup for you!

ps- don’t have any duck confit in the larder? I still have one place open on the October 3 Confit Course -http://kitchen-at-camont.com/programs/cookery/dig-in/cassoulet-confit-coq-au-vin/.

• Foie Gras & Lotte cassolettes- oven baked Foie gras & monkfish on a bed of julienned aillets & carrots
• Foie Gras en Chemise Verte- spinach wrapped poached foie gras
• Confit de Canard
• Rillettes de Canard
• Paté de Foie Gras
• Terrine de foie gras
• Confit de Oie- goose
• Cassoulet Camontw/ saucisse de Toulouse,
• Grattons or cracklins- Gascon popcorn Piment d’Espelette
• Magrets seché fumé
• Magret Chemineé
• Huitres Roti (for a little duck relief)

Whispers of salty advice are twittering down the internet lines. Hints of red gold are wrapped in cheesecloth and hanging from basement stairs, under eaves and nestled among the Chablis. Nervous declarations of love, success, or failure ring through the comment boxes.

Here in Gascony, friends and neighbors make charcuterie like they plan their daily meals- seriously and with great centuries of experience. So I decided to answer @Mrs.Wheelbarrow and @theyummymummy ‘s challenge to play together and help make “A Year of Meat’ with a dozen charcuterie challenges named Charcutepalooza.  Their Ruhls are here.

Since the first challenge was already underway and I had a pair of Magrets (duck breasts from a Mullard foie gras duck) hanging in my stone larder from our last AB&C Meat School program, I thought I’d take up the old world perspective and pass on some tips from the pros, my neighbors who raise foie gras ducks and how they salt and cure their own product.

These are the Gascon ABC’s for making Magret Séché straight from the duck’s beak!

A. MEAT. Duck. Use a duck breast that comes from a mature foie gras duck- that is a large breed duck (Muscovy or Mullard hybrid) of 16 weeks age average that has been raised for it’s fatted liver. The breast meat is dark red with a thick layer of fat. The meat is rich and fully developed as any meat use for curing would be. Think beef not veal. There needs to be structure to the meat cells for it to cure properly.

B. SALT. Appropriately. One tablespoon of good sea salt well-rubbed into the meat side of the duck breast is enough. Placed skin side down, the fat acts a cradle to retain any meat juices that then get reabsorbed. After 12 hours- yup, just over night, wipe off any excess salt. There should be almost nothing left.

C. DRY. Age.  In other words, let time make magic. At Camont, I have a stone larder sandwiched between the kitchen and the barn. It once served as the piggery for the farm and is now the laundry room/pantry. We still call it the Piggery. It’s airy, cool and humid and fluctuates temperature just like the étuve on the Chapolard’s farm- warm days, cool nights. Just like the rest of Camont. It’s perfect to let meat hang free in the air, no cheesecloth needed, and out of the cat’s reach. I have never seen anyone here wrap their saucisse or hams in anything but black pepper. 10 days to 2 weeks is enough.

These are the basics of dried duck breasts… as we do them in Gascony, the kingdom of foie gras ducks. Stayed tuned for my own Duck Breast Bacon sandwich- a DLT, coming soon for the Charcutepalooza challenge. and don’t forget to follow along on Twitter with the #charcutepalooza hashtag.

I love it when I feel I am in the middle of something. It doesn’t happen often being a bit of a “living on the edge” sort of person- in all senses. But when it does, I feel that delicious “a-ha!” moment welling up out of my back brain and jumping out of my mouth onto The Keyboard.

