- What are we doing?
- I don't know, we're on our own.
(Ben laughs)
We've been left on our own with literally nothing.
Oh.
A note from Mike.
- He's got a very dainty hand.
- Hello boys.
While Barry's on holiday and I'm off having a baby,
(Jamie laughs)
I thought it would be fun to challenge you
to another recipe from our favourite book.
- Oh yay.
- One of our favourite books.
Please turn to page 677.
We're making Zephir.
Good luck, love Mike.
- Good luck to him with the baby.
- [Jamie] Right, it's a stew duck,
stewed or braised duck, stuffed duckling.
- This one.
- Zephires of duck?
- Zephir de Canard.
- It says "See Zephires of wild duck, page 696."
That's a pointless recipe.
(mumbles) Just send us to 696.
- [Jamie] Zephir of wild duck.
Any idea what that is before we start?
- [Ben] No, but what we do know about this book
and why we love it,
is everything you need is inside it somewhere.
- [Jamie] Make panada.
- [Ben] I don't actually know what it is,
but it only has four ingredients.
Water, flour, butter and salt.
And what does that remind you of?
- A little pastry. Ducky-
- Not empanada.
Just panada.
Like envelope, maybe we don't put the thing inside it.
- So just a velope.
(Ben and Jamie laughs)
- We're gonna read the recipe
have a little bit of thinking time
and then we'll get cracking.
To make,
Zephir of Wild Duck.
(upbeat music)
- It's about five minutes of reading,
and we think we have a plan.
- I'm making a panada.
- Which is very similar to shoe paste, I would say.
Water and butter in a pan,
brought up to a boil and then flour beaten in
until it leaves the side of the bowl, seasoned with salt.
And then we'll let that cool down.
- How much does half a pint of water weigh?
- 280 mil.
Meanwhile, I'm making one of the sauces that we need,
because that sauce then goes into the other sauce
to make the thing we need.
So I'm starting with mirepoix,
which is onion, carrot, pancetta, bay leaves, peppercorns,
all kind of sweated off.
(upbeat music)
- What's fun already is, having read through this
there are a couple of things, that
off the top of my head I would have done through gut feel,
but because we've cooked from this book and
or the Repertoire de la Cuisine previously, we already know.
And that's that Mirepoix traditionally has the bacon
or the ham in it.
And that a fleuron of puff pastry.
Well we've done those before.
(upbeat music continues)
- So this isn't the first time that we've cooked from
Mrs. Beaton's Cookery and Household Management.
It's 160 years old, this book,
and it was the best selling book of its time.
A lot of it is quite outdated in terms of the
household management side of things,
and the recipes take some effort to follow,
I think is probably a nice way of putting it.
- It is a rabbit warren of instruction
that references other places in the book
that reference other places in the book.
- They've got rabbit.
- Yeah.
- It's in the next section if you want
- And the next sec- we're in the game section,
but actually even the venison, hair, and rabbit section,
it is by its very nature quite old fashioned,
very British in its approach.
(upbeat music)
- My water, butter, and salt mixture is now boiling
and I can now gradually add in my sifted flour.
- I would typically throw it all in
and then beat it together so you don't get lumps.
'Cause you certainly need to be beating at the same time.
It's the basis to any shoe.
And the key is to weigh out
all the ingredients and then not let too much
of that water evaporate as you beat it all together.
(upbeat music)
- That, that's slightly lumpy panada.
- Do you want me to carry on whisking it?
- No, that's fine.
(upbeat music)
- Lovely. - [Jamie] Oh.
- A Zephir, translated into English as Zephyr,
is a fine cotton or a soft gentle breeze,
in this dish, reflecting the texture.
- If that was beaten nice and smooth
and was the different ratio, you'd then pipe it
and as it bakes in the oven you end up with shoe buns,
and they are light as anything.
'Cause the air inside of them, kind of does their thing.
The raising agent is the moisture.
- Do you want me to put that back in the pan
and give it a good beat?
- No, I think we're gonna be blending up until paste anyway.
What I don't understand,
is once we add the next step of the recipe to it,
how it's ever gonna be light.
(energetic rock music)
- Remove meat from duck.
Chop and pound it, until very smooth.
- And then we're gonna add this and an egg.
So essentially we're making a meat paste.
- Yes.
(upbeat rock music)
(Ben makes quacking sound)
- [Ben] If you are enjoying this,
there are some small things
you can do that make a big difference to us.
Like the video.
Subscribe, if you aren't.
Click the notification bell and select all.
