Hidden…an interesting collaboration

As I toss my hat fully into the independent publishing ring, I’ve found a number of new opportunities come my way.  The indie community is fiercely supportive of each other, and is surprisingly collaborative. While I would probably take a six-figure advance should I be offered one, I doubt I will ever abandon indie publishing entirely. There’s something eminently appealing about being in charge of everything and being part of a community that cheers each other onward and upward.

The cost of publishing has gone way, way down over the last few years. Yeah, I know, there are some e-books out there that read like my fifth grade rough drafts, but, most authors go through a lot of effort to put out something entertaining and error free. We write fast, hard, and don’t overthink things too much. (Except me. I overthink EVERYTHING.)

One of these indie-author collaborations I’ve come across is something called the “Hidden” project.  Here’s the basic description from the  Hidden Reader Facebook Group:

One Title. Endless Possibilities.

From romance to thriller, dystopias to fairy tales. There’s something for every kind of reader with the Hidden Project.

Join us for weekly releases from the 26th October onwards.

Laura Greenwood and Joynell Schultz founded the project hoping writers of all genres would jump in and write to the simple prompt–your title must be Hidden. The result is a whole lot of books with the exact same title and nothing else in common.

I put my name in as a way of forcing a deadline. The plan is, Bound to Die will come out in December 5, my Hidden short story in March, followed by Book 2 in late summer/early fall. I’ve written book 2 so that the short story is meaningful and yet not entirely necessary to understanding book 2.

If you’re interested in seeing how dozens of authors are approaching the project, I suggest you look at the website, sign up for the newsletter, or join the Facebook group. (Linked above.)

Here are the first three in the project at Amazon. I haven’t read any of them yet, but they’re short and I’m interested in seeing how this whole Hidden thing pans out.

#SexIsHuman–Let’s Talk About It, Shall We?

This very thoughtful article by erotica editor extraordinaire Rachel Kramer Bussell has pulled me out of my year-long blogging doldrum. I might write another post about my hiatus from blogging, but right now, I want you to think about sex. Actually, I want you to think about erotica and sex.

Erotica is a written story involving sex designed to titillate–the imagination as well as the body. The relationship between the people in the story is incidental to the sex, and Happily-Ever-Afters are not a necessary a component. More often than not, the endings are ambiguous. Some people have referred to erotica dismissively as written porn, but that sells the genre short.

The best erotica, the kind I write under my primary erotic pen name, and the kind Rachel Bussell ensures in every one of her anthologies, goes beyond one-handed reading. There is almost always some character development and a fundamental change or experience that would never happen without the sex in the story.  Often, erotica examines some part of our sexual nature or humanness. For example, Brandy Fox’s If Mom’s Happy: Stories of Erotic Mothersis an entire collection about women and their sexuality as mothers.

Sex changes us. Life changes how we approach sex. Erotica helps us delve into who we are, and it helps us grow. Erotica usually goes into graphic detail, and we shouldn’t be ashamed of that kind of detail.

In the wake of the success of Fifty Shades of Grey, Tom Bissell opined in GQ about his experiences with consuming erotica and the role the reader plays. “To write about sex well, you have to be brave. To read about sex well, though, you have to be honest. You have to be willing to be turned on, and you have to be willing to be disgusted; you also have to understand the difference between being turned on and being disgusted. That’s the nutshell history of censorship: turned-on people claiming to be disgusted.”                                                                                      –from linked article

As a writer, my primary function is to entertain people. Regardless of what genre I am working on, I focus on reader expectation. People buying erotica expect a certain kind of entertainment. When I provide them what they are looking for, I’m happy, they’re happy–we’re all happy!  If I were writing comedy and no one was laughing, I’d be failing. If someone were to send me an email telling me they got off when reading a story, I’d have to take it as a compliment. I don’t really want to know the details, thank you. I’m not so sure I’d be so thrilled about them thinking about “ME” while they get off because…I am not my characters. I use a lot of imagination when I write. LOL.

