A New Duck

Hello esteemed dinner guests! I wanted to send a reminder for my dinner party tomorrow night and make one last desperate plea for RSVPs.

If you've already RSVP'd, this is just your reminder that the party is tomorrow (Saturday) at 8:00 p.m. If you haven't RSVP'd, I'm going to turn you over my knee and spank you till you're blue.

I'll be making salad, hot apple cider, baked brie in phyllo dough, muscovy duck confit pizzettes, Thai duck basil rolls and braised pheasant with port wine cherry sauce. Lest you think I'm spending next semester's tuition on dinner, the pheasant, duck and Door Country cherries were gifts that were already in my freezer. There is, however, a story behind the duck.

Those of you who cook seriously may have made duck confit in the past. For those who haven't, here's what's involved:

Step 1: Quarter the duck with an old bread knife that wouldn't cut through butter but somehow manages to rip your cuticles to shreds. With freshly punctured cuticles, brine the duck by packing it in coarse salt, peppercorns, garlic, bay leaves and thyme for 24-36 hours. Take a hammer and break the peppercorns up slightly before pressing them onto the duck. Make sure to hit your thumb so hard with the hammer you can't type for a week.

Step 2: Two days later, free the duck from its brine, wash it off and pack it in duck fat, olive oil, new garlic, thyme and bay leaves. Your own duck, skinny bastard that he is, won't have enough fat. Call every butcher in Madison who, for some perverse reason, will pretend they have no idea what you're talking about until you beg. They will eventually relent, but give you only 1/3 of the fat you need. Repeat this process twice more, preferably with butchers located in the most inconvenient corners of Madison, all of whom will stare rudely at your breasts when you come to pick up the fat.

Step 3: Cook that motherfucker for 14 hours.

Step 4: Remove duck from oven. Do not use oven mitts to pick up the dish. A thin, old dishtowel full of holes should do the trick.

Step 5: Marvel at how hot a pyrex dish can get after 14 hours in the oven. Burn the hell out of your hands. Run for the counter. Burn, baby, burn. Concede defeat before you are permanently scarred and drop the entire thing on your kitchen floor.

Step 6: You know the friend who originally gave you the duck? He lives in upstate New York and knows someone with a duck farm. Call him, in tears (this part is important). He will FedEx you a new duck. It will arrive Thursday morning.

Step 7: But wait, you have a huge assignment due on Friday afternoon and if you don't spend all of Thursday in the library you will fail miserably. Spend half of Thursday morning trekking to FedEx to pick up the duck and running from butcher to butcher to collect more fat. Ask yourself why you chose this day of all days to wear a tight sweater. Begin to wonder if dating a butcher wouldn't be so bad.

Step 8: Panic. Your duck is frozen like a rock, must be brined tonight and you MUST GET TO LAW LIBRARY IMMEDIATELY. You do not have time to take your duck home to defrost, and it certainly won't defrost in your freezing cold car. Carry 15-pound frozen duck up Bascom Hill in 18-degree, 40-mile-per-hour-windchill, December-in-Wisconsin weather. Wonder for the millionth time why you didn't go to law school in Miami.

Step 9: Run into at least 2 friends who want to know what the suspicious looking package is (my apologies to Robert and Miles for my manic condition yesterday). Put the duck in your locker. Contemplate whether you're the first person to ever put a duck in the law school lockers. Hope you are. Finish your assignment in record time. Run home. Repeat steps 1 through 3. Hope people show up.

And that, my friends, is how to confit a duck. Come out tomorrow night and you can tell me how it tastes. I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!