Crispy Duck

When I did eat meat I LOVED duck. This smelled really good when it was roasting in the oven too. I planned to cook this like Nigella told me put in the oven for 4 hrs and walk away. That's not really what I did though and its a good thing because this bird did not take 4 hours to cook. After about 2.5 hours I checked on the duck and it was looking pretty done to me. So I took it out of the oven and checked the temp of the meat and sure enough it was ready. The lesson - don't set and forget 4 hours in the oven would have been a disaster. It woulda been like when Clark Grizwald cuts in to the turkey in Christmas Vacation - it would have busted open with a puff of smoke coming from the cavity.

Anyhow, lucky for me I avoided that catastrophe. So then I had to shred the duck meat. Nigella says to take a fork and just shred the meat off the carcass. This, while physically simple,was a test of wills for me. I was near to puking almost the whole time. I'm really not good at handling the fact that I'm butchering up what was previously a sweet little ducky swimming around a pond with probably 5 little ducklings swimming behind all quack-quacking away with the sun shining and children eating lollipops on the shore. See this is what I'm seeing on my counter as I have to shred the poor buggers cooked flesh. This is why I feel like I'm Hannibal effing Lecter as I stand at my counter "cooking". Because while most people just see meat on the counter I'm standing there thinking if anything this duck should be shredding my carcass for dinner. Point is it took everything I had mentally to do that shredding and be left with a duck skeleton on my counter that I had to dispose of. I'm gonna go out a limb though and guess that you won't have this problem - if you do have trouble separating green meadow animal images from what's in your oven then save yourself a whole lotta hurt and buy some duck breast and slice it up - this activity is not for you.

So the duck is cooked and shredded the hard parts over right? Maybe. Because now you're left on your own. Nigella drops you like a hot potato at this point. She says just put out the duck with hoison sauce, spring onion, cucumber and let people build their own rolls. Well, no. So I set about making the rolls (a bit frantically) and I was all over the place with portions. I wasn't keeping track of how much of anything was going in so things fell apart a bit there - I think really we could have used some suggested assembly portions for this but what ever....

In the end I think it turned out pretty well taste wise - or so I'm told. But I gotta tell you this recipe just didn't feel like it was worth the effort. For something that should have been pretty straight forward there was lot of drama with making this for me - and since I didn't eat any no reward. I honestly don't know if I should recommend this one or not...I guess if you've nothing to do for 4 hours this could keep you busy - and let's face it duck is pretty effing delish.