Roast duck #2

4 Servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
Wild ducks
1 medium Onion per duck; peeled
Salt & pepper
Oil for browning

Directions

Duck was common among the Northwest Indians. For that matter, so were clams and oysters. But because the ducks lived on salt water and ate saltwater fish, they had a rather fishy taste.

Duck with a fishy flavor does not appeal to the white man ... at least, not to very many. My mother, Emily, was raised on the Lummi Indian reservation on Lummi Island, near Bellingham, Washington. As a child, she ate fishy duck all the time and learned to love it. Northwest fishermen still come to her door to give her fishy ducks that they have caught and will not eat. But my mother relishes them. She also used to eat the skin off my salmon when I was a boy. She had Lummi tastes, and now years later I eat the salmon skin myself and plead for a fishy duck. She has me hooked too!

This is as close as I can come to what went on in the old days here in the Northwest. I don't expect you to build a fire and roast your duck slowly for a long time. But if you ever get any wild duck from around saltwater, this is what you do ... and it is very close to what the Northwest Indians still do.

Rub each bird with salt and pepper, inside and out. Brown the birds in a big black frying pan with just a bit of oil. Turn so that each side is browned a bit. Stuff a medium-sized peeled onion inside each bird (the Northwest Indians used wild onions), and place the birds in a covered oven-proof pot. Deglaze the frying pan with a bit of water and add that to the pot. Cover and bake at 325ø for about l hour. (Wild ducks are rather small, so don't overcook them.) No, wild birds will never be as tender as domesticated birds, but the flavor is something else! From <The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American>. Downloaded from Glen's MM Recipe Archive, .

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