Raised duck pie with flakey hot water crust pastry jam-packed with confited duck leg meat, confited gizzards, and pan-fried hearts

This bodacious bauble of pastry is very much in the style of a traditional British meat pie. Think pork pie. Except this one’s duck.

The pastry is “raised” by hand around a mould or dolly, starting from the base and drawing upwards to form the walls of the pie case. No rolling. No pie tin. No levitation. Maybe I could’ve used a deep muffin tin but where’s the fun in that? Actually, this recipe only came about because I wanted to play with a dolly. Yeah, yeah. Action Man was a dolly—albeit a bearded one. Er-hem. Anyway, you know me. A new technique is like something shiny to a magpie. I have to go for it. After much searching online I found a larger wooden dolly at Morris & Dickinson in Melton Mowbray. Kismet! Why did it not occur to me to look there first? Why didn’t I think a pre-eminent pork pie maker, who by the way still makes their pies by hand, would sell the prerequisite dolly. Duh! My dolly measures 72mm in diameter and 85mm to the shoulder.

Pork pie dolly next to a beer, for scale

Meat pies are densely packed with…err…meat. Put it this way, if you can’t catch, you wouldn’t want one thrown at you. And this little ducky depth-charge is no different. That said, the pastry is truly something special. Flakey hot water crust packed solid with all kinds of delicious duck bits—confited leg meat, confited gizzards, and pan-fried hearts. Baked free-standing these pies develop little pot-belly bulges making them the perfect shape to cradle in one’s hand.

I’m an utter dolly novice but I reckon the pies turned out great. They look so cute. Coo! I might develop the recipe further over time. I reckon the filling can take more spice. And if my dolly fu improves I’ll share any tips and tricks with the method.

In the meantime, have at it. You won’t be disappointed.

BTW, I recommend doing all the confiting the day before so you have all the cooked ingredients chilled down for the filling. This means starting an overnight cure 2 days before.

Ingredients

Make 4 individual pies, depending on your dolly size.

CONFIT DUCK LEGS

4 duck legs
600g duck fat
100g rock salt
16g caster sugar
4g Prague Powder #1, optional if you want to avoid nitrites and nitrates
2 garlic cloves, crushed
4 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 bay leaves, bruised

Pie Filling

4 confit duck legs
200g confit duck gizzards. I save up the offal (gizzards, hearts, livers) from the ducks I buy, keeping it in the freezer until I have enough. I also keep a large tin of Gesiers Confits De Canard handy—the gizzards are already confit’ed and come with the flavour-packed confit fat. Couldn’t get any easier!
50g duck hearts, optional
125g pancetta, finely chopped
125g minced pork belly
2 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves finely chopped
1.5 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp ground white pepper
0.25 tsp ground mace
1 tsp allspice
1 bay leaf, finely chopped
25g fresh breadcrumbs
1 egg, beaten
200ml duck jelly, optional if you don’t like aspic

HOT WATER CRUST Pastry

Traditional hot water crust pastry is worked while the dough is hot. However, this recipe creates a dough that can be worked at room temperature and even after refrigeration. The baked pastry is slightly lighter with a crispier crust and the flavour of infused herbs. This dough can be kept in the fridge for 3 days or frozen for a month. It’s best to portion the dough as required before freezing. Defrost the dough in the fridge overnight.

slightly lighter, crispier crust

200ml water
80g lard
80g duck fat
2 rosemary sprigs
10g salt
500g plain flour
2 eggs, beaten
2 egg yolks, for egg wash

Method

CONFIT THE DUCK LEGS

1. First, cure the legs overnight. Mix the ingredients together and rub into the duck legs. Drop into a resealable bag and place in the fridge.

Jellified duck juices separated from the duck fat after confiting the legs

2. Next day, rinse the legs thoroughly and pat dry.

3. In a deep pan, gently melt enough duck fat to cover the legs. Add a tablespoon of water or white wine to help moderate the temperature of the fat and add flavour. Add the duck legs, skin-side up.

4. Place a cartouche over the top of the fat. And lid on. Maintain the fat temperature at 80-90C.

5. When the meat is almost falling off the bone, remove the legs from the duck fat and drain on a rack.

6. Once cooled, remove the skin and shred the meat with your finger. Don’t worry about any residual fat. Fat is flavour. You don’t want any gristle though. I save the skin to make duck crumble. Basically chop up the skin, render the fat out slowly, and let the skin bits gradually crisp up. Yum! You can throw this into the pie, if you want, but let it cool down first. It won’t be crispy anymore but it’s all flavour.

7. Reserve the leg meat in the fridge until needed.

8. Pass the liquid duck fat through a fine sieve while it’s still warm and place in the fridge. The fat will separate and solidify above the lovely jellified cooking juices. If you want to inject jelly into your finished pies, this is the stuff to use.

PREPARE tHE FILLING

Pie filling with duck leg meat, diced gizzards and hearts, pancetta and minced pork

1. Empty the tin of gizzards into a pan and warm. Decant the gizzards from the liquid fat. I use the fat to help confit the duck legs. Dice the gizzards into 5mm cubes or bigger, if you prefer. Reserve in the fridge.

2. Trim the duck hearts of any fat, sinew and tubes. Season then pan-fry in hot oil to sear. Leave to rest and cool and then finely chop. Reserve in the fridge.

3. Now bring the filling together. In a bowl over ice, add the minced pork, pancetta, leg meat, gizzards and hearts. Sprinkle over the salt, pepper, mace and allspice, along with the chopped bay and thyme leaves. Scatter the breadcrumbs and squish in the egg. Work quickly to blend the mixture until it holds together.

