Duck and Cherry pie - A brief history and a funny story
I first sampled this delicacy at a French restaurant by the name of Gatrille's in 1998. They had a promotion there to celebrate their 10th anniversary at their Sandton location. Gatrille's offer for the month of September was that all their main courses on the menu would be priced as it was 10 years ago! This difference was clearly visible when we eventually got there and saw the menu. I had first heard about their promotion on Radio 702, on the Isabelle Jones show, and one of the dishes the staff of Gatrille's brought into the studio was a Duck and Cherry pie, which everyone in the studio raved about. At first I thought that this was a strange concept - meat and fruit sharing the same spot in a pie. Anticipating this promotion to be very popular, we phoned on the evening after hearing about it and booked a table for ten.
The menu price of the pie was at that stage R55. The price from 10 years prior was just over R20. I was wondering how they could justify a pie for R55 - and it was only when I came up with my own recipe did I realise why - the main ingredients of duck and black cherries is quite dear. Giving the menu a once-over, I followed my friend Kenny's suggestion and had the pie - and was very pleasantly surprised. It was great! I vowed to get a recipe and make it myself!
The first time I made this dish was when I was house-sitting for 702 talk-show host, Jenny Crwys Williams. She had gone away for a few days and asked me to house-sit for her while she had some builders in to renovate (I guess I could say I was the station's resident house-sitter). She offered me free reign to anything in her kitchen - including some frozen duck breasts. I was horrified to see that the price of the fillets was R98 per kg - there was no way on earth that I would just prepare them any ol' how. I later also found some tinned black cherries in her cupboard - and I thought about the pie we had at Gatrille's
What started off as a routine house-sit soon turned into a nightmare. On day one, I came home to find that the plumbers had not turned the water mains back on. I had to go out with a torch and find the water mains. I found 2 separate sets of pipes, both with stop-cocks on them, and so turned them both on, hoping that one of them was not for the gas. I heard a gushing noise and assumed it to either be water or gas rushing though, hoping it would be the former. I went back into the house and ran a bath, and then proceeded to the kitchen to start cooking my dinner. I went back towards the bathroom and noticed a gurgling sound coming from the main bathroom and decided to investigate. The plumbers had not finished their work and left the taps disassembled. Water had shot out of the open tap and hit the lightbulb directly overhead and caused it to explode - it was like a natural geyser spouting! I had to run out and turn the water mains off. I wound up taking a bath in less than 2 inches of water.
I knew that the plumbers would only be back on day 3, so I had to take a shower at the gym before coming home on day 2. "No problem," I thought to myself. I planned to get home, have a quick meal, and then head off to Rosebank to catch a movie. Upon coming home, I pressed the remote control to open the gate. It did not open. I pressed the button a few times, and thinking that I might have been out of range, I drove closer and tried again. No luck. I parked my car and decided to see if the power had perhaps been cut.
I was only given a set of 2 keys and the remote control. The two keys only opened the security gate and door to her study, which led to the rest of the house. I was not given a key to the door leading to the street as the remote control was thought to be sufficient to get me onto her property. The only way to get in was to climb over the wall. Being in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, it was a very high wall. She had also recently been broken into, and so she had ornamental spikes put up. They were certainly not effective, as they were made of sheet metal and gave only a visual deterrence. There was also a small section that they did not cover, and so I headed in that direction.
There was a lot of rubble and building material on the pavement outside her property, so I took some bricks and made a step to give myself a boost in climbing the wall. I got up with relative ease, and was then confronted with the next logical problem - how was I to get down from this high wall? Especially since there was nothing to ease myself down onto. I took my chance and crouched as low as possible before jumping, hoping that the ankle support on my Caterpillar boots would hold out. I managed to land relatively painlessly, but I could definitely feel the force on my ankles.
Getting to the study door, I remembered that I would have 30 seconds in which to enter the house and deactivate the alarm system. Under normal circumstances it would have given me this amount of time, but somehow, the alarm had already been activated before I got in. I entered the code, and waited for the security company to send someone to check up. In the meantime, I looked all around the house for the damned mains control by torchlight. I then heard the sounds of a car pulling up outside and figured it to be the security guard. I grabbed the note with Jenny's instructions and PIN and went outside. I was dressed in my usual black garb (black denims and 702 T-shirt) and went out and explained to the guard that the power had been cut and that I was house-sitting. I gave him the code while reading it from the sheet of paper and he was satisfied. I was alarmed. What if I was indeed a burglar who had the owner trussed up inside and forced to reveal the security code?
