Duck Tales: The Horror...The Tasty Horror!

I entertained both Briggi and Franny in Szeged last weekend. We cooked and ate wonderful dinners, had lots of farmer's market and flower shopping time, explored the city, and took a trip to the Pick Szeged Factory museum.

Friday night we had Japanese curry with roasted eggplant, rice, and pickles. Saturday afternoon after a long stroll in the market I decided to share my duck confit with Briggi so I dug it out of the fat and roasted it in the oven.

I served it on top of spinach salads simply dressed with lemon juice, a little salt, red onions, and some of the Mangalica fat that cooked off of the duck. The smell, texture, and flavor of the duck was amazing! It was so fragrant, tender, succulent, and earthy. The skin alone was some transcendent form of bacon. The Mangalica lard was a perfect choice for cooking the duck in. We paired the lunch with a fantastic Egri Cuvée (a gift from Briggi) that was dry and fruity. It complimented the duck and salads perfectly.

We all had salads of spinach, freshly pickled radishes, beets and red onions. It was a celebration of spring! A funny sidenote about the red onion: I wanted two medium onions and the guy at the stall gave them to me for free! I left 50 HUF behind anyway.

That night we had a ratatouille of radish greens, tomatoes, zucchini, and mushrooms. That was served along side a fresh orchiette pasta with butter sauce and basil. We all enjoyed making the orchiette by hand. It was a perfect dinner after walking all around Szeged that whole day. Briggi, thank you again for visiting I hope you had a great time!

Comfort Food: Confit de Canard part deux

We'll be right back but first, a word from our sponsor:

So the Pick brand Mangalica lard that sells for 998 HUF/Kg at Spar, but I bought it from the market stall in Mars tér from the Pick Szeged stand and got it at 780 HUF/Kg. Not only is it cheap but couldn't be whiter or firmer. What a deal! Now back to your regularly scheduled program...

This is the duck after cooking in a 75°C oven for ~4 hours.

I've made the pork confit recipe from Charcuterie and that was excellent, so I'm hoping that this is just as good if not better. I'm also getting ahead of myself, but I've already begun thinking about Mangalica pork belly confit with a paprika cure!

The duck in hibernation.

The duck was covered, but a little too thinly on top due to an uneven surface in the refrigerator, so I had to redistribute a little bit of fat, but otherwise this worked out great. I'm hoping that I can hold out from eating it for at least a week while it ripens...we'll see. More to come!