Caneton Rouennais à la Presse

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Deep metal roasting pan with rack
• •Large carving board with a juice moat
• •Sharp slicing or carving knife
• •Heavy-duty poultry shears
• •Deep stainless-steel saucepan
• •Stout wooden rolling pin
• •Sturdy fine-mesh sieve or chinois
• •Wide 12-inch sauté pan
• •Ladle with a strong rounded bowl
• •Instant-read thermometer
• •Oval heatproof serving platter

Instructions

1. 1

   Build the service station

   Heat the oven to 475°F (245°C) with a rack in the upper-middle position. Set a roasting rack inside a deep metal pan. Beside the stove, arrange a large board with a moat, a sharp slicing knife, poultry shears, a deep stainless-steel saucepan, a stout wooden rolling pin, a sturdy fine-mesh sieve, a ladle, and a wide sauté pan. Measure the wine and brandy now. Fill the serving platter with hot water so it becomes lukewarm, then dry it just before carving. Once the duck comes out, the sequence must not stop.

   Use metal tools and a sound wooden rolling pin for the pressing. Cooked bones can crack plastic, and glass has no business under this amount of force.
2. 2

   Roast twenty minutes

   Pat the duckling completely dry, including the cavity. Season it inside and out with 1½ teaspoons of the salt and ½ teaspoon of the pepper. Set it breast-side up on the rack and roast for exactly twenty minutes, without basting or lowering the heat. The skin should become taut and deeply burnished while the breast remains underdone at the centre. Do not rest the bird. Carry it straight to the carving board with the warm platter waiting.

   A wet duck stews under its own skin. Drying is what lets twenty brief minutes of fierce heat produce colour instead of pallor.
3. 3

   Carve without resting

   Remove both legs cleanly at the hip joints. They are not served in this preparation. Set them in a separate small roasting pan, lower the oven to 425°F (220°C), and continue cooking them until their thickest part reaches at least 165°F (74°C), usually another twenty to thirty minutes. Do not chill them half-cooked; set a timer and keep them for another meal. Run the slicing knife tightly along each side of the breastbone and lift off the breast fillets with their skin intact. Slice each crosswise on a slight bias into collops, thin slices about ¼ inch (6 mm) thick. Lay them overlapping on the lukewarm platter, season with the remaining salt and pepper, and collect every carving juice.

   Thin, even collops reheat together. Thick slices force the outside to toughen before the centre becomes safely hot.
4. 4

   Press with red wine

   Pour the roasting juices into a small vessel and let them settle briefly. Spoon off the clear surface fat and save it for potatoes, then add the dark juices and all carving juices to the deep saucepan. Using poultry shears, cut the still-warm rib cage, breastbone, and backbone into pieces about 1½ to 2 inches (4 to 5 cm) across. Add one-third of the wine and pound firmly with the blunt end of the rolling pin, crushing the bones and soft tissue against the bottom of the pan. Add the remaining wine in two additions as you continue pounding for three to four minutes. Tip everything into the sturdy sieve set over the wide sauté pan, then press with the back of the ladle until the solids yield no more than an occasional drop. Discard the pressed carcass.

   Never put the carcass in a blender or food processor. The machine produces dangerous bone splinters, while shears, pounding, and a fine sieve give the controlled extraction needed here.
5. 5

   Warm below the boil

   Stir the drops of brandy into the pressed liquor. Set the sauté pan over the lowest heat and stir continuously, moving the pan partly off the burner whenever the heat gathers too quickly. Bring the liquor to at least 165°F (74°C), but never let a bubble break the surface and do not reduce it. Slide in the seasoned collops with any juice from their platter, spoon the sauce over them, and heat gently until the sauce recovers 165°F (74°C) and the slices are hot throughout, about two to four minutes. If fine grey grains begin to appear, pull the pan from the heat immediately, lift out the duck, and strain the sauce through a clean warm sieve before returning everything to an even gentler burner. Ça se rattrape. The sauce will be a little lighter, but it will remain clean rather than curdled.

   The thermometer is the modern advantage. Thoroughly hot and boiling are not the same thing, and the safe space between them is wide enough if the burner stays gentle.
6. 6

   Serve at once

   Arrange the collops once more on the warm platter, skin edges showing, and spoon every drop of the pressed sauce over and around them. Carry the platter directly to the table. Caneton Rouennais does not improve while waiting, and no garnish should distract from the burnished skin and wine-dark liquor. À table!

Chef Tips

• •A genuine Rouen duckling is difficult to find outside Normandy. A young Pekin duck of the same weight is the honest home equivalent: it has enough breast for four and sufficient fat and bone to give the pressing body. Technique first, always.
• •Choose a supple, dry red wine with moderate tannin. The wine is heated but not reduced, so anything aggressively oaked or astringent remains exactly that in the finished sauce. Pour the same wine at the table.
• •A purpose-built duck press applies more force than the saucepan method. Cutting the warm carcass into small pieces creates the missing mechanical advantage, while patient pounding and firm pressure through the sieve recover the marrow-rich juices without bringing bone fragments into the sauce.
• •The source calls for only a few drops of brandy. Keep faith with it. More brandy overwhelms the pressed duck liquor, and flambéing would alter both its flavour and sequence.
• •Classical service often left the breast distinctly rosy. This home version reads the instruction to heat thoroughly through a thermometer: both sauce and collops reach 165°F (74°C) without boiling. The thin slicing keeps the breast supple.
• •This sauce does not hold. If leftovers remain, chill them within two hours and reheat once, gently, to 165°F (74°C). The flavour will remain fine, but the texture cannot recover the first service's delicacy.

Advance Preparation

• •For better browning, dry the unwrapped duckling on a rack in the refrigerator overnight. Keep it on the lowest shelf and away from ready-to-eat food.
• •Up to an hour before roasting, measure the wine, brandy, salt, and pepper, and assemble the entire pressing and carving station. Warm the platter only shortly before the duck leaves the oven.
• •Nothing after the twenty-minute roast should be made ahead. The warm carcass releases its liquor more readily, and the breast is meant to move directly from carving to sauce to table.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 235g)