For 4 people: 1 young, meaty, free-range duck, weighing about 2 kg; 4 small cavaillon melons (or 2 medium honeydew melons), not too ripe; 1 glass white port, 1 bottle dry white wine; 1 clove garlic, 2 shallots, 1 small glass each red wine and duck stock (cooked from neck and wing tips); 1 duck liver, 2 chicken livers; 2 tablespoons tomato paste, 0.2 cl cognac, 2 sprigs fresh thyme, cayenne pepper, olive oil; juice of half a lemon, salt, pepper.
From the melons on the stem side cut out a lid diagonally, so that it fits afterwards again exactly in the Öfnnung. Remove the watery inside and the seeds; drain the fruit upside down. Pour in the port and seal. Put them in a suitable pot, pour the white wine around them and steam them in the oven until they are not too soft. Take care that the melons keep their shape.
Roast the ready-to-cook duck briskly in the oven at 220 degrees, turning it over and over during this time; salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, prepare the sauce: Sauté finely chopped garlic and shallots in a little olive oil, pour in red wine and duck stock and reduce. Roast the cleaned livers quickly in the remaining oil so that they are still pink inside, season with cayenne and thyme, deglaze with the cognac, press through a fine sieve and add the tomato paste and lemon juice. Pour in the sauce mixture, stir well and keep warm.
Cut all the meat from the carcass of the finished roast duck, layer it inside the melons and keep adding a little of the sauce. Put the lid on and steam in the oven again for a short time.
Serve the melons whole and present the duck pieces along with the peeled melon flesh, perfumed with sauce and port.
It is ripe when it falls: Cavaillon, the queen of melons
They must have been a special delicacy even back then, the Cavaillon melons from the town of the same name near Avignon in Provençe. Otherwise, would the writer Alexandre Dumas, who was also considered a gourmet, have demonstrated his special fondness for the fine fruit by offering his entire work in exchange for being supplied with twelve of those delicious melons a year for the rest of his life? I don't know if the deal went through; nevertheless, the spherical, yellow-green-skinned Cavaillon is also my favorite melon. The delicacy of its orange flesh is unmatched, much less surpassed, by any other variety. The higher price of Cavaillon melons is therefore justified.
The crown, it is claimed, belongs to female melons. These differed from the males by a round, colorful spot opposite the base of the stem, which resembled the vestibule of the female nipple. Now female melons may indeed taste better; but I would be satisfied if more fully ripened fruit were to be had at all, before I cared for the niceties. Because melons harvested before that time do not ripen, on the contrary: their sugar content even decreases again.
So more important than their sex is the degree of ripeness of the fruit. This can be recognized first of all by the fact that the fruit is really heavy in the hand; it also gives slightly at the base of the stem when pressed with the finger. If you smell it at this point, it must have a sweet scent.
But with Uwe Struck's Cavaillon melons (2,50 €/piece) the problem of pubescent fruits does not arise at all, because he waits for the right moment: The fruits are ripe when they fall down, it's as simple as that. Ripe melons can easily be stored for a few days; cool, but not in the fridge.
Uwe Struck's nursery is a source of culinary delights beyond melons. In their own time, many vegetables ripen, up to 80 crops, including several varieties of cucumbers, which are related to melons, as well as chard, tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers, salsify and even artichokes; also herbs, fruits and berries.
Melons belong to the cucurbits and thus, strictly speaking, to vegetables. However, they are used like fruit, both watermelons and dessert melons, such as our charantais-type cavaillon. They are best eaten fresh, as an appetizer, with or without ham. Or as a dessert, for example with sweetened fresh curd ("Faiselle"). But there is one recipe that has interested me for a long time, but so far I have not been able to bring myself to cook it: Duck à la Alfred Walterspiel. It sounds good and certainly makes a good impression, this duck ragout, which is served together with a sophisticated sauce in a whole melon stewed with port wine. Since cavaillons are too small for this purpose, you either need more than one fruit or make use of one of the other dessert melons, such as honeydew melon, cantaloupe or galia.
Biological Horticulture (BIOLAND) Uwe Struck
Alleestr. 47 (outside, at the B 519)
65439 Flörsheim-Bad Weilbach
Phone: 06145-33811
Fax: 06145-33811
Öffnungszeiten: Sale only ex farm: Mon & Wed, 16-18; Thu 10-12.30; Fri 15-18.
from Waldemar Thomas