RECIPE - Duck with Sauerkraut (Pato com chucrute)

It's a safe bet that the majority of this blog's readers never expected to find a recipe that included sauerkraut in a blog dedicated to exploring Brazilian cuisine and gastronomy. However, the recipe below for duck served with sauerkraut is authentically Brazilian. Like many other recipes that come from the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, the recipe came to Brazil with the thousands of German immigrants who settled in Santa Catarina in the early 20th century and over the course of the next hundred years became thoroughly Brazilianized - without losing their Teutonic heritage. Santa Catarina has Brazil's highest percentage of population who can trace their roots to Germany, and in the interior of the state there are many cities where German is commonly spoken and understood, along with Portuguese.

The recipe was created by a more recent German immigrant to Brazil, Heiko Grabolle, who was born in Germany and trained in that country, but who now lives in Florianopolis, the capital of Santa Catarina, where he teaches cooking and gastronomy.
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RECIPE - Duck with Sauerkraut (Pato com chucrute)
Serves 4

1 whole duck
2 Tbsp butter
2 medium onions
1 Fuji apple
1 lb. prepared sauerkraut
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup dry white wine
salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste
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Cooking the duck:
Preheat the oven to 325F (160C). Season the duck inside and outside with salt and pepper. Place the duck in a non-stick roasting pan and roast the duck for two hours, basting the pieces every fifteen minutes with the accumulated pan juices. Remove from the oven and cut the duck into four serving pieces - two breasts and two legs.

Cooking the sauerkraut:
While the duck is roasting, chop the onion and peel, core and cube the apple. Melt the butter in a large frying pan and when the butter is hot add the onion and the apple. Cook for about five minutes or until the onions and apples are softened and the onion is transparent. Drain and rinse the sauerkraut, the add it to the pan. Pour the chicken broth and wine over, mix thoroughly and cook for about 15 to 20 minutes, until the sauerkraut is done (The sauerkraut should have the consistency of risotto, neither soupy nor dry. It should be moist and creamy. Add a small amount of water if necessary during cooking to keep the sauerkraut moist). When the sauerkraut is done, turn off the heat, cover the pan and let rest for at least a half an hour for the flavors to develop.

Preparing the dish:
When the duck is close to being done, reheat the sauerkraut. Put a quarter of the sauerkraut on each of four dinner plates, and top with one of the pieces of duck. Accompany the duck with mashed or boiled potatoes, or with white rice.

RECIPE - Wild Duck with White Wine (Marreco com Vinho Branco)

Most recipes for duck, whether Brazilian or not, can be made using either domesticated farmyard ducks - the big white ones - or with wild ducks - brightly colored ducks such at mallards or teals. Both types are eaten in Brazil (as detailed in this post on Flavors of Brazil), and many Brazilian recipes suit both types of birds. But the two birds are not identical, and sometimes one or the other is better suited to a particular recipe.

Farmyard ducks (called pato in Portuguese) have milder-tasting meat and are generally much more fatty than their wild cousins (marreco in Portuguese). The wild birds boast of leaner meat, also much stronger in flavor, much gamier. Whether you prefer the milder taste of pato or the stronger taste of marreco is a matter of personal choice, but because the animals have differing levels of fat, recipes must take this difference into account.

This Brazilian recipe is best made with wild duck, or marreco. Since there is relatively little fat in wild duck, you needn't drain away fat or worry that the dish will be overly rich. The dish is high in flavor, but not heavy. When wine is combined with duck, red wine is usually called for in recipes for farmyard duck, as the stronger-flavored wine can stand up to the rich meat. On the other hand, wild duck, being less fatty, combines well with white wines, as in this recipe.

In southern Brazil, where this recipe comes from, the duck is often served with cooked red cabbage and apple sauce. Either mashed potatoes or buttered noodles are also appropriate.
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RECIPE - Wild Duck with White Wine (Marreco com Vinho Branco)
Serves 6

6 whole wild duck legs (thighs and drumsticks)
4 Tbsp butter
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1/2 lb (250 gr) black olives, pitted or unpitted
4 fresh sage leaves
4 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup (250 ml) dry white wine
salt and pepper to taste
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In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil and melt the butter together. When hot, add the rosemary and sage leaves, then the duck legs. Cook until the legs are nicely browned on all sides. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Reduce the heat, add a tew tablespoons of water, and cover the pan. Cook over low heat just until the duck is cooked. Test for doneness by piercing a thigh with a sharp paring knife. When the juices run clear the duck is cooked.

Un cover the pan, increase the heat. Bring the dish to a boil and boil until any liquid evaporates. Add the white wine and the olives and continue to cook at high temperature until the wine reduces to a few tablespoons.

Serve immediately, spooning a bit of sauce and some olives over each leg as you plate it.

