Low & Slow with Chef Bernard

To say chef Bernard Alberigo of Whitby’s famed Nice Bistro serves at the pleasure of his customers would be an understatement. A case in point was my tête-à-tête with him back-of-house one bone-chilling Monday — his day off, the restaurant dark— to talk duck confit and the Slow Food Movement, two subjects near and dear to my little foodie heart.

Over the years, Chef and his wife, Manon, have made me feel like family. Such a generosity of hospitality it warms the heart and keeps us patrons coming back for more. 

It’s this approachability that gave me the daring to ask Chef if he would teach me how to make my most favourite Slow Food dish in the world. Chef Bernard assured me that it was not hard to learn but it did take time to create. That there were important steps in the fashioning of confit that must be observed to ensure the duck is properly cooked and the duck fat properly rendered for re-use time and again. 

Thanks to the folks at King Cole Ducks in Newmarket, Ontario, I was able to secure enough duck legs and duck fat to allow Chef to teach me the three-stages of confit with swap outs “a-la-Martha-Stewart” for every step in the process.

Says Chef Bernard of the first step; making and using the dry-cured salt rub, “You must apply the marination to rid the meat of the moisture and blood. It is important the legs cure under refrigeration for 24 hours before you do confit.”

As we were rubbing the duck legs with a mixture of kosher sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper we talked about other Slow Foods in Chef’s repertoire... cassoulet, a rich, slow-cooked bean and sausage stew originating in Bernard’s neck of the woods in the south of France; authentic French onion soup, the from-scratch stock made with roasted beef bones and oven-charred aromatics (whole onions, chucks of carrot and celery; a  mirepoix, if you will), and many, many onions cooked low and slow in oil and butter until they are almost jam consistency. The soup’s crowning touch — the gratinée — using only the best quality gruyere cheese and homemade garlicky croutons. And Coq au vin, a classic winter dish from the Bourgogne region of France. Stovetop braised in a hardy Beaujolais, the whole chicken comes out succulent and moist and full-flavoured.

As way of back story, the Slow Food Movement originated in Italy in 1986 and is now a global, grassroots organization with supporters in 150 countries around the world who are linking the pleasure of good food with a commitment to one’s community and one’s environment. 

This is what Chef Bernard has been doing his entire career.

As a not-for-profit member-supported association, the Slow Food Movement was founded to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, and the disappearance of local food traditions and how our 21st-century food choices are affecting the rest of the world. 

Food is intensely personal. It’s the tie that binds. It’s feel-good memory handed down... Nanny’s just-picked-from-her-garden seven vegetable soup simmering all afternoon on the back burner; great uncle Burt’s six-hour baked beans infused with syrup tapped from his own maples. These simple hand-crafted dishes epitomize family and culture and our own sense of identity. Getting reacquainted with slow foods makes us pause and really pay attention to a recipe’s method and from where the ingredients came. 

How wonderful to have been reminiscing about these time-honoured recipes with Chef in the warmth of his kitchen as he mentored me in the next phases of duck confit... rinsing off the marinade, paper towelling the legs bone-dry, then pan-searing them in blistering-hot skillets before placing them in a deep roasting pan “leg-thigh side down” and covering the lot in golden duck fat. The final step was to set the duck confit in a low 225F oven for three hours to cook the meat and crisp the skin.

Finally, it was time to eat. Chef’s presentation was restrained, letting the duck confit stand on its own merits, set atop a lightly dressed salad of greens, red onions and a grilled pear half.

Pleasure on the plate, indeed.

Duck Confit (serves 4 to 6)

Compliments of Nice Bistro’s executive chef, Bernard Alberigo

6 fresh duck legs (about 7 oz each), patted dry with paper towelling

4 tablespoons kosher sea salt

1 tablespoon freshly milled coarse black pepper

2 – 3 cups rendered duck fat, melted

• Place duck legs in a deep-sided bowl and  set aside.

• In a small bowl, combine salt and pepper

• Rub duck legs with salt mixture, place them back in the bowl with the leg-thigh positioned down in the bowl, then refrigerate for 24 hours to allow legs to cure and the blood to leach from the meat. Discard any unused salt mixture.

• Remove duck legs from the fridge, wash off salt mixture with cold water and thoroughly pat dry with paper towelling.  Set aside.

• Set a heavy bottomed oven-proof skillet over high heat. When skillet is smoking, add duck legs “skin side down” and pan-sear until skin is golden brown and crispy, about 2 minutes. Do not let duck skin burn.

•  Flip duck legs over in skillet and sear other side for 1 minute, then add enough melted duck fat to cover just the leg-thigh meat.

• Place skillet on a rimmed baking sheet and set in a preheated 225F oven and slow-roast, uncovered, for 3 hours or until duck is completely cooked through.

• Remove duck legs from fat and set in another oven-proof dish, increase oven temperature to 400F, and continue to roast the legs until the skin is crisp and golden, about 10 minutes.

•  Meanwhile, filter duck fat through a cheesecloth-lined sieve into a heat-proof bowl, cool to room temperature, then refrigerate and use as a fat for other cooking purposes such as frying potatoes or to baste a roasting chicken or turkey, or to create more confit duck. Use fat within three months.