As a writer in multiple genres, I now use FOUR DIFFERENT names for my writing

The first pen name is one I have told absolutely no one, but it’s making me a good chunk of change. There are kinks in this world that are not well understood, and anytime someone spends any length of time writing to their world, they buy it. Nothing beats feeling understood. This one really borders on the “turned-on claiming to be disgusted” vibe for me. I’m not EVER going to partake in the kind of sexual acts I write about as this pen name, but it’s hard to not get turned on by them anyway. (Fantasy vs. reality is a big part of this whole thing, and worthy of its own discussion sometime.)

I spend an hour or two writing a 2-3,000 word short story, edit it for grammar, slap a home-made cover on it, and publish it for $2.99.  For those of you paying attention–that’s about the same price-point most romance writers choose for their 50,000 word novellas.

The second pen name is for my mainstream erotica and is one I share with people who ask–except certain relatives or guys who are looking at my boobs instead of my face when they ask me about it. Like in the article linked at the beginning of this post, I have been mostly lucky about not being approached by weirdos who conflate me with my writing.

I totally enjoy writing erotica, but I use a pen name for various reasons. Back in 2010, my daughter was freaking out over my sullying the Rockenbeck name. She didn’t want any confusion between my erotic work and her (as yet unpublished) fantasy fiction. I’m glad I did go with a pen name, because publishing erotica at Amazon screws up your links, and I’d hate to have my murder mystery cast into the Amazon dungeon because of my name being linked to erotica.

What? Yep. Amazon works against itself by limiting how people see erotica on their storefront.  Amazon dumps kinky stories into their dungeon. Why is this? Amazon totally buys into this ridiculous, pearl-clutching narrative that explicit sex is wrong or needs to be hidden. (Unless it’s a best-seller.) In order to find certain stories, people have to know the name of the story or get lucky with their searches.

The third pen name I use is for a new steamy romance joint pen name that a friend and I are working on together. They don’t want to be identified, but I feel like the basically vanilla sex in it is so far removed from the kinkier stuff I write under my other two pen names that I’m fine sharing it. The main difference between the erotica and the romance is the romance is novella/novel length and the relationship between the people is definitely a romance where they end up with their Happily Ever After.

I love this project because working as a writer is fundamentally a lonely venture. With Juno Chase, I’ve got someone to plot stories with. We hang out together in person to brainstorm characters and nit-pick each other’s writing–tearing it apart and figuring out how to put it back together again. Having a colleague as a writer is precious and awesome! The first is up for sale, the second is going up this week sometime. We’re about to send our fourth book to the editor, and each book is better than the previous one.  The writing is stronger, the plots are more cohesive, and the stories get longer.

The fourth name I write under is my legal name, Laurie Rockenbeck, I am writing mysteries, thrillers, and mainstream fiction. I fully expect to hear from unhappy people when my first novel, Bound to Die comes out. (SOON!) But, there’s no sex in that book, and I expect the hate to come simply from my protagonist being a transmale detective.

What kind of reactions do I get from people?

With the really kinky pen name, I’ve yet to receive any email from anyone. I think the people who read those particular stories are not wanting to be identified. And there are zero reviews on the store-front.  And, while I’m very sex-positive, I would be stupid to not recognize that some kinks and fetishes are considered unusual or even disgusting.

With my erotic pen name, I’ve had a couple of comments about people enjoying the stories and how they have gotten off while reading them–but these are usually part of the public reviews on Amazon or Goodreads.  I take it as a compliment because…well…I WROTE THEM to excite people. I’ve only gotten one harassing email, and that was from a disgruntled author I turned away for an anthology.

I’ve never gotten any weirdo reactions to my writing about sex in person, either. Most people are intrigued by a middle-aged woman who will actually admit to knowing plenty about flogging and handcuffs. (Research can be a lot of fun.) I’m most often asked “how I got started” writing erotica, not about my own private sexual inclinations.