4. Divide the filling into 4 equal balls. Cover with cling film and reserve in the fridge.

MAKE tHE Pastry

Duck fat and lard melting in simmering water with rosemary

1. Gently heat the water, lard, duck fat, rosemary and salt to just below boiling until the fats have fully melted. Don’t let it boil. Turn off the heat and let the rosemary infuse for 20 minutes.

2. Sift the flour into a bowl.

3. Make a well at the centre and pour in the beaten eggs. Gently chop the eggs and flour together with a plastic scraper.

4. Remove the rosemary from the melted fats and bring to the boil. Pour into the bowl.

5. Chop with the scraper until the ingredients start to come together, then switch to your hand. Careful! It’s hot. Once you have a rough ball of dough, turn out and knead gently until the dough is uniform.

6. Flatten then allow to cool between parchment paper on a baking tray.

7. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 10 minutes in the fridge.

ASSEMBLE tHE PIES

1. Divide the pastry into 4 balls each weighing 150g, and 4 smaller balls weighing 40g.

2. To make the pie lids, roll the 40g balls into 5mm thick circles. Lay these circles onto a parchment-lined baking tray. Wrap the tray in clingfilm and place in the fridge.

3. For each 150g ball of dough, flatten into a circle slightly wider than the bottom diameter of the pie dolly. Dust the dolly with flour and place it at the centre of the dough circle. Press the dolly down firmly and the dough will puff out a bit and rise up the sides.

4. Dust the dolly again and relocate it within the dough circle. Cup the dolly in your hands. Squeeze the dough to gradually work it up the sides while turning and pushing down on the dolly. Keep the dough as tight as possible against the dolly—which is not easy. Periodically extract the dolly for another dusting and go again. Continue until the wall of the pastry case is about 7-8cm high and the base around 5mm thick.

I learned that the pastry at the corner, where the base turns up into the wall, is where it’s at its thickest. So watch out for that. Keep returning to the corner to work the dough up the sides without stretching it. Of course to confound your efforts, gravity is working against you. The weight of the pastry means it just wants to sag and flop back to the floor, like a drunken friend. I must confess, I cheated a couple of times by turning the dolly upside down to get gravity working with me. This also made thinning the corner dough easier. Bravo!

5. Carefully remove the dolly and pack the pastry case with a ball of pie filling. Cup the pie in your hands, pressing in the meat with your thumbs while turning and shaping the pastry walls. Gently curl the excess pastry around the top outwards to form a collar.

6. Place each pie onto a square of parchment paper then onto a baking tray. Put the tray in the fridge for 30 minutes for the pies to chill and firm up.

7. Cup each pie again for a final shaping.

8. Wet the pie collars with a little water—just enough for the pastry to become tacky. Lay the lids on top then firmly press the lid and collar together, working around the circumference of the pie.

9. Apply a little more water in a ring around the lid, just where the lid becomes the collar. Crimp the collar up and onto this ring. See the photo, then you’ll know what I mean.

10. Use a skewer to poke a hole into the lid at the centre. This will allow steam to escape. If you want to add into the pie jelly later, make the hole big enough to fit the nozzle of a syringe.

BAKING

1. Preheat the fan oven to 190C.

2. Make the egg wash. Make sure the egg yolks are completely separated from the whites. Pass the yolks through a fine sieve to remove the chalazae (the membrane attaching the yolk to the white). Add 2 tsp of cold water and whisk.

3. Brush a thin layer of egg wash onto the pie walls, lids and crimped collars. Don’t let the egg wash pool anywhere otherwise you’ll have spots of omelette that will make the pastry go soft and yucky. And do not egg wash the base. Return the pies to the fridge for 20 minutes or so until the egg wash has dried. Brush on a second thin coat of egg wash, again avoiding the base. Return the pies to the fridge.

4. Once the second coat of egg wash is tacky to touch, decorate the lids as you see fit. I lightly scored the lids with a small knife. Decorate pastry like this after applying egg wash. Do it before and the decoration won’t show in the baked result.

5. Now bake the pies on their parchment squares for approximately 35 minutes, or until the core temperature reaches 70C.

6. Remove the pies from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes on the baking tray before serving hot. Alternatively, after 10 minutes, pop the pies onto a cooling rack until they reach room temperature. Transfer to a tupperware and place in the fridge. BTW, if you want jelly in your pies, inject it after they’ve spent a night in the fridge. Return the pies to the fridge for a few hours for the jelly to set.

Now when it comes to pork pies, and pasties for that matter, I prefer to eat them cold. Ditto for this duck-packed pie. But, I must confess. These pies are also amazing devoured hot. As soon as they came out of the oven I served one each with duck crumble—I told you to save that skin; plus duck jus, buttered kale, cherry jam and cherries pickled in Shiraz wine and Chardonnay vinegar with long pepper, star anise and cardamon. Fab! And very filling. Big pie!

Hot duck pie with duck crumble, duck jus, kale, cherry jam and pickled cherry

The next day the remaining pies came out for a cold lunch. So good! This time enjoyed with a slightly warmed red cabbage choucroute and a Landaise emulsion—my little riff on the dressing for a Landaise salad, which I first encountered at Le Cordon Bleu. Basically, I combined homemade mayonnaise with Moutarde Violette de Brive, a mild French mustard made with grape must, and sherry vinegar, shallot and garlic. Delicious with duck.

Raised duck pie