Cooking on the Ice Planet Hoth with Darth Vader & the Gang: The French Laundry's Roulade of Duck with Creamed Sweet Corn and Morel Mushroom Sauce

My husband walked in right as I, kneeling subserviently on the floor, was bowing to touch my forehead reverently to the cover of the book.

'What is thy bidding, my master?' I rasped.

'What the hell are you doing?' he asked, his head tilted slightly. 'Is it yoga?'

'Ssshhhhhhhh,' I hissed in a tiny voice, swatting him away. 'Get out of here!' I resumed my forehead-bowing.

'He will join us or die, my master,' I solemnly intoned.

My name is Laurel Morley, and I do the bidding of Thomas Keller. That's famed American chef, restaurateur, multiple James Beard Award winner, and perhaps most importantly, cookbook writer Thomas Keller. And the book that I was so lovingly touching my forehead to? The French Laundry Cookbook. Chef Keller is undoubtedly the evil Emperor to my humble Darth Vader, and if he commands me to do it, it will be done. Make a delicate ice cream out of red beets? Pair beef cheeks with veal tongue? Reduce fresh herbs to an oily essence and vegetables to a fine powder? Poach a roulade of Savoy cabbage-wrapped duck breast, slice, and perch it on a bed of fresh creamed corn, topped with sautéed morels? As my man Vader would say, 'All too easy.'

This recipe begins with one of my favorite bright green, ruffly vegetables. A few individual leaves are lightly blanched to heighten their color and pliability, then chilled.

The next step involves trimming your duck breast (whole, boneless, about 12 oz.) into a neat and perfect rectangle, if you're Chef Keller, or into something approximating a trapezoid and involving some jigsaw-puzzling together, if you're me. Oh well. It's all going to roll together in the end, right?

Arrange the meat-trapezoid......er, perfect rectangle on the blanched cabbage leaves, which are resting on a large piece of plastic wrap. Roll up the duck in the leaves, then roll up the whole package in the plastic, twisting the ends tightly to secure. You then place this in the refrigerator while moving on to the next crucial step, pouring yourself a glass of wine and congratulating yourself on having wrapped expensive meat in delicate, damp leaves without tearing anything. Then you prepare the creamed corn.

'Creamed corn' is something that I have to stop right here and admit that I'd never so much as even tried in my lifetime. Don't get me wrong, I love corn in all its forms and preparations, but there's something about the phrase 'creamed corn' that screamed 'junior high cafeteria lunch in the 1950s' to me, something that would occupy a spot on the plate next to creamed chipped beef on toast, sloppy joes, or Jell-o fruit salad. Something dairy-laden, pasty and stodgy that I'd never eat, much less enjoy. And then the hologram of Chef Keller flickered to life before my very eyes.

'Soon you will see the power of my creamed corn,' he croaked from beneath his hood. 'My creamed corn is fresh and delicate, flavored only with butter, salt, pepper, and the simple starchy sweetness of corn itself. There isn't even a drop of cream in it. You will love this creamed corn. Search your feelings, you know it to be true....'

'Yes, my lord,' I mumbled, while getting out the food processor. The thing is, though, Emperor.....er, Chef Keller was one hundred percent right. This isn't your mama's 1950s creamed cafeteria corn, it's a light, yet somehow buttery, kind of a corn porridge, even when made with frozen corn (as mine was, since fresh corn wasn't yet in season a few weeks ago).

You take most of the corn and whizz it in the blender until pulpy (reserving the rest to be blanched then added back into the mix later to provide some much-needed textural contrast and chew), then pass it through a sieve to extract what Keller calls 'corn juice.' This substance is then heated gently and whisked until it thickens (because it's full of corn starch, get it? It's science!), then butter, salt & pepper, and the remaining corn kernels are added to the mixture, which has miraculously become a rich, silken thing, full of sweetness and deep corn flavor. It's the humblest-sounding part of the entire dish, what with those luscious (duck) breasts and sexy, earthy morels competing for your attention, but I honestly have to say it might have been my favorite part. It binds everything together perfectly, although I could have eaten a bowl of it just on its own. Certainly we'll be making it again, to accompany just about anything.