Talking about sex can be tricky and uncomfortable, but until people are willing to admit they think about sex or enjoy reading erotica, it’s going to remain taboo. Amazon will continue to toss erotic work into their dungeon and hide it from you. You can help change that by normalizing it. Don’t be afraid to admit you read whatever you read. Leave reviews. Talk about it.

#sexishuman

 

Note: I completely forgot a fifth name I use for creating content over at blog-mutt. I can’t remember why I didn’t go with my legal name over there, because all I do is write 400 word blog posts for $8 a pop. It’s a quick way to make $32 in an hour when I’m bored.

Lemon Ombre Cake

For my son’s birthday, he requested a “lemon, lemon, lemon” cake, and I decided I’d try my hand at an ombre frosting. I took our favorite lemon cake, did a little research and put together what you see above. As I worked, I did a couple of time-lapse photos and put them on my FB wall. People asked for the recipe, so I decided to blog about it because that’s easier in the long run.

I made the cake in three steps. Lemon Curd, Cake, and Frosting. I made the butter-cream a couple of days ahead, and I had to re-whip it to make it creamy after it was in the fridge for a couple of days. If I do this again, I’ll make the filling ahead of time. Cook the cake a day ahead and make the butter-cream to use right away. It was sort of a pain to re-whip the frosting.

I assembled the cake and took a time-lapse of the process. I put one layer on the cardboard, made a ring of butter-cream around the outside edge and filled it with lemon curd. I added a second layer and repeated the filling before topping with the third layer and covering the entire thing with a crumb coat. That all went into the fridge until the frosting was firm.

Then, I mixed two colors of yellow frosting–about a cup of each color, and left the rest of the frosting a kind of creamy color. This time-lapse shows how I piped thick bands of the dark yellow on bottom, medium yellow in the middle and the white around the top. It looks really messy, but that’s okay because the magic happens when you smooth the cake.  This video is kind of funny because I put the cake plate on top of the turntable. I saw that in another video and thought it was clever, but it didn’t really work all that well for me because I ended up with frosting on the bottom of the plate and ended cleaning up the look by piping shells around the base.

The cake recipe “Glazed Lemon Cake” in The Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. I made a couple of changes to make it a three-tiered cake. Sorry about the timing being vague, but you really do have to just check to make sure it’s done. Start at 20 minutes and keep checking…

ingredients Makes 8-10 portions

• ½ pound ( 2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, sifted
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 tightly packed tablespoons grated lemon zest
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• Lemon Icing (Recipe follows)

Steps

Preheat oven to 325f. Grease three cake pans. (Mine were 9 inch, but I’d do 8 next time for a taller cake)

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, blending well after each addition.

Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Stir dry ingredients into egg mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Add lemon zest and juice.

Pour batter into prepared pans. Set on the middle rack of the oven and bake about 20 minutes (more or less) until cake pulls away from the sides of the pan and a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool cake in the pan, set on a rack, for 10 minutes. Remove the cake from the pan and cool ten minutes in pans, then invert onto racks and allow to cool completely.

 

Lemon Curd Filling: I used this lemon curd recipe.  It’s pretty easy, but you can make any lemon curd, or to simplify your life you can buy jars of lemon curd. It’s really not that hard to make, but buying a jar can save you time.

The frosting is Swiss Meringue Buttercream. If you click the link, you’ll see a nice tutorial on the whole process.

 

Why I Find Comfort in Crime Fiction

A few months ago I almost signed up for an “urban escape” training weekend. We’re not talking getting out of the city and into the woods though. The course description is this:

While on an international business trip you are kidnapped and held for ransom. or, a terrorist attack closes the business district of your city and you find yourself in a dangerous, chaotic fix. How do you stay alive? How do you get to safety on your own?

This class provides leading-edge skills to civilians who live or work in challenging urban environments or who may find themselves in a destabilizing urban area during a crisis. Topics covered include covert movement (day vs. night), the judicious use of caches, understanding urban baseline movement and urban awareness training, the use of disguises and false papers/identification, lock picking, escaping from unlawful custody, obtaining and driving local transportation, the use of “specialized” urban gear, and instruction on how to develop urban escape and evasion go-bags. A one day urban escape scenario is held the final day of class.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? One of the classes was offered in Las Vegas during my daughter’s spring break, and I suggested we take it together–spend a couple days in Vegas ahead of time for fun, then go to the class to learn some new skills. Great mommy-daughter bonding time, right? She seemed as excited about it as I was.