Thanks.
[Jamie] This is a duck.
We are making the Zephir of duck,
but it told us to go
to the page and the recipe,
which is Zephir of Wild Duck.
Now why would those two things be separate?
- So the recipe is exactly the same.
There is only one change and that's the duck.
Whereas the recipes all fall on the foul section,
where we're just talking about ducks.
- So this is a duck
and I'm led to believe that it wasn't wild.
- Correct. That means it's probably slightly fattier,
probably slightly meatier than a wild duck
which would've been doing a lot more running.
So maybe we definitely don't need the duck fat in this dish.
- How big was a wild duck in 1860, whatever.
- Oh...
(upbeat music)
- A domestic duck can be twice the size of a wild duck.
Consider this when making the dish.
- Would you like to take the board behind,
pop it next to this one,
and cut that duck ready for saute.
Basically bone outed duck.
- Really silly question,
is it the same as dissecting a chicken?
- Yes. The bones are mostly in the same place.
They're just a slightly different shape.
- Sorry.
(upbeat music)
- Now we've got the Mirepoix base and veg,
softened and lovely,
in with the stock.
That's gonna bubble for half an hour,
and then we're gonna add in tomato
and that's what makes it a Spanish sauce.
(upbeat techno music)
- [Jamie] I think I've butchered a duck.
- [Ben] Looks good.
You've got two breasts, two drumsticks,
two wings off of that.
Pretty good job.
- Yeah? - I think we'll take the skin
off the breast 'cause we don't want it too fatty.
And then we'll make a paste from it.
So the only other thing is to de-bone the wings and legs.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] So there are two sources at play for our dish.
We have sauce Espanola.
That is what we finish our entire plate with.
But we also need sauce,
salmis? Salmis.
Which is 50% white stock and 50% sauce Espanola.
This sauce is shallot mushroom sauteed off.
And then we go in with a lighter stock.
And you can finish it with Red Current Jelly,
and a little bit of Port.
- Have you ever made anything like this before?
- This here?
Yes. Right.
Basically mirepoix, a brown stock,
and then finished with tomato.
I'm gonna be honest, I used a tin of tomatoes.
Or some Passata. We've actually got fresh tomato here.
But this sauce, the salmis sauce no.
(upbeat music plays)
- [Ben] I'm not sure Mrs. Beaton in the late 1800's
would've been using winter tomatoes from Spain.
But it's what we've got left over
from a previous filming day.
So they're going into our sauce.
- Feels like you are quite privileged
to be able to cook with me today.
(Ben laughs)
Seeing as I've won,
couple of battles against other chefs recently.
- The tables are turning, I'll be honest.
(funky music)
- [Ben] Quarter a pint of that.
(funky music continues)
- [Ben] And our game stock.
(funky music continues)
- So, I've got my duck, and I need to chop it,
and then I'm gonna pound it.
So we're gonna do that in a mixer, right?
- Yeah. Chop it into small pieces.
We'll blitz it in a food processor.
I'm gonna finish the sauce by thickening it with Bermonyais
'Cause I should have put the flour in at the start
and made a velouté.
But I skipped that bit.
And our salmis sauce is done.
(funky music)
- I've added in my duck,
our panada, an egg,
and mixed it to create this beautifully pink thing.
I'm now gonna add salt, pepper,
- [Jamie] and it says add mixed spice to taste.
I'm not going to taste that, 'cause it's raw duck.
So we'll just add a bit.
- [Ben] See the thing is,
some of these recipes are very precise.
Like an eighth of a pint of sauce.
Or a quarter of a pint of this.
Some of them just say half a glass,
but it doesn't tell you how big the glass is.
- Yeah that's an issue.
- So how big's a port glass for serving one 120 mil?
- Oh, that feels like a lot.
- It's a small glass of wine but obviously it's fortified.
A 750 mil bottle should serve 10 people.
- So 75 mil.
- So 75.
- 'Cause we need 37. - So we want 30-
- Seven. - Yeah.
That's about right then.
- So it was, yeah.
(Jamie laughs)
- I mean that was my gut,
given that but we don't know.
(funky music)
- Now I've added the mixed spice
and the port in, that smells like Christmas.
- It has that kind of, seasonal flavour.
But that's 'cause a wild duck would only be caught
between, like the autumn and early spring.
- Because they're good at hiding for the rest of the year.
- No, you leave them to do their ducky things.
So there's more for next year.
- things.
- Whatever ducks get up to in the spring.