I went back to search for the mains control, which was not in any of the usual places, and I finally had to call Jenny's son Gerhard. It was quite late and I apologised. He quickly explained to me where it was (inside the bedroom cupboard - in case you ever need an extra place to look if you're caught in a similar situation, but if you're a criminal - ignore this note).
The power restored, I managed to open the gates and park my car inside. I missed the movie, but I could wait until day 3 for that.
The next morning, the builders were back, as was Jenny's domestic help. I asked her to pass on a message to the plumbers and ensure that the water be turned on at the end of the day. I went off to work thinking that everything would be fine and that things could not get worse. I even told my colleagues that we should do a story on house-sitting nightmares, saying that I was sure nothing else could possibly happen.
That night, I returned home. I pushed the remote control switch and the gates opened. So far, so good. I made my way into the study, making no rush, as the servant would not have been able to activate the alarm. I then went through the doorway into the passage that would lead to the main bedroom. The passage door was locked and the key was in the keyhole - on the other side! The maid, like myself, was only given one set of keys, but they were for the kitchen at the back! She had thought that she would please her employer by being extra careful about security and lock all the doors.
I remembered those old tricks we'd all seen in the movies. You knock out the key and get it from under the door with a piece of newspaper that you've placed there beforehand. I've even done it before in similar situations. However, the carpeting on her floor was somewhat dense. It was not your standard pile carpet, but one that was very hard and thick, and it left no gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet surface. I could not get the paper under the door, but I managed to find a large, stiff envelope in her study, which I managed to slide under the door. I pushed the key out and it landed on the floor on the other side with an audible thud. I slowly pulled the envelope towards myself, but the gap under the door was so small, that the key did not make it through. I then tried to bring it through using a range of different items, from rulers to letter-openers, all to no avail.
I decided to give her son Gerhard a call once more. His suggestion to me was, "Since she's renovating and has the builders in, why don't you just kick the door in?" A fine suggestion which I declined using. He explained that he would come over and try help me out, he didn't have a spare set of keys, but his grandmother did. Unfortunately, she was in Cape Town with Jenny, which was why I was house-sitting.
While waiting for him to arrive, I managed to use the letter opener to bring the key closer to the door, but it was difficult to get it through the small gap. To make matters worse, Jenny has her keys attached to sheet-metal key rings in various shapes of sea-shells. They were huge and cumbersome! I finally managed to force the key through the gap and pulled it out with a bit of force. I was excited. I opened the door and quickly called Gerhard to tell him of my success and that he needn't come over anymore.
I now needed to get to the kitchen to get the key for the security gate that protected the main bedroom. It wasn't going to be easy, because the kitchen door was also locked, and the key was once again on the other side! This shouldn't be a problem, I thought to myself, considering that the kitchen floor was tiled and that the gap under the door should be considerably larger.
I went off to get the envelope that failed earlier on, and began to slip it under the door. There was great resistance. I peered underneath, and found that someone had previously re-tiled it, by placing the new tiles on top of the old without first removing the original ones! The gap was quite tight, but I managed to slip the envelope under the door. Using a sharp object, I prodded at the key through the keyhole until it fell out.
Being a hard surface, the key bounced on the envelope away from the door! Anyway, even if it had landed on the envelope, it would not have been able to come through under the door. I looked under the door again, and saw that in the one corner, there was a broken tile that made a gap that might be wide enough to allow a key to slip through.
I trotted off to the guest bedroom where I had all my things, and found in the cupboard a wire coat hanger. It was plastic coated. I unravelled it and fashioned a small hook on the end. My intention was to slip it under the door and try to get at the key. When I got back to the kitchen door, I tried to push it under the door, but the gap was too narrow even to allow the wire through. Bummer.
I then decided I'd had enough and that I'd just call a local locksmith to open the door, and then reclaim the fee from Jenny on her return, after all, it wasn't my fault was it? If worse came to worse, at least I had access to my bedroom and the bathroom, but I still needed to eat. I looked up some numbers in the Yellow Pages, and called one of the locksmiths nearby. He wanted R180 minimum, plus another R120 for each half-hour! I thought that there was no way in hell I could do this, so I told him I'd give it another go before committing to calling him out. I also called Gerhard again to tell him of the situation, and he agreed with me.