When I suggested I wanted to do this, my husband was appalled. He didn’t understand why we would be attracted to this kind of weekend. Learning how to escape from being kidnapped? Sure, it would be awesome research for my writing, but I wanted to do it. For me. I still want to.

As I spoke to more of my friends about this, I learned that women were more likely to be attracted to the class than men. As women, we are taught to walk down the street with heightened awareness and actively think about the threats that surround us all the time. Is that man crossing the street toward me? What kind of lighting is there? Can I see who is around me? Who is nearby that can harm me? A class like this would give me some possible skills to use if I am ever pulled into a passing car or a bag goes over my head from behind.

As I rationalized my desire to take this class, I realized my relationship to reading (and writing), and my intense focus on all things scary had to do with coping in life. Crime fiction, mysteries and stories that deal with horrible things provide a sort of comfort to me. It is to many women what Grimm’s Fairytales are to children.

Reading about someone surviving a terrifying situation, especially if they are part of their own escape from it, helps us, as women, cope with the possibilities. It makes it so we can walk down the street knowing others have survived, we can too.

note:
I ended up not taking that particular class because of timing and cost issues. Good thing, too. The weekend I was looking at ended up being the same one where I had an emergency appendectomy. Being locked in a car trunk with an exploding appendix would have not been a good time. I’d still like to take the class sometime…

.

(c) Can Stock Photo

A new year, a new list…

What’s on your list to read in 2016?  I got a few fun books to read over the holidays, (see photo) and I still have a backlog from book-signing events and conferences.

First up is “Purity” by Franzen. It was a birthday gift from my fabulous mother-in-law, and I have kept ‘meaning to get into it.’

Every book I read about writing gives me the same advice–write and read a lot. I tried to put every book I read in 2015 on my Goodreads shelves, but I probably missed one or two. But, it looks like I made my 52 book goal for the year.  Most were mysteries or thrillers. What a surprise!

As a writer, I have a couple of standard responses to books I read.  Often I think “wow…this is really good. HOW did this writer pull me in?”  I spend some time analyzing the craft of the author and feeling inferior.  The other response is “wow…this is really crap.  How did this writer ever get published?” along with the more peevish, “I write better than this, so what’s off about MY STORY?”

Regardless of my response, I usually learn SOMETHING as a writer with every book I pick up. Reading without the active analysis is harder for me than it used to be, so I love it when I get so sucked into a story that I forget to pay attention to craft details. When I put such a book down, I have a moment where I think, “wait…how did that happen? I read a story and didn’t even think about how the author used a gazillion adverbs and it didn’t bug me at all…”

Here’s wishing you and yours a happy, safe, and word-filled 2016.

 

 

Why your epic-fantasy-detective-Christian-erotic-romance is having a hard time being found….

I recently worked with a friend to co-edit and publish an anthology of erotic vampire stories. The collection includes some gay, some lesbian, some straight, some BDSM, and even one science fiction story. Given they are all about vampires, most of which suck blood or psychic ju-ju, they all border on horror.

If you’re  at all observant, you might have noticed the picture to the left. These are the categories publishers use as defined by the book industry study group.  When we went to publish the book, we were given space to choose three categories.  (I’ve included both erotica and fantasy categories, but the link to the group will show all categories–click on fiction for all fiction etc.)  Technically speaking, we could easily have chosen six categories for this anthology.