After it has refrigerated for awhile, slide your duck roulade into a nice warm bath of 190-degree water and poach for around 8 minutes. While this is cooking, chop and sauté some morels* in butter. At this point, the recipe calls for you to add some finely minced parsley and vegetables, and a dash of the French Laundry's 'Quick' Duck Sauce. 'Quick.' Ha. I improvised**. We had half a box of chicken stock kicking around in the fridge, and some cubes of frozen demiglace in the freezer (which my husband, who is a superhuman hyper-foodie, makes on a regular basis, thank goodness), which I combined and reduced over heat and which tasted amazing in the end, duck sauce or no duck sauce.

* Second confession of the entry here, I did not use the fresh morels called for in the recipe, although I'm sure they would have been delicious. Why, you ask? Because instead of living in lush, cool Northern California, I live in the middle of the desert, and fresh morels are something we just cannot do. I used rehydrated dried morels, and they were wonderful, just don't tell Chef Keller.

** Aaaaannnd, now for my third shameful confession, I did not use the French Laundry's 'Quick' Duck Sauce, or any kind of duck sauce, for that matter. Why, you ask? Because as much as I love and live to serve him, Chef Keller sometimes speaks a language of his own making in which words have their opposite meaning. 'Quick' duck sauce, translates roughly into 'Start with your recipe on p. 172, find out you need duck sauce (turn to p. 228) which is neither quick nor simple and requires you to have procured duck bones (although the meat called for in the recipe is a boneless breast, and so that's what you bought, dammit) and made, far ahead of time, a reduced stock-based sauce (the stock for which, by the way, is veal stock (turn to p. 222), and which he also expects you to have made even further in advance somehow).' In fact, a lot of the recipes in the French Laundry cookbook read like those 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books I remember from when I was a kid, the ones that had you constantly turning to some new page further and further along in the book, chasing the labyrinthine plot down deeper and deeper rabbit holes. Anyway, this is getting to be a hellishly long footnote and, what am I, David Foster Wallace?? The point is, it's a bit hard to cook this way. Even for a Jedi.

To assemble, remove poached roulade from its plastic wrapping and slice, using a very sharp knife or light saber. Place a spoonful of leftover duck sauce (or demiglace reduction) in the center of the plate, then place a large spoonful of creamed corn on top of this. Nestle a slice of duck roulade in the center of this, then top with sautéed morel sauce.

Gaze upon it in wonder.

As the flickering image of a hooded, sinister Thomas Keller would agree, 'It is your destiny.'

Vietnamese Duck Noodle Soup, from Bon Appétit magazine, May 2010

'It's so pretty, Napa cabbage. So ruffly and drapey.'

I held a few of the loose, ruffled leaves against the leg of my jeans and sighed, considering them.

'....I think if I was going to make a dress out of any vegetable at all, it would be Napa cabbage.'

My husband, who knows me well enough by now to know that this isn't even remotely crazy talk coming from me, wisely held his tongue and kept slicing shallots and chopping mint. He's a smart man. It is very pretty though, Napa cabbage, although when it comes to uses I recommend eating over eveningwear. And what better way could there be to eat it than sliced into delicate ribbons and swimming in spicy broth and tender noodles, a few golden shreds of duck meat, diced tomatoes, and a sprinkling of fresh herbs decorating the surface?



This recipe for Vietnamese duck noodle soup (also known as bun vit mang), from the May issue of Bon Appétit magazine, is built on a solid foundation of flavors: first of all, duck. Yum. I think it's only fair to tell you that you might, in the absence of duck, be able to build a perfectly respectable soup on, say, chicken. But it's going to be missing that inherently wonderful, rich, ducky quality. Don't cheat yourself. It's a little difficult to find at our usual supermarkets (at least it is in our Phoenix suburb, your mileage may vary if you're in a more duck-loving corner of the world?), but we can always, always find duck legs at our local Asian specialty supermarket, so look around.