I mean I'm trying to tiptoe around the subject,
but you know.
Quack, quack.
(Jamie and Ben laughs)
- What does that mean?
- Sauce Espanola has finished, I'm now gonna strain it off
and then season it to taste with the Spanish drink Sherry
and a little bit of Red Current Jelly.
The majority of this will go over our dish at the end
but some of it gets mixed into this
which becomes our salmis sauce,
which goes into this.
(funky music continues)
- That's really good.
(funky music continues)
- It's pretty damn good.
- Yeah.
- It's got that essence of the She Crab Soup we had.
- [Jamie] Oh Charleston. - [Ben] in the U.S.
In Charleston. - [Jamie] Yeah.
- [Ben] It was finished with Sherry at the end.
- [Jamie] Yes. Yeah, yeah.
- Now that is a very sweet Sherry,
but similar kind of vibes.
(upbeat music)
- That also needs adding to your paste.
- Lovely.
(upbeat music continues)
- So now we cook this.
Two things need to happen to it before that.
One. Pass it through a sieve to make sure it's really,
really smooth.
And two, make sure the seasonings good.
Given it's raw duck and raw egg.
The best way to do that is a dollop on a plate
that we microwave so that we can both have a taste.
- I mean, it still looks exactly the same.
(funky music)
- That is distinctly better than I was expecting.
- Yeah, it's like cooked pâté.
- Yeah, in its warm form, it is cooked pâté.
- Yeah - But lighter and bouncier.
- Is it like, "Fine cotton or a soft gentle breeze?".
- It's just like that.
- Then we're on the right track.
(funky music continues)
- How many of these-
(Ben bangs on table)
- Such an angry little man.
(Ben laughs)
- How many of these in a portion?
- So it says make eight to serve four.
I've realised there's only two of us here
so we only need to make four.
- I don't know, Dom,
can you spin around and show everyone else that's here?
(Ben laughs)
(Jamie laughs)
- [Ben] I'm gonna put it out there,
I'm not making two for everyone.
(Jamie laughs)
- Let me scrape your bottom.
Let's see how close we're getting.
(Izzy laughs)
(Jamie sighs)
- [Izzy] Quack, quack.
(Jamie laughs)
- Stop quacking.
- So I was hoping these were gonna rise as we steam them
but there's every chance cause it's 50% protein,
that they'll actually just shrink back.
- Shrink back.
- So we better fill them to about there.
- So like, in the instructions where it says fill.
(Ben sighs)
- We're gonna cook them in a bain-marie,
so in an oven but in a roasting tray with boiling water
and then tin foil over the top.
And the meantime we can cook some fleuron,
which James and I learned in a previous episode
is Crescents of Puff Pastry,
and we can work some spinach.
- So we're not doing the buttered paper on the top
like in the recipe.
- Oh.
Glad you're here Jay.
- Me too.
- Could you cut four cartouche?
[Ben] And another bit of precise work
from Mrs. Beaton. No time or temperature for the cooking.
Just till it's done.
- Until firm and set.
(funky music)
- Glad you measured that
- Ta-dah.
(Ben laughs)
(Beep)
- [Ben] This stops from getting too hot.
'Cause in theory they'll never get hotter than steam,
and they go into the oven.
(bass guitar tune)
- Right! Let's make some fleuran and watch the spinach.
(motivational rock music)
- You are doing the fleuran's of puff pastry.
- Yeah.
- We can half a glassier Sherry, that's fine.
That last garnish is spinach.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- What kind of spinach are we making?
- The one we've been given.
- Because I've looked up spinach in the book.
- Right.
- And the first thing there is boiled spinach,
which is I'm guessing we want to do boiled spinach?
- We could do boiled spinach.
- Cool. So we need spinach, butter, cream,
and salt and pepper.
We need to wash it in at least three waters.
- (Ben whispers) We don't have a tap that works.
- Right.
(motivational rock music continues)
- Like those in the same oven.
(motivational rock music continues)
(vegetable crunches)
- I don't think we want to cream it,
because the way she's asked us to plate it,
it's spinach in the middle and the sauce over the top
and I think it'll just
bleed into our otherwise lovely sauce.
(rhythmic rock music)
- Funny. Read the instruction again.
- Put the wet leaves into a sauce pan
without additional water.
Cook slowly until tender about 15 minutes,
stirring the spinach in the pan occasionally.
The pan should have a tightly fitting lid.
Drain well, pressing out the water.
Reheat in the butter.
- That's a terrible way to cook spinach.
