Christmas Duck and the Immortal Kashey

Christmas Duck and the Immortal Kashey

Duck is not reserved only for lamely departing presidents or Chinese cooks. The duck, as it turns out, also has a special place in Russian folklore and cuisine. 

Russian children hear many fairy tales featuring the duck or its male equivalent, the drake. If my childhood memories serve me right, it was the wild duck that carried the magic egg high in the sky. And inside the egg was the magic needle – the life giver of Kashey-Bessmertny (the Immortal). In the tale, the duck drops the egg in the sea, then a pike retrieves the egg. Then Ivan-Tsarevich somehow gets hold of the egg, breaks it, then breaks the needle inside, killing his nemesis, the ugly Kaschey. Of course, the point of all this was to save and marry Vasilisa-Prekrasnaya (the Beautiful), victim of Kaschey’s evil designs. 

Historically Russian peasants did not eat much meat. Cattle breeding was not highly developed in pre-revolutionary Russia. Or post-revolutionary Russia, for that matter. So Russian peasants cooked duck. Of course, duck was a favorite game hunted by the Russian nobility – suffice it to read Ivan Turgenev’s, Hunter’s Sketches. 

In Soviet times, when the appearance of any meat at all on empty-shelved stores caused long lines, duck was a more than a welcome staple. Speaking of Soviet times, inveterate theater goers may recall the famous play by Alexander Vampilov, Utinaya Okhota (Duck Hunting). Slightly camouflaged as a story about duck hunting, it tells the drama of a Soviet intellectual (I have a particularly warm memory of  the late Andrei Mironov – star of the Soviet film classic Diamond Arm – in a stunning interpretation of this play). 

In the 1970s, the lucky duck shoppers found a foul “made in Hungary.” This was 20 years before Tyson chicken legs would make their debut in Mother Russia and maverick Hungary, wayward son in the family of socialist nations, was a reliable supplier of poultry to the USSR. Whenever I could withstand the fights in queues on New Year’s Eve, I would bring home a duck for my babushka, Yelena Vasilievna. She could make a mouthwatering dish out of anything, let alone duck. 

True, as a meal, the duck is far from low-fat, and its meat may have often a “special” flavor. But if you take your time to cook it right, adding a soft, incomparable taste of apple, you cannot help appreciating the duck’s special taste. Chicken becomes boring. What is more, duck with apples is a traditional yuletide meal in Russia, on par with suckling pig (See Russian Life,  December 1996). But then, pork is a much costlier pleasure …

Ingredients:

One medium-sized duck

8-10 apples, seeded, peeled and chopped

Sour cream

1 tbsp flour

1 tsp pulverized caraway seed

8-10 black olives

Sprig parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

Sauce:  1 tbsp flour, 1/2 cup beef broth, one tablespoon of pan drippings.

Preheat oven to 400o.

Wash the duck carefully, then pat dry. Rub it outside and in with the caraway and salt. Stuff the duck with (no, not a magic egg) chopped apples. Sew the duck up. 

Grease the outside of the duck with sour cream. Place the duck on its back, on a roasting pan greased with butter. Then put the pan in the pre-heated oven and bake until the it obtains a slightly (!) reddened crust. Turn the oven temperature down to 375o and cook about 90 minutes, basting periodically with the juices.

When the duck is all but cooked, put the rest of the apples in the pan with the bird and roast them as well. 

When completely cooked, remove and lightly mash the apples that served as filling. Surround the duck with this applesauce and the roasted apples. Garnish with parsley and fresh vegetables.

Create a simple gravy of the duck’s juices, flour and the beef broth. Bring to a boil then pass through a sieve or, better yet, cheesecloth. Once you have sampled the meal, you will wonder why you didn’t buy two ducks from your butcher instead of just one. 

– Vadim Karbyshev