I took the wire hanger and using a pair of scissors from the study, I managed to strip off the plastic coating. It would now hopefully fit under the door. During all this, music from the TV series McGyver and The A-Team filtered through my mind. You know - the tune that rang out every time our heroes were stuck in a problem situation with 10 minutes of the show to go. How they'd be locked up in a garden shed with just a broken down lawnmower, an old tent, a Weber barbecue and some dental floss. Then, with the help of a Swiss Army Knife or shifting spanner, they'd roar through the door and voila, a microlight aeroplane! If they could do that, surely I could still manage to get this damned key from under the stupid door?
I managed to slip the wire hanger under the door and knock the key towards the side with the broken tile, but in the process, the wire had caught onto a narrow section, and when it released, catapulted the key away from the door! I couldn't see where the key was due to the narrow opening restricting my vision. And I could not manoeuvre the wire hanger properly, again being restricted by the narrow gap. I had to go outside into the yard, shine a torch into the kitchen, memorise the position of the key, and go inside and try my luck. I managed to shape the wire hanger in such a way that I could push it through the part with the broken tile, and blindly try and retrieve the key. I could hear the metal on the tiled floor, and knew I was moving the key, but not if I was making good progress or not.
I had to periodically go out to see my progress, until I managed to get the key close enough to see it from under the door, With a final yet careful attempt, I managed to get it into the gap, and I retrieved it. The door was opened and now I had access to - FOOD!
Once again, it was too late to catch the movies, and I gave a final call to Jenny's son, who was relieved that I'd overcome yet another hurdle. I found out later that he'd scolded Jenny's poor maid. I felt sorry for her, because it wasn't entirely her fault. She didn't know I had limited access and she was only trying to be helpful in keeping the place locked up.
After telling my colleagues at the station the next day of my exploits, we decided to do a show on house-sitting nightmares. It didn't take off due to the limited time, but we did it again the following week when Jenny was back on her show, She got me into the studio to tell the story I wrote above.
Anyway, the day after the double-lockout drama, I decided to try and make a duck and cherry pie. I felt that I'd earned it! I scoured through Jenny's vast range of cookbooks for a starting point, as I'd never cooked a duck before (although I've had my goose cooked a few times before!). I had no luck in locating a suitable recipe, so I just went with gut instinct, and since that first attempt, I've fine-tuned it a bit.
I made the filling on Thursday evening, allowing it to simmer at a very low heat for a few hours while I went to watch a movie. The next day, the filling was ready, but I had no one to share it with, so I called my friends Kenny and Lynette, after all, Kenny encouraged me to try this dish in the first place. Unfortunately, they had already invited some friends over for dinner that evening, but suggested I have dinner with them and to bring the pie with me. I readily accepted. That was my first Duck and Cherry pie, but by no means my last.
A few pointers: Duck breasts on their own can be somewhat expensive, so I prefer to use a whole duck. You need to experiment a bit to get it to suit your tastes, but you should get satisfying results with my recipe. I suspect that some chefs would roast their ducks first, and then mix it with a black cherry sauce, but I prefer to make a stew-type filling to get the flavours of the duck and cherries to intermingle and fuse together, and to make it tender and juicy. If you're not a fan of fruits in your main course, please don't be put off. You may very well be pleasantly surprised. If you prepare the pie using cold filling, you may need to bear in mind that when the pie bakes, the gravy might be too runny, especially if you have used cornflour to thicken the mixture. This is because the starch in cornflour tends to break down with constant heating, and results in runny gravy. The best solution would be to make gravy using a roux mixture - as you would when making a white sauce. The gravy will stay thicker for longer, even when you re-heat the pie the next day.
A simple way of using roux to thicken the gravy is to melt some butter, mix in some flour and make a thick dough with it. When it is cool enough to handle, roll the mixture into a few balls. When you need to thicken the gravy, pop in the required amount of balls and mix into the gravy until the desired thickness is reached.
With all this out of the way - let's move onto the main event, namely:
HONGSTER'S DUCK AND CHERRY PIE
Ingredients:
Method:
Remove and serve.