The second fundamental building block in this complex soup is a large quantity of good, fresh ginger. Ginger is one of those rare food items (really, it's a short list) that I always claimed not to like, having tasted funky, limp pinkish pickled ginger slices too many times at too many cheap sushi joints and declaring it to 'taste like window cleaner.' I don't remember when I changed my mind, but I do know that it was fresh ginger that cracked that particular prejudice wide open. Fresh ginger is a juicy, tongue-prickling wonder, a staple around the Orange & Salt kitchen whenever we're cooking anything remotely Asian in flavor. It's also basically a superfood that is reported to do just about everything from curing indigestion, nausea, and cold & flu symptoms to lowering levels of 'bad' cholesterol so eat your ginger--but stay away from the pickled, cheap-sushi-joint stuff! It really does taste like window cleaner.



Finally, I would say the balance of flavor in this wonderful soup is made up by all those fantastic garnishes, piled on in traditional Vietnamese mix-and-match style, to suit the individual taste. It's a lineup of the usual suspects of Southeast Asian cuisine: fish sauce, hot chilis, mint, cilantro, bright & zingy lime juice, etc, and all the tangy-hot-spicy-sweet helps to liven up the rich, fatty soup base incredibly.


I couldn't resist including this photo, since we tried a new brand of fish sauce this time around, and I think the smiling, lipstick-wearing, thumbs-up baby fish sauce spokesmodel is hilarious. 'Heeyyy, try my fish sauce!' :)



What you will start with: a full to the brim bowl of juicy, spicy, crunchy, ducky goodness............

........and what you will end with: a very clean bowl. A happy, warm belly. And an overpowering urge to make this soup again, in the very near future.

Vietnamese Duck Soup (from Bon Appétit, May 2010)

6 servings

Ingredients:

Soup

6 duck leg-thigh pieces
16 cups low-salt chicken broth
1 large onion, peeled, halved
6 tablespoons finely chopped peeled fresh ginger
2 tablespoons (or more) fish sauce (such as nam pla or nuoc nam)*
1 tablespoon sugar

Garnishes

1 6.75-ounce package rice vermicelli
3 cups sliced shallots (about 10 large)
2 1/4 pounds plum tomatoes, chopped
3 8-ounce cans sliced bamboo shoots, drained
6 cups thinly sliced Napa cabbage
1/3 cup chopped fresh mint
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/3 cup chopped fresh chives
Hot chili sauce (such as sriracha)
Lime wedges

Heat heavy large pot over high heat. Sprinkle duck with salt and pepper. Add to pot; sauté until deep brown, about 6 minutes per side. Add broth, onion, ginger, 2 tablespoons fish sauce, and sugar; bring to boil. Reduce heat; simmer uncovered until duck is very tender, adjusting heat to maintain simmer, 45 to 60 minutes.

Using tongs, transfer duck to rimmed baking sheet. Cool 30 minutes. Skin and bone duck. Coarsely shred duck meat. Strain broth into large bowl; discard solids. Spoon fat from top of broth into small bowl; reserve. Return broth and duck to same pot. Can be made 1 day ahead. Chill soup uncovered until cold, then cover and keep chilled. Cover and chill duck fat.

Cook rice vermicelli in large saucepan of boiling water until just tender, stirring occasionally, 3 to 5 minutes. Drain, rinse with cold water, and drain again. Cut noodles in half to shorten.
Melt 2 tablespoons reserved duck fat in same saucepan over medium-high heat. Add shallots; sauté 3 minutes. Add tomatoes and bamboo shoots. Cook until juices thicken, about 7 minutes longer. Add tomato mixture to soup. Simmer until flavors blend, 5 to 10 minutes. Season with salt, pepper, and more fish sauce if desired.

Divide noodles, cabbage, and herbs among 6 large bowls. Ladle in soup. Serve, passing hot sauce and lime wedges.