Xesla Research Organisation

I was at work on Saturday when I hear a voice from across the room “Hey Paul, do you want some ducks ?”. A rather strange question to hear at work, but of course I immediately said yes. Turns out the guy had gone out for a quick hunt before work. I headed on out to his car and he presented me with two freshly killed ducks. I immediately doubted my decision to take these ducks as they were still fully intact, ungutted, unplucked.

A quick message to my friend Hank Shaw who points me to a recent blog post he did on Plucking Game Birds and I was feeling better about it and I soon found myself stripping the birds of their plumage with paraffin wax.

Next came gutting the birds. I figured it couldn’t be too difficult I’ve gutted plenty of fish in my life, surely this couldn’t be too different. And it wasn’t. I cut open just under the breast bone and pulled down to open each birds cavity and most of their fun middle bits fell out neatly. I then cut open the neck and pulled out the thorax from the top end. With all the entrails and fun stuff out of the way I just had to fish around a bit for the liver, heart, and lungs. Easy.

As you can see one of the ducks looks quite handsome with nice white fat under the skin, the other though had orange fat and was a bit manky with a bunch of pellet holes. I did some reading and I’m guessing the manky one is a Gadwall, Hank suggested it would be good for soup. I struck on the idea of gumbo which I’ve made a few times before and is a good way to use sub-par meat.

Hank has a recipe for Wild Game Gumbo so I figured it would be a good yardstick and used his basic ingredient set, but went my own way on the preparation.

Spice Mix
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 tablespoons sweet paprika
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 2 tablespoons garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon celery seed

Roux
• 250g (1 cup) butter
• 125g (1 cup) flour

Main Ingredients
• 2 kg (4 pounds) of meats ( I used the smaller duck, andouille sausage, beef cubes, and some bbq pork ribs and confit pork belly from my freezer )
• 250g ( 1/2 pound ) bacon cut into lardons ( home cured of course )
• 2 finely diced green peppers
• 2 finely diced medium onions
• 5-6 finely diced celery stalks
• 6 finely diced cloves garlic
• 1 Litre home made chicken stock ( don’t use bought stock, just use water if you don’t make your own stock )
• 1 Litre of water
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 lb okra, sliced crossways
• A small bunch of thinly sliced green onions
• A bunch of chopped parsley leaves
• Finely chopped parsley stalks from above.
• 2 tablespoons file powder

Preparation

First make your roux. Melt the butter in a pan ( cast iron is great for this ) and when it stops foaming add the flour. Whisk the mixture until it becomes a paste and then let the flour brown whisking it just enough to stop it burning. It’s a bit of a game of chicken the darker the roux the better, but you don’t want to burn it. Cook it for as long as your nerves can handle and then pour it off into a container to cool off.

Next cook off your bacon over low heat until it has released enough fat to cook on. Put the bacon aside and start browning your meats in batches. Between batches of meat you may need to cook the bacon some more to render more fat out to cook in. Eventually all your meats will be nicely browned and you’ll finish off the bacon if its not already nicely crispy.

With your meat cooked you now want to start building the flavours of the dish. First cook off your Peppers, Onion, Celery and garlic in batches. You want to bring them right to the edge of burning… Again its a battle of nerves. The closer to burnt the better the final flavour but you don’t want to actually burn them.

Once that is done you’ll want to to mix your roux and your vegetables with the tomato paste and half the spice mix in a large pot ( I initially started using my electric pressure cooker which has a simmer feature, but it didn’t really get hot enough so I had to transfer back to a normal pot ). Stir it until hot and then slow add in the stock and water while constantly stirring to avoid clumping.

Once this starts to simmer add your meats in and continue to simmer for at least 90 minutes, but preferably 3 or 4 hours. If any of your meat had bones in it you’ll want to pull it out towards the end and remove the bones. The flesh should fall off them easily. Through this cooking process you’ll want to frequently skim off any scum or froth that forms. You’ll also want to taste it regularly and adjust with more of the spice mix, some hot sauce, and salt.

With about 15 minutes to go add in your Okra and Parsley stalks. And then just before serving stir through the chopped Parsley, Green Onions and File Powder. Serve with rice or by itself. Don’t feel the need to build a silly rice tower.

Tags: Beef, duck, Gumbo, Hank Shaw, pork, Rice, sausage