(Jamie laughs)
I agree with the, "no added water",
but a little bit of butter may be seasoned nicely,
and then a hot fierce cook and it'll cook in not 15 minutes,
but about 15 seconds.
(rock music)
- [Ben] Halved.
- [Jamie] Halved.
- Her way says add it now with a lid
and just let it do it's 15 minutes.
That's gonna be so sad.
So sad.
- So sad, but we're doing it all so sad,
and therefore we're ignoring it.
- I feel like it should be the latter.
Just don't have a lid that fits.
(funky music)
- What a ridiculous little dish.
- Excuse you.
(production crew laughs)
- Wasn't me, Ben.
- There's my drawers.
(funky music)
- I guess that's it.
(Jamie laughs)
- Right. Should we see if they turn out?
- They're gonna be hot sitting in an oven.
- Yeah. Careful.
(Ben blows air twice)
(Jamie laughs)
(Ben laughs)
- [Jamie] Oh god, I spent a whole afternoon doing this.
(Ben laughs)
- Don't laugh.
They're not done yet. They're not finished yet.
And we're gonna decorate it like that.
And like that.
- [Jamie] That would be better.
- [Ben] There we go.
- Can we try them first? Before you-
- Well that's just butter,
we buttered them all didn't we?
Butter's good.
(calm music)
- I'm just making sure you're doing this properly.
Turn the, moulds out into a circle.
Place a fleurran of puff pastry on each
and half a glace cherry.
Pile spinach in centre,
and pour the hot Espanol sauce around.
- Right? You ready?
- [Ben] The sauce is good.
- And pour the hot Espanol sauce, round.
Not on top, round.
(calm music continues)
- You're a nightmare.
(calm music continues)
- [Ben] That Jamie,
what was it called again?
(Ben laughs)
What we making?
- That is, Zephir of Duck.
- Just as Mrs. Beaton would've liked it.
- Nearly as Mrs. Beaton would've liked it.
(lively music)
- I know it's only you and I,
but sometimes it's nice to have some moments
at a table and enjoy a nice meal.
- You ordered something in?
(Ben laughs)
- Is this what you pictured when we started?
- I had no idea-> Zephir de Canard.
I had no idea what we were making.
I didn't really expect this.
- I know the sauce tastes great.
- Yeah.
- I'm just confused by the rest.
- Yeah.
(electronic music)
- The texture of cat food.
- You say cat food,
I was gonna say, lamb's testicle.
- Yes it is. I know exactly what you mean.
Unfortunately.
(Ben and Jamie laugh)
- [Ben] Cheers. - [Jamie] Cheers.
(electronic music)
- It is surprisingly,
after forcing it through that sieve,
and steaming it in a bain-Marie,
- It's very smooth.
- Light and moussey.
- It's like fine cotton.
(Jamie and Izzy laughs)
- Just cooked.
- [Jamie] Mm.
- I mean, I know what a glase cherry is like.
- But with this-
- I don't think I need it.
The sauce has got a sweetness from the Red Current Jelly.
- Yeah.
- And the sherry.
(funky music)
- The pastry's nice.
- I don't think it needs the Sherry.
- If that was served to me,
in perhaps a more appetising shape as a little starter,
I could wholly see it.
The sauce is very rich,
and I'm chuffed with how sort of,
the consistency but also how glossy it is
- Mm
- And it tastes great.
- I feel like this is the kind of thing,
where you'd go to a fancy restaurant in France,
and you'd order something off the menu in French,
recognising canard and go, "Oh, that's duck."
And then this turns up and you go,
"Oh, the sauce is lovely, but you know what?
It's nice enough."
I would have no idea,
how much effort anyone had gone to, to make it.
- Yeah, that's very true.
- Probably best left in the 1860's would be my summary.
- If somebody gave me a whole duck.
There are 101 things I would rather do to it.
- [Izzy] Quack, quack.
(Ben and Jamie laughs)
In summary, I think the flavor's good.
The texture is very pappy.
I think the sauce is the winner there.
- Yeah.
- There's nothing wrong with a bit of steamed spinach,
and everyone loves puff pastry.
- Well comment down below. Let us know what you think.
Did we pass?
Did we do the dish justice?
Would you cook anything like this at home?
- Do you know what's remarkable?
- What?
- Since the internet has been invented,
I'm not sure anyone has made this dish
taken a photo of it and shared it.
This is the first.
- The Internet's first canard
- Zephir de Canard
- Zephir de Canaard sauvage.
(Ben and Jamie laugh)