The Duck Confit Police: Traditional Foods, Why Protect Them?

As I mentioned in my last post, foie gras has been given some legal attention in Europe - namely, the E.U. has issued a statement that its production must not grow beyond regions where it is already being made.  Which is a way of saying "We think it's a cruel practice but we're not willing to pry duck livers out of the cold, dead hands of Frenchmen."

Why do we need to preserve old practices in food culture?  

For a practical example, consider another venerable French food - duck confit.  It has a centuries-old pedigree and is currently made all over the world (including in the restaurant where I cook.)  It takes a minimum of 24 hours to make, and involves curing duck legs with salt and herbs, then poaching them at a low temperature in copious amounts of duck fat.  

This recipe evolved from a common Old-World scenario.  Humans hunting ducks.  Once you've killed a dozen or so, and the day is ending, and you're still in the middle of the wilderness, what are you going to do with the ducks?  Did I mention you are hungry and cold?  So, you and your party take some time to pluck the birds, and then go after the largest muscle that's ready-to-cook: the breast.  You roast the breasts to about medium-rare and eat them.  Then, you take the legs from the birds and cure them with salt and herbs and garlic (these are lightweight, so you've brought them along with this purpose in mind.)  Now the legs will keep a couple of days as long as the temperature stays cool, so at your leisure the next day you take the skin from the carcasses and put it in a pot over the fire's embers, and render out all the fat.  Day three, having worked up a good appetite from all the fresh air, you put the legs in the fat and cook them slowly until the meat is tender.  

OK, here's where the genius of this dish comes in.  Duck fat solidifies at about 50 degrees.  So you take the pot of cooked legs off the fire, and just let it get cold.  The fat hardens, eliminating the possibility of oxygen or moisture spoiling your duck.  You can keep this pot someplace safe and cold for months, carrying it around from camp to camp if you like, or parking it a cupboard in your partially-unheated home.  Just dig out a few legs when company comes over.  Plus you can use the fat for sauteeing potatoes or cabbage to eat with the duck.  

This recipe tells a story from our past, and teaches us some elemental techniques, and provides one of the most satisfying ways to eat a duck leg.  Also, it shows how ingenious humans can use and conserve resources not only for survival, but also for the reward of pleasure.  Because pleasure in life is key to happiness and therefore survival.  

Not everyone views traditional recipes in this light.  Many see them as blindly-repeated culinary habits that don't have the context or value they used to, and might still serve some function if only we could update them to the pace of the modern world.  So on one side of this argument, you have centuries of tradition and the collective genius of many generations, and on the other side of you have a single person wanting to be creative and freshen things up a bit.  

Not that innovations don't happen in cooking, but meaningful ones aren't as common as you might think.  

Having eaten at Grant Achatz "Alinea" in Chicago, a world-famous temple of molecular gastronomy, I can say that although the manipulations of flavor and texture he produces there are remarkable, the 9 course experience was far less satisfying than a leg of duck confit and some braised red cabbage.  

Chalk one up for tradition.