PDF For many, the Old-Fashioned cocktail represents a classic sip of Americana. The elixir is one of the first recorded American cocktails and remains popular in bars and supper clubs today. Today’s widely accepted recipe – rye, soda, and bitters with muddled sugar, orange and cherry – is a variant of the drier original version, which doesn’t have fruit. But nowadays we wouldn’t have it any other way.
This recipe is inspired by that classic combination. Cherries and oranges are known friends of duck, so I tossed in a little bitters and bourbon to round it all out. You can make pulled duck with confit legs. If you’re ambitious, you can spend all day making your own confit, but for our purposes, the store-bought legs are perfect. Top the duck with a rich, orange-scented dark cherry sauce and an orange-juice laced cabbage slaw finished with aromatic bitters.
Makes 6 sliders
- 2 prepared confit duck legs (like D’Artagnan brand)
- 6 mini-sandwich ‘slider’ rolls *
Dark Cherry Sauce
- 1/4 cup minced red onion
- 30 fresh or frozen black cherries, pitted & halved
- 1/4 cup bourbon
- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
- 1 Tbsp dark agave nectar or 2 Tbsp brown sugar
- 3 1-inch pieces orange zest (orange part only – no white!)
- 3 Tbsp room-temperature butter, divided
- 1 Tbsp flour
Aromatic Bitters & Orange Slaw
- 1/2 cup fresh orange juice
- 3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tsp honey
- 20 drops Peychaud bitters **
- 2 cups green cabbage, thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup green onions, thinly sliced
- 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded & minced
** Peychaud bitters has a milder, sweeter flavor than Angostura bitters. If you want to use Angostura instead, reduce the amount of bitters the recipe calls for.
Place 2 confit legs in a skillet and warm them gently over low heat. Once softened, pull the meat off the bones in chunks. Discard the bones. Use two forks to pull and tear the duck meat into stringy pieces. Sprinkle the meat with a pinch of sea salt, cover and keep warm.
Make the sauce: In a very small bowl, make a beurre manie by blending together 1 tablespoon of softened butter with 1 tablespoon of flour. Set the beurre manie aside while you continue the cherry sauce. In a saucepan over medium high heat, melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter. Wait for the foam to subside, reduce the heat to medium and immediately add the minced red onion to the pan. Cook, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes until the onions are translucent. Do not allow the onions to brown.
Stir in the cherries and cook for another two minutes. Stir in the orange zest, bourbon, balsamic, and agave nectar and cook for five minutes more, gently pressing the cherries to release their juices. Remove the sauce from the heat. Pick out the orange zest and discard. Drop the beurre manie into the sauce. Stir briskly until the butter has fully melted. Cover the sauce and set aside.
For the slaw, whisk together the wet ingredients until well blended. Toss this liquid with the cabbage, green onions and jalapeno peppers.
To serve, warm the slider rolls in the microwave for 10 seconds. Open the roll and stack ¼ cup meat, then 3 tablespoons of sauce, and a little less than ¼ cup slaw. Replace the crown of the roll and serve immediately.
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