Responsible cooking and respect for ingredients lie at the heart of our training at Prue Leith Chefs Academy and charcuterie is the one lecture every semester where we can practice these ideologies to our heart’s content.

Two weeks ago the current 1st commis group had their introduction to processing meat. The lecture included preserving (duck confit, gravadlax, biltong, bresaola) terrines, sausages and fabulous foie gras, or is it so fabulous…

Many students had their first taste of this controversial delicacy and before we prepared our foie gras terrine we watched Rick Stein’s French Odyssey where he visits a farm that produces this supreme fruit of gastronomy. It’s never great to see. The visuals of force fed ducks challenged several minds, but most of them voted in favour of having such a delicacy on menus once we sliced our terrine and paired the buttery richness with sweet preserves. 

Duck dominated the week and we made very good use of our whole birds. Legs and thighs were turned into confit, the breasts were kept for terrines and the fat and skin from the breasts melted down for the fat needed for confit.

From our bag of giblets we sent the livers to the restaurant kitchen for duck pâté (as part of the Duck and Fig Compilation on the menu). The necks joined the cleaned duck carcasses in a fragrant stock (that was later used for our brawn).

For a moment we were tempted to serve stuffed duck hearts for amuse bouche in the restaurant, but we were not quite convinced that our customers are ready yet for our nose to tail approach in cooking. 

There is definitely hope though as several of the 1st commis were convinced that they won’t be tasting the pig’s head brawn when we blow torched the last of the beast’s facial hair and waxed its ears; but on Friday to their surprise they packed their lunch boxes full to even share some at home!

Our bresaola will be on the menu next semester. After curing in a red wine brine, herbs and spices they are maturing for at least six weeks, patience it rewarded with remarkable flavour, so we won’t be rushing this process.