Duck, Duck,...Fat

I first took note of the duck fat for sale here at the farmer's market. Frequently, adjacent to the saucisson man, there is a van parked, selling all manner of duck- and goose-related products, whole and in pieces, including foie gras and duck fat. I was first attracted by the foie gras, not because I was particularly fascinated by it (although it's difficult not to be a little fascinated, a ban on foie gras was only recently repealed in Chicago), but because of the shear selection; it feels particularly illicit to be browsing for foie gras. I'd never seen so many varieties of such a product in one place. Tucked in among the jars were a few labeled "graisse de canard," and maybe it was that phrase that intrigued me: grease of duck.

I was little tentative about purchasing the graisse for the first few weeks, not sure of what I would use it for, how long it would last, what the storage restrictions would be, etc. Luckily for my taste buds, Rebecca threw caution into the wind and decided to just buy some and figure out the details later. Needless to say, it is delicious, and can be used in all manner of dishes. It is primarily used in the Southwest of France in dishes like cassoulet, duck confit, and foie gras. But the options don't end there. In reality, versatility (relatively speaking) is its most interesting quality.

Apparently, duck fat gives sauteed vegetables a hint of savory flavor, perhaps similar to MSG. Substitute some duck fat for butter in pie and tart crusts, mix duck fat with some blanched and pounded garlic for Gascony Butter (to use as soup flavoring or on toast; variations can be made with shallots and red wine), fry duck skin in duck fat for fritons de canard (though this culinary term can also apply to various renditions), and all roasted and fried potatoes benefit tremendously from being cooked in duck fat.

Duck fat also has advantages from a technical and nutritional point of view. For instance, the "smoke point" of duck fat, the point at which the oil begins to smoke and break down, is above both butter and extra virgin olive oil, though below high quality extra virgin olive oil. Cooking in fat above its smoke point will impart an unpleasant taste to the food. Here is a chart of the smoke points of various fats.

Besides being a little easier to cook with, duck fat also has less saturated fat than butter. Perhaps this fact, along with the health benefits of red wine (in the form of Resveratrol), has contributed to Gascony having the longest life expectancy in France, the French Paradox. On the other hand, with a number of sites trying to debunk this theory, the whole thing (really, both sides of the issue) starts to sound like a conspiracy theory. But would you rather die from a McDonald's-induced heart attack, or a red wine and duck confit heart attack?

The real question for the English speakers reading this blog is "where do I get it?" It is available online, but shipping costs make it pretty expensive. You might try the local farmer's market or butcher. If you live in a more rural area, maybe your local duck hunter can help. Ducks are very fatty, and cooking a duck without removing some of the fat leads to long cooking times. You can ask them for some of the extra fat; their duck cooks faster (and gets crispier) and you get duck fat to render. Hooray!

A nos lecteurs/lectrices Francophones--Merci!

***mise à jour***

-Zkark, LO, et William: merci pour vos idées, nous vous tiendrons au courant!

-Si vous n'avez pas encore fait une suggestion....n'hésitez pas à nous laisser un petit message (et corriger notre français, si vous en voulez)!

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Vous êtes Poitevin? Vous n'êtes pas? Quand même, nous avons besoin de votre aide...


Évidemment, nous adorons Poitou-Charentes, mais c'est le moment d'explorer d'autres régions de la France, n'est ce pas? Il ne nous reste plus que sept ou huit mois de notre année à l'étranger.

Mais où aller? Nous ne savons pas, et c'est pour ça que nous vous demandons de nous faire vos suggestions. Quand vous prenez les vacances, vous allez où? Où sont vos endroits préférées?

Quelques détails : nous n'avons pas une voiture, et nous préférons ne pas conduire. Nous aimons voyager, manger, explorer, bouger, rencontrer des gens and des expériences nouvelles. Nous aimons faire du velo, marcher, être actif, nager (sauf s'il fait beau!), les festivals du vin, du fromage, du cinéma (même du graisse de canard, si il y en a). Nous pourrions prendre un train ou un avion, selon la distance et le prix, mais nous ne sommes pas riches! Aucun doute que Monacco est trés jolie, mais il faut être économique dans nos choix...

Quick translation:
Tell us where to go on vacation in France. We like to ride bikes, swim, go to wine festivals, cheese festivals, film festivals (duck fat festivals, if there are any). And we're a little poor.

