Duck Confit Claypot Rice

Serves 4

6 duck confit maryland's- slip off the leg and thigh bones carefully to keep intact, save the bones to make stock on a later day when you have a bag full of bones saved up- I keep a bag of  bones in the freezer. (Recipie below)

6 confit shallots

3tbs confit garlic

30g dry ginger powder or fresh minced ginger- the powder can be made by drying fresh mature ginger and grinding into a powder

2tbs green sichuan pepper

3 plants of whole coriander- roots, cleaned and pounded, stems and leaves rough chopped

6 garlic cloves, peeled and smacked flat

2tbs Duck confit fat plus 1 tbs to fry the duck confit

3cups new crop Jasmine rice

1.2L boiling water.

Chillies and vinegar condiment

4 Thai orange chillies

Rice vinegar

Turn the oven on to 180*c.

Take two duck legs and coarse chop. Keep aside.

Using a large Donabe, claypot, cast iron pot, deep saucepan or any cooking pot that can be placed in the oven, place on stovetop at medium heat. Add in the confit fat and once it starts to ripple, add fresh garlic, green sichuan pepper and coriander root and fry until fragrant. Add the duck and fry until the fat starts to brown a little.

Add the rice, ginger powder, garlic and shallot confit. Move the ingredients around to evenly distribute and pour over roughly 1.2L of water. If your rice is old you may need more.

Pop into the oven covered and cook for 70 minutes. The last 10 minutes, uncovered and let the top brown and crust up. 

With 20 minutes to go to the rice cooking time finishing up- pan fry the duck legs. 

Using a skillet or a frying pan over medium high heat, place 1tbs of confit fat into a hot pan. 

Arrange the duck legs skin down and use a meat press or get creative if you don’t have one by placing baking paper over the legs and use a heavy flat rock to keep the confit firmly down as they cook. This will help with getting as much skin contact as possible onto the heat which means more evenly crisp surfaces. Reduce the heat to low-medium and cook until fully heated through., Turn the duck legs once the skin is very crisp, and pan fry the meat side only briefly.

To get a good level of crispness on the skin this usually takes about 20 minutes. 

Remove from the heat.

While you wait for the duck legs and rice to cook, chop the chillies and either mortar pestle it to a rough paste or blitz in a food processor with the rice vinegar. This will keep in the fridge for 6 months. It is great to serve alongside noodles or anything fatty and heavy which needs pep.

Take the Donabe/pot/pan out of the oven, place pan fried duck legs over the rice and scatter the chopped coriander as desired. 

Serve immediately with the chilli vinegar condiment on the side. I like to serve with some mustard greens dressed with citrus and olive oil.

Serve with Steamed or quick poached greens

Duck Confit

8 Duck marylands (bone-in thigh and drumstick)

2.5% Salt of the weight of the duck legs in total- for example if you have 2kg of duck legs you will need 50g salt which is approximately 3 ⅓ tbs

4tbs of Provincial herb powder (Recipie below)

100g garlic cloves unpeeled

12 small shallots or cipollini onions unpeeled

1Lt Extra virgin olive oil

Salt the duck legs and liberally rub spice mix on both skin and meat side. Place on an oven rack over a tray to catch any extra moisture. Place in a dry place or in the fridge overnight to cure. I often leave out meat in a room with a dehumidifier which dries out the skin beautifully.

Turn the oven on fan force at 160*c. Into a deep oven tray, cast iron pan or a baking dish place the cured legs and arrange shallots/cipollini onions and garlic evenly around the legs then pour over as much olive oil as needed to submerge the legs completely and cover with baking paper- I pop onto the top a couple of long wooden spoons to hold it in place so that the baking paper acts like a loose lid over the tray. Place in the oven for 3hours.

Once cool, portion out how many legs generally you want to eat per meal. Separate out the garlic and the shallots. Peel these and pop them separately into jars and label. 

They are handy ingredients to have in the fridge for dressings, sauces or anywhere you need additional flavour bombs. Both the shallot and garlic confit is used in the claypot duck confit rice.

Keep the fat too! This is a vital and delicious fat source which can be used to fry eggs, rice, potatoes- anywhere you see a recipe for any fat, use this- in fact I mostly make the confit so I can have the fat to cook with. Store in the fridge.

Provincial Herbs

20g black pepper

15g fennel

5g bay leaves

15g rosemary

10g French tarragon

10g oregano

10g thyme

Toasting the dry spices will help unlock the oils which makes it more potent and aromatic. 

For larger, denser and odd shaped spices like star anise, cloves and cinnamon spread them out in a single layer, pop them in the oven at 170*c and dry roast until they start to release their oils. 

In order of size and weight of the individual spices, use a pan to dry fry them separately the first few times to get a hang of how long it takes for them to get fragrant and then once you have mastered that, you can toast them together in sequence. Stay with the pan as they burn quite easily.

After they have been toasted, remove from the pan, let it cool completely then using a spice grinder or mortar and pestle, grind or pound until completely pulverized and uniform into powder. 

Store in a dry glass jar and date label them.

If you are a habitual cook, they will be used up long before they start to get rancid.

Both these spice mixes can be used as rubs, for marinating and straight into stews and braises.