The Kitchen · № 02
Canard à la vanille
Réunion's answer to a question Europe never thought to ask: what if vanilla were a spice?
Where this comes from
This is not a chef's invention. Canard à la vanille is an iconic dish of Réunion, the island where in 1841 a twelve-year-old named Edmond Albius worked out how to pollinate the vanilla flower by hand and made the world's vanilla trade possible.
On the islands that grow the bean, vanilla was never confined to pudding. Here it does the job a bay leaf does: depth, not sweetness. The dish is traditionally made with the island's own Bourbon bean. Bourbon and our Indonesian beans are the same species, Vanilla planifolia, grown on different volcanic islands.
Creole tradition, RéunionIngredients
- 1 duck (about 1.8 kg), jointed into 8; or 4 duck legs
- 2 Ox & Orchid vanilla pods
- 2 onions, finely sliced
- 4 garlic cloves
- 20 g fresh ginger
- 1 tsp ground turmeric
- 2 ripe tomatoes, diced
- 1 sprig of thyme
- 1 tbsp neutral oil
- Salt and black pepper
- Hot water
Method
Split both pods lengthwise. Scrape the seeds into a glass of about 200 ml of warm water, drop the pods in with them, and leave it to steep while you cook. This vanilla water is the seasoning, not a garnish.
Crush the garlic, the ginger and a good pinch of salt to a rough paste in a mortar. A paste, not a chop: it is the difference between a sauce that tastes of the island and one that tastes of garlic.
Heat the oil in a heavy casserole over high heat. Brown the duck, skin down first, without crowding the pan, until it is deep gold; 8 to 10 minutes. Take it out. Pour off all but a tablespoon of the fat and keep it; it is worth more than the pan.
Lower the heat. Soften the onions in the remaining fat for 5 minutes. Add the turmeric and the garlic and ginger paste, and fry it for about a minute, until it smells of nothing but itself.
Add the tomatoes. Let them collapse and deglaze the base, scraping up everything stuck to it.
Return the duck. Add the thyme, the vanilla water and both pods. Pour in hot water until the duck is almost, but not quite, covered.
Lid on, lowest heat, 1 hour to 1 hour 15, until a fork slides out of the meat unopposed and the sauce has reduced and darkened. Turn the pieces once, halfway.
Taste for salt. Fish out the pods, scrape whatever seeds remain back into the sauce, discard the husks. Serve with plain rice. The sauce is the dish.
The grader’s note
If anyone at the table says the word vanilla, you have used too much. It should read as warmth and roundness underneath the duck fat. Two pods for a whole duck is the ceiling, not the target. And do not scrape every seed in at the start: the water carries the perfume through the cooking, and the last scrape at the end carries the finish.
Made with
Grade A Indonesian planifolia.
Every recipe here is written for a real bean: graded, signed, and sold by weight.