First Time Home-Cooked Good Fucking Duck

Today I should be working. Instead, I am roasting a duck. There is no purpose to this, no occasion for which I am doing the duck thing, other than that I bought one in a fit of culinary enthusiasm and defrosted it in the fridge, and if I don’t cook it today I will have wasted $11.86. That, and it was starting to bleed into the crisper.

Since the sister has gone away for the weekend and the boyfriend doesn’t eat anything that isn’t sugar, I will be entertaining myself for the next few days by eating my way through this duck. If I cook it properly, that is. I’ve never cooked a duck before, and I imagine it as something mystical and profound. I spent about an hour online investigating various ways in which to prepare a whole duck and, as I have neither the money for ingredients nor the inclination to understand the joys of confit or cassoulet, I have decided to scrounge up whatever I happen to have in my cupboards, ram them in or on the duck, and roast the thing ‘til crispy. My recipe, then, is as follows:

-One young duck
-Small tin of mandarin oranges
-Olive oil
-Garlic powder
-The dregs of a bottle of Sauterne cooking wine
-Some hoisin sauce found in the back of the fridge behind the sauterne cooking wine
-A sad looking onion discovered rolling around aimlessly in a cupboard

1. Preheat oven to 325 C.
2. Clean enormous roasting pan and rack that was left behind by previous tenant, presumably because it would not fit in their car. Set aside.
3. Open the business end of duck and remove mushy bag of giblets. Make mental note to schedule long overdue appointment with gynecologist.
4. Notice strange fleshy hunk inside duck. Grasp with fingers and pull. Marvel at how a duck's neck resembles mummified horse genitalia. Set aside for making stock. Quit kidding self. Pitch.
5. Wash duck inside and out. Wonder if other people think that raw duck feels like a cold clammy baby. Resist urge to hug duck. Leave duck to drip dry on dishrack. Make tea. Check email for 10 minutes.
6. Return to kitchen. Punish cat for licking duck. Give duck a shake and set on roasting rack, breast side down.
7. Sprinkle inside of duck with salt. Sprinkle outside of duck with garlic powder.
8. Remember that there is some sort of big fat flap that has to be removed. Search for fat flap. Find it on breast side of duck. Hack it off with scissors and set aside. Wish for similar solution to own fat flap.
9. Open tin of mandarin oranges. Reserve juice. Dump oranges inside duck.
10. Peel and quarter sad, aimless onion. Plonk into duck.
11. Bung together some olive oil, the mandarin juice, dregs of cooking wine and a healthy dose of hoisin sauce. Whisk with reckless abandon. Use bedraggled barbeque brush thing to drizzle sauce all over duck.
12. Attempt to put enormous roasting pan in oven. Ignore earsplitting scraping sound of pan against oven wall. Shove hard. Pray pan will shrink slightly in heat.
13. Set timer for 90 minutes. Putter about for a half hour until remembering that there is a greasy slab of duck fat sitting on the counter, emitting disease. Arrive just in time to watch cat swallow last bit of slab. Disinfect counter. Keep eye on cat.
14. Use burnt oven mitt and wadded up sweatshirt to heave pan from oven. Ignore billowing cloud of duck smog. Drizzle more sauce over duck. Notice business end of duck is filling up with grease. Attempt to spoon grease out. Burn wrist on side of pan. Use fork to lift other end of duck and drain grease. Watch as duck wriggles free of fork and belly flops into pool of hot fat. Plunge arms and face into cold water. Call boyfriend.
15. Put feet up as boyfriend complains about duck smog. Sip tea as boyfriend ingeniously flips duck with pasta ladle and chopstick. Drizzle more sauce over breast. Cram back in oven. Open windows and engage ceiling fan. Set timer for 60 minutes.
16. Open oven and tug on pan ‘til it gives. Stick thermometer in duck. See that the temp is 236 F. Wonder if that’s some sort of record. Lift rack from pan and dump duck onto plate. Tent with foil.
17. Stare blankly into pan. Try to decipher the little bits of goodness that make nice gravy from the blackened, charred crust on the bottom. Decide that deglazing is for sissies. Dump pan remains into bowl and put in fridge until fat separates. Soak roast pan in bathtub.
18. Decide waiting for fat to separate is for sissies. Transfer remains to a saucepan. Crank up heat and reduce. Quickly change mind as saucepan turns into a deep-fryer. Put pan in freezer. Scrub walls and stove for 15 minutes.
19. Remove pan from freezer. Scrape frozen, congealed fat into garbage. Dump some chicken stock, frozen orange juice concentrate, garlic, salt and pepper in new pan. Simmer for a bit.
20. Hack up duck and coat with sauce. Serve.

Now if I was served this particular duck dish in a restaurant, I would likely summon the waiter, wrinkle my nose, wave my hand over the plate and say something like “puh”; however, for a first-time, home-cooked duck thing it was pretty damn good. Even the boyfriend thought so. “That’s a good fucking duck, babe” he said, fat dribbling down his chin - and so it has been christened. And from this day forward, all my ducks will be purchased pre-roasted in Chinatown.