• A-ha! Locavorism is my way of being a lazy bum- what’s growing outside the door? dandelions? rosemary? rosehips?
• A-ha! Organic Gardening is also wonderfully lazy, no schedules to follow for spraying or bottles of poison to sort out by use by date.
• A-ha! Canning & Preserving in small batches is fast and easy. 4 jars of quince here, 5 jars of salsa there; faster than going to the supermarket.
• A-ha! Butchering & Charcuterie making on the farm with artisan French butchers is part of the yearly cycle here.
• a-ha! Farm-to-table does work when you live surrounded by fertile fields in a wealth agriculturally based society. “France” in a word.
• A-ha! Urban farming works as long as you have Wi-Fi and can Google “mysterious chicken diseases”.
• A-ha! The Back-to-the-Land movement I joined in the 70′s on Lopez Island, WA never went away, it just got better music.

So when the I see this big kahuna wave swelling around me,  I’ve been sitting on my long French board for about 20 years, it makes me want to start paddling faster and faster. Catch that wave now! And at last, I can be the #1 Surfer French Farm Queen-Dudette in town.

This week’s wave is all over the web on blogs and news sites. Kim Severson writes an article at the NYT  about  some of the of the problems people are having raising chickens in an urban environment. And today, Alex Williams writes about the new “do-it-yourself butchery” taking place around the country in shops, cooking schools and well as bars. Like preaching to the choir, I want to join in and shout Amen! or Hallelujah! After all, I learn by doing, too. And while I want to encourage and applaud these Good Food neophytes, I want to bang them on the head, too.

Like parents that think Easter chicks are cute- for a week, I imagine those chickens abandoned by someone who found out that a living breathing animal eats, poops and needs attention just like we do.  I think about the wasted meat not cooked from that lovingly raised porker by someone whose stomach was turned by the smell of too much raw meat or the serial killer smell of fresh blood. I know some of that good meat will end up in the garbage uncooked. I know what happens not just because I see it when fresh students and interns show up in France all starry-eyed or because I have years of experience of sheltering the delicate Gourmet-reading gourmand from knowing too ‘much ado about foie gras’, or the ‘truth behind truffles’.   I know what happens because I, too, have been there. And I am willing to admit it.

I’ve learned a lot these two decades of eating France. Yet, I still have a lot to learn.  About Charcuterie- did you know that the age of the pig (minimum 12 months) affects the acid level produced in the meat muscle and thus affecting the quality and curing of the jambons, saucissons and chorizo?  I didn’t either until this summer when Camas D., Jonathon K. and I sat down at teh lunch table with the Brothers Chapolard for a Q&A about their pig farm and artisan charcuterie operation.  About Chickens- after a year with my own layers  (11 hens- 1 rooster) and losing a couple to neighbor dogs (including Bacon the teenage gangsta pack member),  I am soooo glad I have chicken-raising neighbors who coached me through my first crisis (one too many rooster) and told JK and me exactly where to stick the knife. The Coq au Vin was as good as any I have cooked and eaten.

Interested to learn more? Not on the web but live and in person with people who love their food and make it too. It’s easy this winter. Come to France (air fares are looking good, children!) this November (read about it here) or meet me in the North West this New Year 2010 as  I pack my Gascon bags with lots of ideas and tons of experience on making cassoulet, rendering duck fat, confit and natural foie gras with Neal Foley on his Podchef Island and Robert Reynolds at his wonderful Chef’s Studio in Portland.

Now about that wave… let’s keep it swelling. There are a lot of delicious rides ahead.

It’s been dry since April.  I know this fair weather won’t hold much longer. Rain is sure to come. The chicken coop needs some end of season love and weather proofing,  so it’s off to the tool shed, hammer, nails, screws and ingenuity in hand. The best part is getting to spend an hour with the girls, clucking and clicking as they scratch, peck and lay their golden eggs.

With Julia preparing some winter crop beds, we’ll turn the flock into the potager and let them give us a hand. Should be a slugfest frenzy!

Making confit de canard or preserved duck is a Gascon winter kitchen game of duck, duck, goose. Although I posted these pix on my old blog now referred to as ‘The Archives’, I wanted to share these again as a step-by-step slideshow and appeteaser for this winters confit making workshops. For more information click here- DUCK+.