We chose to publish via Ingram Sparks, a distributor of books all over the world, rather than via Amazon.  Amazon is hated–and I mean HATED–by most brick and mortar stores, and we wanted to make sure this little anthology was available in small independent stores.  This is how it works. The publisher logs onto IngramSpark and adds a new title. They put in the ISBN, which they’ve purchased from a service. Then, they choose the categories and add in a bunch of key words to help readers with their searches. Basically, the publisher adds data to a database. They upload the documents for the book–cover, PDF, epub files etc. Then, retailers databases ‘talk’ to the distributor’s databases and computer magic happens and the book appears for sale all over the internet–Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, etc. Unfortunately, not all magic is magical. Databases talking to other databases don’t always match up field for field and nothing is 100% automated.  We still had to call Amazon directly for them to link the kindle version with the print version. Barnes and Noble managed to link the two versions automatically, but they got other metadata wrong because they pulled data from the wrong fields.

The bigger problem is, you can’t add categories or tweak them. We were stuck with the categories shown in the image. So, while there are several gay stories in our anthology, they aren’t ALL gay. And while there is one alien story in the book, it’s not a collection of science fiction. We could have just left it at “collections and anthologies” but we wanted to let readers know, somehow, there are more than just heterosexual interactions in the book. Our back cover, the description for the book, ended up being the only way we could inform readers of what they’d find inside.

As authors, we get asked this question by agents and editors all the time: “Where would your book go on the shelf?”  Now I FINALLY understand why. They want to visualize our books as part of the industry standards–the categories they know and understand. If they can’t click on one of the topics off that list, they don’t know how to sell our work. The category list is a lot smaller than you think it is.  Genre-benders almost always get turned down by agents because they can’t quite figure out which category to use that will sell the most books.  If it doesn’t fit into the list as they know it, they won’t want to rep or buy your book.

So, here’s the take away for writers.  If you have a book you want to sell, study the list. Figure out which three categories you would choose to best describe your book and use the top category in your pitches. You can do this even with cross-genre work by going with the strongest element of your novel.

Deep breath, hit send. Fly baby, fly.

Betas and drafts.

I might as well be standing outside naked–in a public park surrounded by people staring at me. That’s how exposed I feel right now. Today is it. The day I send Bound to Die out into the world. Yes, a few people have read it, liked it, even. But, today is the day I send it to agents and editors–the people I met at last year’s PNWA conference who said, “Sounds like a great story. Send it to me when you’ve got it.” The people who will pass judgment on it in a way that has me feeling raw and vulnerable.

I made a goal to send it off before THIS year’s PNWA conference. It’s July 3rd, and I’m meeting that goal by a scant two weeks.

I took all my beta-reader’s delicious (and sometimes painful comments) and worked through them over the last few months. I hired a professional editor to look at the result and rewrote based on his comments. All the while, I tried to maintain the integrity of my voice, my character’s voices. Did I make every change my readers suggested? No. I seriously considered every thoughtful remark and comment. I agonized over cutting characters, adding in more of this or that. At the end, I am feeling really good about the book. It’s got a beginning, a middle, and an end–complete and full story with characters who make me want to write more of them.

It’s hard work. I was consumed by it in a way I had never experienced before. Working late into the night is pretty strange experience for me, but that old Journalism degree pounded a fierce compulsion to meet deadlines into my psyche. I’m done…I’m finally done.

Well, for now, anyway.

Beta Time

People have been asking me questions that are some variant of “So, how’s that book coming along?” or “When is your book coming out?” and “Didn’t you win a contest or something?” and “Hasn’t it been a while now?”

It feels like FOREVER since I started Bound to Die for NaNoWriMo in 2011. I took a look at the original 50,000 words and realized I have kept about 5,000 of them. Ten percent. I point this out to illustrate that, as a newbie novelist, I am learning as I go. Writing a novel is about ten thousand times more difficult than reading one. And, when you do it the way I did, it’s maybe a gazillion times harder.

The problem with NaNoWriMo is, it’s all about process and not product. The problem with this is…well, it’s NOT about the product. So, my 2011 NaNoWriMo was a mess. It’s taken me three years to turn it around into something that is readable. In Mid-February, I sent the manuscript off to six readers to get their response.

