laocook

We serve marinated Duck Breast at the restaurant that is cooked “on the bone”. This way the breast has more flavour and tenderness.

Seeing as we buy the ducks whole, the legs and wings are removed for other recipes (the wings being used in stocks). The Duck Breast is a very popular dish on the menu so we end up having loads of legs left over.

We use some of the legs in our “Dtom Khem”, which is basically a Caramel Soy Braised Dish which is sometimes served as a Daily Special. Other times we include the legs in our Stocks (broths) and use the resulting meat to make Croquettes.

One day I asked one of the cooks to shred the legs, which he did very well but he also happened to throw away the fat and skin by mistake! :shock: .

After calming down (and picking up the pots and pans that had been strown inadvertently) I sat down to think about what I could use the meat for (Croquettes, the original idea needed some degree of fat in the recipe to ensure a succulent interior).

As it happened, fate had left us with some Foie Gras in the fridge, so I decided to match the pair and make a pressed Terrine.

Terrines are named after the cooking vessel that they were originally cooked in (like Paella is named after its cooking pan, the paellera), however nowadays it can refer to any stacked, shaped and set cold dish.

For our Terrine I decided to add some pickled Daikon and Carrots to compliment the Foie Gras and some Jamón (Spanish Ham).

The two “terrines” have been pressed for 24 hours.

To help bind the terrine I used some reduced Duck Stock that had been clarified (you can see it leaked out in the above photo).

The finished dish was served with some Shallot Crumbs, which are made by brushing bread with Shallot Oil, toasting it then lightly pounding it with a Pestle and Mortar.

The Pickled Carrot strips that were used reminded me of a “mountain outline” and got me thinking that if I could position everything right in a future terrine, perhaps I could actually make a kind of “landscape”, that would be fancy… ;) .

The sourness and slight spiciness of the pickles really acted as a foil for the Foie Gras.

The Jamón was minced by hand and used at the top (which ends up as the bottom as the terrine is turned out) instead of scattered around to keep things somewhat linear(ish).

The Daikon strips were used to encase the terrine.

The Daikon is cut in to wafer thin strips using our favourite technique which can be seen in the LCTV “Sushi Maki” presentation below, which is incidentally our most viewed and commented on submission in Youtube.

The Terrine was such a hit that night we have decided to make it more often and our next project includes a “Dtom Khem” version. That should be nice…. ;)