SC - Servings (was Duck Doneness)

[Tara Sersen]

> Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 22:18:50 EDT
> From: LrdRas at aol.com
> Subject: Re: SC - Determining Duck Doneness
> 
> In a message dated 4/23/00 2:44:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, allilyn at juno.com 
> writes:
> 
> <<  I know we have other professional cooks on the list--how
>  done is your duck??????
>  
>  
>  Regards,
>  Allison,  >>
> 
> Well done. In the last 3 restaurants that I worked at our roasted duck with 
> cherry sauce was always well done. However, there does seem to be a tendency 
> in is the recent popularity of the old Nouveau cuisine and in fusion cooking 
> to undercook duck.

Um, not exactly. The situation is that the criteria applied to duck and
other waterfowl is slightly different from that of, say, chicken.
Undercooked (as in, cooked without reaching temp levels which will kill
salmonella) chicken can be pretty dangerous stuff. Undercooked duck is
merely excessively chewy; the legs have considerably more connective
tissue than a comparably sized chicken leg, but it appears to be immune
to the kind of food-borne diseases you can get from chicken. Goose also
doesn't seem to carry salmonella.

Be that as it may, when cooking a whole roast duck or duck legs, I cook
them to the well-done-but-not-dry stage, but when cooking just the
breasts I think it's a crime to cook them so much, and generally cook
them to a state comparable to beef steaks. 
> 
> Ras
> (who avoids those cuisines because he wants more than a tiny raw partridge 
> breast with a tsp. of sauce and 3 peas on his plate)

Funny, I got paid to loaf around in restaurant kitchens for several
years, but have been lucky enough never to have encountered this
phenomenon in real life. In movies and TV commercials, frequently, but
in reality, no. The only place I recall where the reality was close to
this was Bouley, who would serve you five or six plates such as you
describe, in succession. I can see, though, why you might want to avoid
such situations, if that was your experience.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com