The image above shows the first three manuscripts I got back. I used this image to illustrate the next step in my process. I will be comparing notes from all six readers side-by-side and page-by-page. For example, readers of two of the returned manuscripts have brought up an issue at the start of Chapter 23. They are having DIFFERENT questions, but this tells me that I have to re-write the transition into the scene or fix it some other way to keep people connected to the story.

As the author, I get to make all the decisions about things, but when half the people are being bumped out of the story, it’s clear something is not working. This is tricky, because writing by committee doesn’t work. I’m trying to work out a metric on this. If only one person is bumped by something, I look to see if it’s a big bump or a little one. If it’s something easy to clarify, I will. If it’s something that I think is just that reader’s ‘personal issue’, I’ll probably ignore it. If more than two have a bump, then I KNOW there is a problem.

One person told me he doesn’t like the name I chose for my protagonist. It just so happens he had a bad reaction to the name because he was projecting from a life experience. I get that, but I decided to keep the name I had very carefully chosen even though I know at least one person won’t like it. Heck, I know more than one person won’t like the book. (And, there’s the topic of my next blog post–thick skin…)

I’m heading off on a three day intensive editing retreat this week to go through all the fabulous and thoughtful responses I got from my “beta readers.” I have an appointment with a developmental editor in April, and then I’ll be ready to do one more edit before sending it out to agents. I had a bunch of them interested in the story at last summer’s PNWA conference, and I can’t wait to get it into their hands.

Cassoulet!

After my last post on making the duck confit, I kind of left things hanging. Sorry about that, but I was busy finishing a draft of my novel during the last few weeks. Said draft is out into the world, or at least in the hands of six lovely beta readers for now. I told my family last night I feel like I just walked into the mall, took all my clothes off, and asked people to tell me what they think. I have a very thick skin when it comes to my writing, but there’s something very raw and tender about sending my 98,000 word “baby” off to be (intentionally) torn into shreds by critical readers.

Back to Cassoulet…In my last post, I cover making Duck confit. Today I’ll run through what else goes into our cassoulet with a bunch of pictures. (Still trying to figure out alignment issues…sorry if it’s not all pretty on your browser.) For the pork roast recipe, you can find the general directions here.

And, here’s a link to where you can watch a timelapse of putting it all together. I apologize in advance for the vertical format. I had to stick the phone into something to hold it while I did the timelapse, and doing it the right way wasn’t working. The only thing that is missing is the final step–chopped parsley mixed with bread crumbs go over the top of the beans. The cassoulet goes in the oven for an hour, then you push the browned crumbs down into the beans and let it brown again.

Pork roast in marinade plus prepared veggies.I used Julia Child’s classic pork roast recipe. I let it marinate for a couple of days before cooking it for the cassoulet.

The roast is browned and veggies are added before it bakes in the oven.I deglazed the pan after the roast was done cooking with wine and saved the resulting liquid for the final preparation of the cassoulet.

We found some French garlic sausage to use, but you can use kielbasa found at the grocery store. Just don’t use breakfast sausage. You want something with a savory garlic flavor.

The garlic sausage is cut into quarter chunks and browned. I let it drain on paper towels before putting into the cassoulet. I bet pouring the leftover fat from the browning onto the beans would be tasty, too.

The bouquet garni for the beans is pretty important. Parsley, thyme, garlic and bay flavor the beans.

One inch chunks of salt pork are first boiled then drained before adding to the beans.

The beans have been through a quick boil/soak. Now they are in their long cook with sliced onions, the salt pork and the bouquet garni. They are cooked until just tender as they will be cooked again in the cassoulet.

Here you see everything ready to put together, except the beans. They are on the stove. The duck, pork, sausage, juice from the duck and pork, salt pork are ready to be layered together.

Crusty Cassoulet, ready to serve.

Cassoulet–Step 1, Duck Confit with the Anova Sous Vide

Crusty Cassoulet, ready to serve.

For many years, my in-laws would celebrate their New Year’s Day wedding anniversary by hosting an open house and serving Cassoulet. January 1, 2015 was their 50th anniversary, and a cassoulet open house seemed the perfect way to honor their golden year.

