La Cuisine Francaise

Is Molto Mario (Mario Batali to those of who are not native New Yorkers or aficionados of celebrity cuisiniers) the Catherine de Medici of the New World? (we are getting to the ducks after this provocative transgression!) In the press here, Le President Sarkozy, who has an approval rating similar to Le President George Bush, created a little European stir when he suggested that French cuisine be declared part of the world's cultural heritage and given UNESCO designation. He declared that the French "have the best gastronomy in the world." The Italians were not impressed.

This little exchange has a long history --the Italians claim that when Catherine de Medici came to France to marry Henri II in 1533 she was homesick and brought cooks and food with her from Florence-- as well as the city of Florence as a dowry. Her father was Lorenzo de Medici. She was only 14, and yet she is responsible for haricots verts? (good thing she was not from the US; where would French cuisine have gone if based on the taste of an American teenager?) The presence of green beans and other exotic foods like broccoli and truffles in France is attributed to her chefs....but since Henri II was running around with Diane de Potiers, perhaps it was fitting revenge--every restaurant and brasserie serves haricot verts--and who even remembers Henri II? Of course, Catherine in her later years was her father's daughter -- she is held responsible for the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of the Huegenots --the French Protestants-- here in Paris 3 days after her daughter Marguerite married Henry of Navarre (a Huguenot who decided Catholicism was a good choice over death or life imprisonment). I read about this massacre when visiting the 15th century church of St. Germain L'Auxerrois next to the Louvre, but I did not appreciate that there was a food connection...but this is France!

This finally leads me back to les canards and the confit du canard. "Confit" is a method of preservation, and for preserving meat it requires salting and then cooking it in its own fat (grasse, you will recall, but the actual noun is "la graisse" --which of course is a feminine noun....). Preserving food in oil/fat and salt certainly pre-dates Catherine, but the idea of sealing the food in jars was developed in France by Nicolas Appert for Napoleon, who wanted unspoiled food for his troops, and the idea of the heating to kill any living organisms in the food (and thus prevent things like botulism) was another French idea, by Louis Pasteur. The prepared duck is packed into large preserving jars and processed as you would process tomatoes or fruit preserves (which are called confitures in French). The foie gras is also processed similarly, but does not go through the salting and pre-cooking process. The jars are sealed in a water bath process of stacking the jars in a large (in this case small trash can sized) pot and covering the jars with water. The whole pot is heated to boiling until the liquid inside the jars is boiling; the cooling creates a seal. (David, I am certain that you could describe the actual transformation process in precise scientific details, but it's really more than we need to know--but readers, please feel free to let him know if you want the scientific explanation!) This is the end of confit process -- and the easiest!

Getting to the point of having something that FITS in these rather large jars is the real job. Remember, we had over 18 kilos (that's 40 lbs for those of you who have no idea of the units of measure most of the world uses --a kilo is about 2.2 lbs!) of ducks --and only 4 ducks!
As I had mentioned earlier, the livers are not sold in situ, but at a separate sale. The ducks are mostly whole, with nearly all of their necessary organs in place. Essentially, you need to open the duck so that you can get your hands inside and then begin removing things... but saving all of the fat in the inside. For those of you who were ER fans --it is much cleaner and there is no blood or George Clooney. Once you have removed things (and if you want the details, email me!) you must remove the carcass from the body. I was actually good at this with my very sharp knife --I had watched repeated episodes of Julia Child when she made "Chicken Melon"-- she de-boned a whole chicken and stuffed it! And I did it without the ever-present glass of wine that Julia Child had on every show! Once the carcass is removed you can open the duck body out flat and cut the legs --les cuisses, the breasts-- les magrets , etc. into pieces (of course there are still some things that you need to remove and discard). You then trim the skin with its underlying fat so that it is not larger than the piece of meat. These pieces are covered with coarse salt for 24 hours before cooking. The salt is removed before cooking.

La graisse (sounds better than saying what it is --fat!) is rendered, which is cooked until it is a liquid. And I am talking about a large quantity of fat --I would guess we had 1.5 gallons or more. This fat is used to cook the duck pieces --not fry, but more of a poaching, and then the cooked pieces are put in the jars and the jars are filled with the remaining fat and closed. At that point they are processed for sealing. The foie gras is just packed into jars with a splash of Armagnac --after all, we are in the Southwest of France!-- and processed. They have enough gras (the masculine form of grasse as le foie is a masculine noun!) to be processed without adding fat.

We brought home these very heavy jars on the TGV --with successful packaging by Philippe, and we have the makings of a good cassoulet or confit du canard with potatoes cooked in some of the fat, which is delicious! And we have foie gras to share with our friends. The confit du canard itself is certainly not fancy, fussy cuisine. It has, however, the essence of "le terroir", the soil/region/terrain that is what ties French cuisine to France itself. Le terroir is what makes every cheese, wine, meat, and other product of the land so specialized, regionalized, and recognized. Confit du canard is a specialty of the Southwest of France, so we went to the Southwest of France to get ducks raised in that region to make the confit.

And Mario?....I have recently finished reading HEAT, by Bill Buford (a writer with no professional culinary experience), an account of working in the kitchen at Mario Batali's restaurant, Babbo, and a biographical glimpse into Mario's views on food and his journey to bring the best of Italian cooking to New York. Mario is of the school of thought that Italians are responsible for French cuisine-the Catherine de Medici story. Buford follows and expands Mario's journey to various places in Italy --mostly Tuscany-- to learn the best of Italian cuisine where it tied to the land and traditions --"le terroir" of Italy. Near the end of the book, Buford describes an interview that he had with Frank Bruni, restaurant critic for the NY Times who had been the NYT bureau chief in Rome. Bruni had given Babbo a rave review, but his opinion is that the food at Babbo is too complicated to be Italian food, which he describes as simple. "Italy is a starting point." So, like Catherine de Medici, Mario Batali has created a new cuisine from the food of Italy --the food which has "le terrior". Bill Buford closes the book "Heat" --wanting to go to France to follow the transformation to La Cuisine Francaise!
PS. Sarkozy married Italian supermodel, Carla Bruni, at the end of February--so will she be the next Catherine?