Sunday, February 23, 2003

Caneton a l’Orange, or: Mastering the Art of French Cooking   When Your Mother is Dying a Slow, Agonizing Death.   After three nights of boozing and eating  it up, our entire party was a little worse for wear.  On Saturday, we chose the very worst day of the year – think driving cold rain on top of mountains of rotten snow, and more water generally, in all its various forms, than one could think possible –  to do a little West Chelsea gallery hopping.  Then we chose to eat at Lupa at 2 o’clock in the afternoon --  which there is nothing I like better than Lupa at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, but it is not easy on the digestive system -- before engaging in a bit more shopping in the driving rain, this time for grocery shopping.  By the time we got back to our lovely Long Island City apartment for a bit of hang-out time and supper, we all of us could use a nap, and my mother needed a period of time in traction.  Hacking and coughing, feverish, with various aches and pains and a raging new case of cellulitis, she took to our bed, bundled under multiple blankets.  The apartment was dark, cool, cave-like.  College basketball was on the television, and my father, my husband, and I dozed in front of it.  The idea of cooking was not particularly appealing – especially cooking Caneton a l’Orange.  It was a dish I had never had, but thought poorly of.  Who likes duck in orange sauce?  For some reason, I couldn’t help thinking of all the bad General Tso’s Chicken I’ve had in my time –  orange in color, cloying in taste, leading almost inevitably to nasty cases of acid reflux. But I am tough, and so I did it.  We’d bought some robiola cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves at Murray’s Cheese Shop on Bleecker Street, because at heart we’re a bunch of bourgeoisie mother-fuckers.  I unwrapped it and left it for the variously distinctly not hungry people in my house to pick at while I removed the orange part of the skin of four oranges with a vegetable peeler, and cut that skin into matchsticks.  It took longer than you’d think.  “Julie, don’t cook…” my mother moaned weakly from bed.  We ignored her. I blanched the skin in boiling water for a few minutes, and dried them in paper towels.  A third of them I put into the duck we’d bought at Ottamanelli’s, the Bourgeoisie’s Butcher of Bleecker Street, along with some salt and pepper.  I variously pinned, tied, and otherwise bound the bird up, pricked the skin with a skewer, threw some sliced onions and carrots around it, and stuck it in a hot oven.  The neck and giblets I put in some water with some celery and thyme and bay leaf to make a little duck stock.  “Julie, let me help…” my mother cried, rising, shaking from bed.  I stuffed her mouth with a piece of robiola while dad made her a drink.  We watched something or other on television for a bit.  I chopped some potatoes into shoestrings and tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper to make oven fries. When the duck giblets had simmered away for enough time to make a kind of stock I started on the sauce, beginning by boiling three tablespoons of sugar with red wine vinegar.  The purpose was to make a “sweet-and-sour caramel,” which certainly didn’t dissipate my bad Chinese food fears.  When it was dark brown, I poured in some of the stock and simmered a bit more.  Then added the rest of the stock along with cornstarch beaten together with port and the rest of the orange skin. I’m supposed to “simmer for 3 to 4 minutes or until the sauce is clear, limpid, and lightly thickened.”   Limpid, huh? “Hey, dad, what does limpid mean?” “Huh.  Dunno.  Dear, what does limpid mean?” “Soft, gentle.” “I’m supposed to make a soft, gentle sauce?” “It also means clear.” “It’s been simmering three minutes.  I think it’s plenty limpid.” In actually, it was not all that limpid at all.  Thickened, yes.  An odd burgundy color, yes.  Sticky and General Tso-ish, yes.  Clear, not so much.  In retrospect, of course, I realize that I used cornstarch, whereas Julia very clearly instructs me to use arrowroot.  I tend to think of the two things as the same.  But I found later, in another part of the book, a reference to the uses of the two, and arrowroot, she says, makes the sauce “limpid.” Ah well. The duck meanwhile, I’ve been periodically turning so it’s brown all over.  I’ve also turned down the heat, and have sucked off the fat that’s pooling in prodigious amounts.  The potatoes I’d spread out on a cheap-ass cookie sheet and stuck in the oven on a rack under the duck. My mother was using her last ounce of energy to argue long-distance with the nurses of golfing doctors about her desperate need for antibiotics.  When the duck was done, I set it on a platter, and stuck it back in the oven with the potatoes, which had stuck miserably to the cookie sheet, leaving the door ajar.  I cooked down the roasting juices with Madeira on the stovetop, and strained the reduction into the sauce.  I simmered it a bit.  I stirred in, cringing all the time, a couple of tablespoons of grand marnier.  Julia writes that “the sauce should have a pleasant orange flavor but not be too sweet.”  Up to this moment, I had not had the courage to taste the stuff.  But when now I at last did, I was surprised.  It was not at all gruesome, actually.  A little sweet.  Julia suggests adding some orange bitters to counteract the sweetness.  I don’t know exactly what orange bitters are.  I have angostura bitters.  What could happen? Dad is on the phone trying desperately for an earlier flight back to decent weather and medical attention. And, surprise, surprise, a few drops of the bitters fixes up the too-sweetness quite nicely.  I stirred in a couple of tablespoons of butter, and we’re done. We carve the duck, serve it, spoons the sauce over it.  Put unevenly browned shoestring potatoes and some bag salad on the plates. The cat manages to upend only one of the four plates onto the floor before we serve. Mom cannot rise from her chair.  We eat in the living room.  And you know what?  It was pretty damned good.  Not sicky-sweet, actually a sort of winey dusky flavor, the sweet beautiful with the duck meat, which was perfectly done.  Even the potatoes were pretty good. “Subtle,” my mother manages to croak. I decided to take that as a compliment, seeing as how it might be the last word she ever utters.     6:56:06 PM    comment []