Ingredients:

One duck hindquarter cooked confit style & shredded
1 T. olive oil
2 mushrooms, sliced
4 oz. heavy cream
Pinch saffron
1 roma tomato quartered and dried (sub 2T sun dried tomatoes)
S and P to taste
2 T Manchego cheese, grated
3 black figs, quartered and marinated in wine
4 oz. Pinot Noit
2 T reduced duck stock (made from bones)
2 T butter
1 puff pastry bouche shell or similar vessel

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 400F. Sautee mushrooms in oil until soft over medium heat. Add cream, tomato, duck, saffron, and gently reduce to a very thick alfredo consistency. Turn off heat, season, add half the cheese and stuff into pastry vessel. Top with remaining cheese, Bake in oven about 5-7 mins in oven proof serving dish. Meanwhile make sauce by reducing wine by 50%, add duck stock and figs, and reduce to sauce-like consistency. Turn off heat, stir in whole butter, and pour around duck pastry onto hot serving platter. Garnish as you like, but always enjoy with good wine & great friends.

A Huge Glass,

…so the esters can rise, fill and engulf your senses as you plunge your nose deeply into the orb, fragrant but farmy, subtle yet spicy. Complexities aside, Pinot Noir is a favored wine of mine to pick apart and discuss with friends over dinner. It can be a challenging pairing for some foods and a shoe-in for others. But never falls short in getting the words & feathers flying.

While dining out, I’ve always gravitated toward Pinot Noir. It has a curious pull. First and foremost, it’s my fondness of Champagne – always a great beginning to an evening, an easy food pair, and a true celebration! The wine with bubbles classically is a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with Pinot Meunier added for bulk. Pinot is the ‘Noir’ in ‘Blanc de Noir’.

But as the evening wanes, the lights dim. The big glasses and the small plates come out. The Pinot lurches and looms as we sip our way through the maze of complex flavors, fumbling forward in a quest toward food and wine Nirvana. Duck is a welcomed beacon and one of my favorite weapons, with its ability to take on black pepper, nutty cheeses, and dark forbidding fruits, - the colors of night, all with pleasing the wine in mind. But will it slay the Pinot monster? A good shot is a Duck Confit Bouche with mushrooms, figs and Manchego cheese. A rich sauce made from the Pinot & duck bones should smooth things over between this little app with big flavor, and the dark forbidding fruits of the noblest vine. The beast will lie there, devoured. Your guests will lie there, satisfied.

--Ty Turner, Garre Winery, Livermore, California