RECIPE REPOST - Duck in Tucupi (Pato no Tucupi)

As promised in Wednesday's post about ducks (pato or marreco in Portuguese) in Brazilian cooking, Flavors of Brazil is offering up some traditional recipes that show how Brazilian cooks have dealt with that delicious bird.

By far, the most famous Brazilian recipe for duck is something  called Pato no Tucupi, meaning simply Duck in Tucupi - tucupi being a yellow sauce extracted from wild manioc which is one of the identifying flavors of the cuisine of Brazil's Amazon region.

Flavors of Brazil has previously posted a recipe for Pato no Tucupi, as part of our On The Road series on posts about the city of Belém, Pará. You can find a this recipe by clicking here.

What the Duck? Untangling Patos and Marrecos

Although chickens are by far the most-commonly consumed poultry species in Brazil, just like everywhere else, they aren't the only birds that end up gracing the Brazilian dinner table. In certain regions of Brazil, for example, guinea fowl (capote or galinha d'Angola in Portuguese) are highly valued for their it's-chicken-but-it's-not flavor and are an important ingredient in traditional cooking. In fancy restaurants in Brazil's metropolises you can sometimes find squab (pombo) on the menu. Goose doesn't really have a place in Brazilian kitchens, perhaps because it's fatty richness is a bit overwhelming in tropical heat.

One bird that bridges the gap between traditional, countryside cooking and contemporary gastronomy in Brazil is the duck. Ducks can be found waddling around the simplest homestead in the backland - easy and cheap to raise - and end up roasted or stewed without fuss or muss. At the other end of the spectrum, magret de canard is considered the ne plus ultra of haute cuisine in Brazil, just as in France or the USA.

The Portuguese word for duck is pato (as in Pato Donald, the Brazilian name for Donald Duck). However, in supermarket freezers, in the pato section, one will often find something that looks an awful lot like duck but which isn't labelled pato. Instead, it's called marreco. If you ask the clerk or the market's butcher what the difference is, he or she is likely to say there isn't any - that pato and marreco are the same thing. Asking Brazilian friends the same question will get you the same response.

But, as Flavors of Brazil has found out, patos and marrecos aren't the same thing, though they are very similar. Since Brazilians are as confused as anyone about what distinguishes these two species, there are numerous attempts at disambiguation (that favorite Wikipedia word) of these two birds on Brazilian food and wine websites, in blogs and in Portuguese dictionaries. The majority opinion, which isn't a 100% consensus, is that, in the culinary sense, pato refers to the larger, white farmyard duck, the one known as a Peking Duck, and marreco is a smaller, more compact, brightly colored bird, often identified as the bird English speakers call teal.

Pato

Marreco

In the kitchen, pato is considered to be fattier than marreco, and with a milder flavor. Marreco has a slightly gamier, wilder flavor and appeals to those who want a leaner bird. But Brazilians tend to use both meats interchangeably and Brazilian cookbooks will tell you that you can substitute one for the other in almost any recipe. We'll publish a couple of traditional Brazilian recipes for duck (or teal if you can find it) in upcoming posts on Flavors of Brazil.

On The Road - Belém (Pt. 3) - The Three Cornerstones

The cuisine of Amazonian Brazil, and in particular the cuisine of the city of Belém, is complex and elaborate, even in its most traditional form. Ingredients are transformed almost beyond recognition. In fact, a single ingredient might show up in various metamorphic forms in the same dish. Giant fish are reduced to bite-sized chunks or smoked, dried and grated, nuts are ground into flour, leaves are cooked for a week without stopping to eliminate their poisons, and fruits are dried, pureed or distilled - all in the goal of increasing the flavor on the plate (or banana leaf) that arrives at the table.

No matter how much manipulation and reformation is going on, though, it's clear that the entire culinary culture of Belém rests on three basic types of foodstuffs. Almost every dish, savory or sweet, will have at least one of these groups in its ingredient list, many have two, and often all three groups are represented in a single dish.

Pato no Tucupi

These three groups of food which rest at the bottom of Belém's pyramid of ingredients are manioc in all its many forms, the animal life that abounds on and in the fresh waters of the Amazon River basin, and the cornucopia of fruits and vegetables to be found in the world's largest rain forest. Take, for example, the region's most iconic and famous dish, Pato no Tucupi (Duck in Tucupi). This marvelous and marvelously complex dish consists of river duck (pato) cooked and served in a broth of tucupi (wild manioc root which is peeled, grated and juiced, then cooked to eliminate the toxins) enlivened with the surprisingly anesthetic leaves of the jambu plant, native to the rain forest. All three food groups are represented in a bowl of Pato no Tucupi - manioc in the form or tucupi, riverine duck, and jambu, the exotic harvest of the jungle.

In upcoming posts Flavors of Brazil will highlight each of these categories of food as we explore the cuisine of Belém. But next up, there's the recipe for Pato no Tucupi.