La Marché

We have mentioned the Saturday market here in Poitiers before, but in the past, we mostly offered photos of our shopping hauls and brief descriptions of some of the vendors. Technically, the market (the building you see in the background) is open 6 days a week. On any given weekday, up to 1/4 of the vendors are open--these are the businesses that lease permanent stalls inside the building; they clearly pay more, but they also have the convenience of not having to worry about how the weather will affect their sales. On Saturday, all of these indoor vendors are open, in addition to the numerous outdoor vendors who set up tents outside around the market.

One caveat...the "normal" supermarkets here are no joke. They may lack the aisle dedicated to Asian and South American foods, but the selection of meats, cheeses, pastas, olives, wines, and bottled water would put any supermarket in the United States to shame. In the United States, for instance, European-style meats (pancetta, coppa, salami, saucisson sec) are usually industrially-farmed reproductions of inferior quality. US cheeses are similar; they are either imported (in which case they risk sitting too long in their packaging due to cost and over-niche-yness) or they are inferior domestic reproductions. Perhaps this is because the American meat and cheese industry remains stalled where American wine was 30 years ago. Unfortunately, the financial crisis may have dealt a serious blow to the people able and willing to afford well conceived meats and cheeses. Also, France doesn't always pasteurize their cheese, something else that won't happen (legally) in the U.S.

The route we take to the market means one of the first vendors we see is the saucisson man. He usually has a dozen or more varieties of cured sausage and is happy to let you sample them. So far, we have tried: natur (plain), goat cheese, fig, blueberry, blue cheese, chestnut, cepes (mushrooms), donkey, duck, and fennel. We buy them three at a time because they make a perfect snack with cheese, olive oil, cornichons, and artichoke hearts.

Since Poitiers is only about 1.5 hours from the west coast of France (the Bay of Biscay), there is always plenty of seafood at the Saturday market: prawns, salmon, swordfish, monkfish, cod, and other fish we haven't translated yet, as well as shellfish like oysters and scallops. For the most part, the seafood is whole and/or unshelled, and can be cleaned upon request.

The picture just above here is of the seafood man shelling and cleaning the scallops we were planning to prepare for dinner. First we picked them out, then we paid, and then we watched as he deftly pried open the shells, and one after another, cut the scallops free and cleaned and rinsed them. It was truly an amazing thing to watch, and we even considered ordering more scallops just so that we could watch him work a little longer.

We are always used to thinking of seafood (and really everything: cheese, beef, sausage, fruit) by weight, but in reality that is a little misleading. Here they often ask you how many you want, or in the case of cheese and sausage they hold the knife up to the item where they are going to cut and ask for your approval. Occasionally, this leads you to spend a little more than you planned, especially in the case of a certain 45 €/kg aged goat cheese...the aged goat cheese vendor has become the bane of our existence, because we are, in perfect honesty, unable to resist him. We have taken to turning away abruptly whenever we get the slightest glimpse his cheese cart--but this is made incredibly difficult by the fact that he sets up in a different place each week. He is a tricky, tricky fellow and his cheese is really, really good.

The butchers usually specialize in either poultry, pork, or beef and lamb. Besides offering their specialty meat, they frequently also offer cooked dishes (someone who does this would be called a traiteur)--meatloafs, salads, and other cold dishes featuring their meats--and may even have wine to accompany them. The most popular pork butcher is Yves Henaud, where a half dozen guys man the 30 ft counter.

For the first time this week, we arrived at the market with a grocery list based on two recipes we had already decided to make: (1) spiced scallops served on braised red cabbage with pancetta and (2) roquefort-stuffed pork chops. In one sense, this made our trip more difficult, since we had to work harder to stay focused, and make sure that we got everything we were going to need (remember, none of the grocery stores are going to be open on Sunday, so forethought is required). On the other hand, going in with a plan means that the trip takes about half as long, and also that we don't end up with things that we aren't going to be able to use before they get overripe. Today, the only novelty food items we ended up with were free ones, from some of the vendors who have developed an affection for The Two Americans--today, the freebies included: sausages, cherry tomatoes, bay leaves, ginger root, and fresh spinach. It was a good day.

Berlin...Part II

Despite a forecast of wet and cold weather, Jefe decided to take his bike to Berlin. The transport system has good coverage and is efficient; one 2 € ticket gives you access to the S-Bahn (like the 'El' in Chicago), the U-Bahn (like the subway in London or New York), and the trams and buses for up to two hours. But taking the S-Bahn or U-Bahn only allows you to see things at one place or another, not in between. Since Berlin is spread out and relatively flat, a bike is the way to go, and Berliners seem to agree.

