Duck Ragu
Duck is a protein that gives you a lot of great options to work with. One of them being duck fat, and the best part is you get it for free whenever you purchase duck meat. In this dish, the duck legs and thighs were first cooked over very low heat to render the fat out of the skin. That fat was then used to sauté the mushrooms and vegetables before building the sauce. I tried to use as much duck as possible, wherever I could to impart that flavor throughout the dish. Normally, if you’re pan roasting a duck breast, you’d cook it over very low heat to get that golden brown, crispy layer of skin. But for pasta, this isn’t something that I’d want to mix into the sauce since it would lose it’s crunchy texture. So instead of wasting the skin, I decided to remove it after it was rendered and crumbled it down. This gave me nice crunchy little bits of skin that I sprinkled over the top of the dish to finish it. You could also mix that skin with other ingredients and end up making something like a gremolata. The main liquid used to build the sauce was a duck stock purchased from a local charcuterie shop. I also mixed in some of my Wild Mushroom Stock as well as Chicken Stock. If you don’t have homemade stocks, you can always get them from the stores, but I’d highly recommend building your own. You can find the recipe for chicken stock here. Duck stock is probably a bit hard to find depending on where you live, so you can substitute it with chicken stock, or try making your own duck stock using duck bones, similar to the chicken stock .
Ingredients
3 duck leg / thighs (1.75lbs)
16oz duck stock (Fatted calf)
4oz Wild mushrooms stock
4oz chicken stock
2oz (1/2 ladle) of cooked pasta water
125g shallots
285g yellow onion
185g carrots
200g Yellowfoot mushrooms
250g Roma tomatoes (roughly 2 tomatoes)
1 can San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes.
1tbsp sage. Chopped.
1 cup Dry Red Wine (Trader Joe’s Shiraz was used here)
4 sprigs thyme
1 bay laurel leaf
Crush red pepper to taste
2tbsp creme fraiche
Prep
Mushrooms - dunk in water and swish around to remove any dirt. If the water looks dirty, drain the water and repeat this process until it’s clear. Trim off any dirty root ends.
Onions / Shallots: medium dice
Carrots: medium dice
Roma Tomatoes: medium dice
Canned Tomatoes: using a slotted spoon, remove the whole tomatoes and put them in a bowl off to the side. Take the remaining sauce and put that into a separate bowl. The whole tomatoes will be hand crushed later.
Garlic: mince
Sage: piuck leaves, whole
Cooking Directions
Render duck skin over low heat until it just starts to crisp. 7-10 mins.
Roast in oven at 350 for 30 mins, flip half way through. Make sure the exterior doesn’t get overcooked and tough.
Strain duck fat and reserve to use as cooking oil.
Remove meat and rest.
Peel the skin off and lay it on some paper towels. Once it’s cooled down a bit, you can chop it up with a knife to an almost breadcrumb-like consistency. You can also use a food processor or similar to speed things up. We’ll use this later as a garnish to finish the dish.
Remove the meat from the bones and shred. Reserve in a bowl off to the side.
In a rondeau or similar, add duck fat and heat over medium heat until shimmering. Keep an eye on this since it has a lower smoke point than the cooking oils we normally use.
Add the carrots and a pinch of salt. Sauté for one minute.
Add the onion, pinch of salt and sauté for one minute.
Add the garlic and mushroom. Pinch of salt. Sauté over medium heat until soft.
Add yellowfoot mushrooms. Sauté for 2-3 minutes.
Add tomato paste, stir to combine, cook for 1 minute.
Add the tomatoes and cook them down. 5-7 minutes.
Turn the heat up to medium-high and deglaze with the wine, scraping any bits from the pan.
Add the duck stock and simmer for one minute.
Add the chicken / mushroom stock.
Bring to a simmer and simmer for 5 minutes
Using the whole canned tomatoes, hand crush the tomatoes into the pot, stir to combine.
Add some salt.
Add bouquets of thyme and add bay leaf.
Turn heat to low.
Cover and cook for 30 mins.
While this is cooking, you can start boiling the water for your pasta.
Uncover and cook for 30 mins. If the sauce starts to dry out, you can add more of the reserved tomato sauce from the can to moisten things up.
The pasta can be cooked at this point, but pay attention to the directions. If you’re using fresh pasta, then it may only need to be cooked for 2 minutes. If you’re using dried pasta, it may need to be cooked for 15-18 minutes. Try to time this with the remaining steps below so the pasta isn’t sitting around. You should be finishing the remaining steps below (which is just seasoning, so it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes), so that the sauce is finished by the time the pasta is ready to come out of the water.
Add hot pepper.
Add 1/2 of a ladle (1/8th cup of cooked pasta water). The pasta should be a few minutes away from finishing at this point. You want that nice starchy, salty water to add some thickness and seasoning to the sauce.
Add 1 tsp sage, stir to combine
Add creme fraiche.
Adjust seasoning with salt , pepper and vinegar.
Plating
In a mixing bowl or saucepan, ladle the sauce over the pasta and mix to combine.
In your serving plate, add evoo and fresh cracked pepper to the bottom of the plate.
Spoon in the mixed pasta
Add crumbled crispy duck skin over top