What is cassoulet? Essentially, it’s baked beans. In France, people will take whatever meats they have left over from their meals, put it in a pot with beans and bake it. However, not being French, and not having leftover meat enough for fifty people, I definitely had to start from scratch. I used the old Julia Child cookbook my mom-in-law had used, watched the Julia Child video on youtube and went from there. The idea of using duck confit came from the cookbook, and I decided that sounded extra rich and yummy.

I had made a ‘quick’ version of duck confit recently in order to get the duck fat for roasting veggies. The store was out of duck fat, so my only choice, really, was to render it myself. The duck meat itself wasn’t my prime target on that one. But, during my research, I had learned duck confit is traditionally made by covering the duck with salt, weighting it down and letting it cure for several days before covering it with lots more duck fat and then cooking it in the fat at a very precise low temperature for hours. Kind of finicky for me, but I was willing to do it.

Then, when I was looking for the directions again, I came across a recipe by Paula Wolfert. (I tried linking it here, but the site doesn’t allow linking–you can google it under Paula Wolfert Duck Confit.) She basically has you put the duck in a pouch and watch the water at 180F for five hours. Basically sous vide without any machine to help. This still requires pretty consistent attention. It just so happens, my husband bought me the”Anova Sous Vide Immersion Circulator – 120V Circulator Cooker” for Christmas. I knew immediately what my first use of the new Sous Vide machine was going to be.

So, here’s how I did the confit for the party. It’s a lot of duck, but packed in its own fat, it should last for months. Either do a huge batch or reduce the quantity of spices and you’ll be fine. I don’t think there’s anything exact about that part. I saw several recipes that added lots of garlic to the mix, so next time, I might do a garlic confit. (I just didn’t want to flavor all my fat with garlic this time out.)

Ingredients:
10 Duck leg quarters
6 TBSP Salt
4 TSPN freshly ground black pepper
two crumbled bay leaves
10 sprigs fresh thyme

I started by cleaning duck quarters and rubbing them with salt, pepper, and crumbled bay leaves. I had fresh thyme still alive in the garden, so I just layered fresh sprigs on each piece. I piled the duck into a sealable container and pressed it down with a piece of plastic and closed it up for three days in the fridge.

After the duck had been salted for several days, I washed off as much of the herbs as I could and dried very thoroughly with paper towels.

I put two quarters into each quart sized vacuum sealable bag and used a vacuum/sealer (FoodSaver V2244 Vacuum Sealing System“>) to suck out all the air and seal the plastic closed.  (While I did this, I had the Anova set up in a huge pot with water warming to 180F.)
Then, I put all the bags in the huge pot with the Anova. I had filled the pot with very hot tap water, set the machine to 180F and left it to come to temperature while sealing the duck. This is the easy part.  I left the bags in the pot for a long time.  Wolfert said 5 hours, but I actually left mine on for a lot longer. More like ten.  My goal was to get to the point where everything looked rendered and the meat was falling off the bone when I poked at it through the plastic.

As you can see, the fat renders from the duck as it cooks.  This is probably around four or five hours of cooking when I took this photo.  Honestly, I had a meeting that evening, so I left my husband to pull the duck out while I was gone.  You just have to decide when it is done, but with confit, I think the more tender it gets the better.  Check it at five hours, then every hour after until you are satisfied it is melty enough for you.

This is the duck after the duck has cooled overnight. The yellow is the rendered fat, and the pink-jelly like stuff you can see if you look closely, is the rendered juices. At this point, I opened up the bags and scraped the fat into one bowl, the juices into another,and pulled off the meat from the bones so I could use chunks of the meat in the cassoulet. For regular use, I would just leave the duck in the bag until I needed it. Traditionally, you would take the whole piece, reheat it gently and pan fry the skin to a crisp golden yumminess. Since I was serving fifty people off the ten pieces, I had to remove the bone and put pieces throughout the dish instead.

(And sorry about the formatting on this post. I made the mistake of switching to ‘visual’ mode in WP, and couldn’t figure out how to make it look even.)