Even during our stay, with the lousy weather, the vast network of bike paths and bike lanes was consistently full of cyclists, who rode everything from older racing bikes to cargo bikes. Sometimes the bike paths are denoted only by differently colored bricks on the sidewalk, and so it quickly becomes second nature to look both ways before crossing a bike path.

On the bike, Jefe was able to explore places that were a little out-of-the-way, like the architectural neighborhood of Hansaviertel.
He also spent one afternoon checking into a few art galleries in the Mitte area of central Berlin. Most of these would be considered avant-garde, or just bizarre. The Zak Branicka gallery was showing a movie called A Summer's Tale, a fairy-tale by Katarzyna Kozyra about midget gardeners that begins idyllic and then turns ugly. The same building housed the Galerie Volker Diehl, showing work by Herbert Volkmann. The show was titled Die Morphinisten (The Morphine Addicts), and syringes featured heavily in most of the artwork.

For more entertaining entertainment, we went to see Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan (with opening band The Miserable Rich) at the Columbia Music Hall. They are from Glasgow and musically, they fall somewhere between Leonard Cohen and The Beauty Shop. They were very good, and we were surprised by the large Sunday night crowd. Maybe they have a cult following in Berlin. We were in a hurry to get home and didn't see any CD's for sale, but we will definitely look for something online.

Before the show, we stopped at Atame Tapas Bar for wine and finger food. One gem we found were these dates which were stuffed with almonds, wrapped in bacon, and then roasted. They were fantastic: salty, sweet, soft, and crunchy. The next night we returned to Nosh (where we ate twice while in Berlin in December 2007). The food is simple, but delicious, roast lamb shoulder with ratatouille and goose leg with mustard sauce and crispy potatoes. Also of note were the salmon brunch at Cream, the cold dahl salad and warm vegetarian paella at Saladette und Freunde, and the rum raisin Rittersport chocolate bars (not available in the US).

The Alexanderplatz was also buzzing with activity. The Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) and carnival encompassed the area of three or four city blocks. For everyone, there were sausages, pretzels, crepes, candy and fries. For the kids, there were numerous rides: a ferris wheel, various carousels, and a rollercoaster. And for the adults there was Glühwein (mulled wine with rum and amaretto).

In Berlin, people drink on the street. They drink on the subway and on the metro. They drink on the bus and the tram. Bottle caps blanket the city, smashed empty bottles glint in the sun. And although Germans are most frequently associated with beer, glühwein is the beverage of choice from the beginning of November until the end of January. What? It's 4am, and you're out of glühwein? Try the pizza place next door. Chances are, they've got some.

Poitiers has mulled wine too, but here there is an issue of decorum, one which seems to have been resolved in Germany back when it was still called Prussia. This year Poitiers has banned the sale of vin chaud at the Christmas Market. This is has caused a small furor, and our friend William, the local Caviste, has started an informal petition (translation) to reverse this development. Du courage William!

Berlin...Part I

After Rebecca's students took the TOEIC, we decided to go to Berlin for a long weekend. We took the TGV from Poitiers directly to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris (very convenient) and flew into Berlin's Tegel airport. All in all, it took around 6 hours to get from our apartment to our hotel in Berlin.

We visited Berlin (among several other European cities) in late December of 2007 and really liked the undercurrent of chaos that permeates the city, especially the eastern side.
This chaotic energy is most notable through the pervasive graffiti and occasional trash in the streets. Poitiers, with its nightly trash collection and frequent sidewalk and street cleaning, seems anal in comparison. While we aren't particularly fascinated by the graffiti (or the trash), these seem to be manifestations of a ubiquitous creativity than can be hard to find in wealthier, more established cities like Paris or Boston. There always seems to be something going on, or something for sale, that you would be hard-pressed to see replicated anywhere else.

We stayed in the Fredreichshain area in the eastern part of the city. The area is more out of the way (and thus less frequented by tourists) than areas to the west, but with the all-encompassing S/U-Bahn system, this isn't much of a problem. The area is full of interesting cafes, used clothing stores, vintage record shops, streetwear outlets, and boutiques by independent designers.

Since we don't speak any German, we had to rely on websites like exberliner.com and berlin.unlike.com to give us a head start on food, movie and music happenings. Through these two sites, we were able to find Thai food that was as spicy as we're used to (a review mentioned dishes are "a tad too hot for the European palate," a good sign), as well as good movies in English with German subtitles (Moviemento and Babylon-Kreuzberg are two theaters that often have English-language films).

We also found a film festival titled "Around the World in 14 films" showing at the Babylon-Mitte Cinema. We were able to attend two of the films: Silent Light and Garage.


Part II coming soon...