by Krissie Mason
Covers magazine – Summer 2019
There’s something disturbing and illuminating about a modern loaf of bread that sits on the counter for a month and doesn’t sprout the tiniest spot of green fuzz. In contrast, my rustic, home-made yeasted boule will become a perm-headed Bob Ross Chia Pet if not consumed within a few days. As food tends to be paramount to our survival, it’s no wonder we developed a preoccupation with the preservative technologies of the times to avoid spoilage.
Centuries before benzoates, sulphites, nitrites and sorbates, comestibles from fall hunts and domestic harvests like Pyrenean chamois, Black Forest boar, wood pigeons from the Basque country and moulard from Gascony were butchered, pickled, salted, cured, smoked and kept in cold underground storage areas of medieval castles and manor homes. The English called these rooms “larders,” the Germans used “kühlhaus” meaning “cool house” and in France, it was “garde manger” meaning “keep to eat.” Storing allowed a wide variety of food to be enjoyed through the winter months and often into spring.
Effectively the hermetic seal of the times, preparing food “confit” was one of the original methods for keeping meat longer. The technique of cooking and storing meat submerged in fat originated in in the mid-1400s in a bucolic area of the French countryside known as Gascony. It lies in Southwest France near the foothills of the Pyrenees mountain range. There the moulard duck, a cross between a Muscovy and Pekin, has been the cornerstone of cooking for centuries and its rendered fat the local currency.
According to David McAninch of the New York Times, “Everything gets cooked in it: potatoes, sausages, eggs and – in the case of confit, that pillar of Gascon farmhouse cooking – duck itself. Gascony is more open, more soulful, more deeply French, and, in its un-self-conscious devotion to tradition, more pleasurably frozen in time. Its cuisine … is firmly rooted in the land it sprang from, and it is, I put to you, enjoyed with lustier abandon.”
But the ducks of Gascony also render enough fat to confit and preserve other pleasures, too – like rillettes. Rillettes are simply a potted-meat spread covered with flavored fat to prevent spoilage. Consider them the earthy country cousin of pates, terrines and galantines.
To make rillettes, typically one uses dense or tough meats. Salt and season the meat and let rest for 24 hours before cooking. Rinse off the salt and seasoning and pat dry. Next, submerge in melted duck or pork fat to cover, add some herbs of choice, a quarter of a small onion, a stalk of celery and a clove of garlic and braise slowly at 225 degrees in a covered pot.
Wild boar, chamois cuts, wild rabbit, wild turkey legs or dark, gamey-fleshed upland birds like pigeon and woodcock are all excellent prepared confit, and also served as rillettes. But just about any meat will yield juicy, tender and delicious confit and rillettes.
Once the meat falls from the bone on its own accord, rake the meat into shreds or strands. Pack the meat into jars or small, lidded crocks. Add a few fresh herbs to taste and cover with strained fat from the pot. Once covered with the layer of fat and stored in a cool spot, rillettes are durable for several months to a year.
According to Kate Hill, founder and owner of Camont, a historic French farmhouse, cooking school and retreat in Gascony, “In Gascony, stocking the pantry with glass jars filled with a tasty diversity of duck products is the goal every winter – confited legs and breasts, rillettes made from the carcass meats, tender gizzards for salads, pâtés, saucissons. Dishes that from the outside can seem like indulgences are in fact the base of a tidy rural economy, and there is much to learn from that.”
Serve rillettes at room temperature with crusty bread, (eaten before it becomes a Bob Ross mold perm), gherkins or cornichons, a spread of rustic mustard if you like and a bowl of olives. Bon Appetit!
