Confit
Can’t wait to see Michael Ruhlman’s forthcoming book, Ratio: the simple codes behind the craft of everyday cooking
Meanwhile, Ruhlman extolls the virtues of duck confit — duck legs, slowly cook in duck fat. Ruhlman has a great point: if you don’t have lots of duck fat handy, just use some olive oil.
But you can make very nice confit without any duck fat at all. Just season the duck legs (I use plenty of salt, pepper, sugar, juniper berries, coriander) and wrap them pairwise in heavy duty aluminum foil. Into the 300° oven for about 3 hours: now you have duck confit and a good deal of duck fat to use next time.