DUCK NECK TERRINE
If you find yourself with a few duck necks, this is a splendid dish.
Servings
4
Servings
4
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Place the skinned ducks’ necks, gizzards, and legs with the pork belly in a plastic or china container, sprinkle with salt and thyme sprigs, toss so the salt gets all around, cover, and leave in the fridge for 24 hours. Shake off the salt and thyme, lay in a baking pan, and cover with duck fat. Cover with tinfoil and place in a medium oven until the flesh is giving and just coming away from the bone (approximately 2–2½ hours).
  2. Tip into a container to cool. You should keep confit for months to develop, but in this case you are allowed to speed things along. Remove the legs and necks from the fat and pull the meat away from the bones. In a bowl mix this with the pork belly, gizzards, bacon and enough duck fat to keep it a moving mixture and season with allspice, mace and pepper (salt is unnecessary due to the bacon). Remember this will be served cold, so compensate with generous seasoning.
  3. Meanwhile, roll out a piece of plastic wrap on which you lay a regimented row of thinly sliced back fat as long as your terrine or bread tin. Lay a lengthways row of your soaked prunes two-thirds of the way up the row. Then, using the plastic wrap to lift the fat, fold the top third back over the prunes, press down, and remove the cling film. Then, again using the cling film, bring the other two-thirds of fat over the almost covered prunes, then gently roll the whole thing back toward you, at which point you should have a perfect prune/fat roll. Remove the plastic wrap.
  4. Line your terrine with the duck neck skin as you would with bacon, leaving flaps hanging over the side to cover the top. Fill the lined mold a third of the way up with the duck and pork mixture, then lay your prune roll down the middle. Cover with more mixture up to just below the top of the mold, flip over the duck’s neck flaps, and top off with foil.
  5. Line the bottom of a deep oven tray with a tea towel folded in half (this diffuses the direct heat from the base of the tray), sit your terrine and mold on the towel, and surround with water. Follow the height of the oven tray and terrine mold: don’t go over either edge and allow enough leeway for waves as you move the tray. Put into a medium oven for 2 hours.
  6. Remove the tray from the oven and the terrine from the tray. Replace the tinfoil with new foil, cut a piece of card to match the opening of your terrine mold, place this on top, and apply weights to press the terrine. Allow to cool and put it in the fridge for 24 hours to allow it to find itself.
  7. To serve, take it from the fridge to acclimatize, then remove it from the mold and slice: you should have something resembling a terrazzo floor with a prune eye in the middle. Serve with bread, cornichons and red wine.