Traditional French technique reincarnated and updated

• A pair of confits for the home chef

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Confit (cone-FEE). N. A piece of pork, goose, duck or turkey cooked in its own fat and stored in a pot, covered in the same fat to preserve it. (Larousse Gastronomique).

Confit. (cone-FEE). N. Anything contemporary chefs say it is.

Philippe Padovani of Padovani's Restaurant in Waikiki makes a meltingly decadent salmon confit by immersing a fillet of salmon in a warm bath of olive oil just until the flesh turns from bright orange to pale pink. This, he serves with a vegetable broth accented with lemon grass, sweet-tart pear tomatoes, asparagus and mushrooms.

Philippe Padovani with his Salmon Confit in Extra Virgin Olive Oil with Lemongrass Broth of Button Mushrooms, Pear Tomatoes and Asparagus Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

The Epicurious.com Web site lists 25 current references to confit recipes, from rosemary-fig confit to red cabbage confit.

What is happening here? For generations, confit meant one thing: the preserved meats so dear to hearts of people in the south of France, who stirred the rich, herbed meats into garbure, the classic cabbage soup of Bearn, and cassoulet, the incomparable bean casserole of Languedoc, and made a hearty meal of re-heated confit with potatoes well-spiced with garlic and parsley.

Now this humble technique, once the province of French farm wives, is being redefined and revived in both restaurant and home kitchens across America.

In fact, Padovani said, defining confit as preserved duck or goose is a misunderstanding of the term. Confit is not a dish but a technique, he said. It is the process of cooking a food at a low temperature while it is immersed in fat, oil or syrup. By this definition, he said, candied chestnuts, marrons glacés, are a confit.

Padovani's brother and partner, Pierre, concurred, saying chefs in France have long used this technique for a variety of foods not merely to preserve them, but to intensify flavors and break down tough fibers, creating a silky texture. Both said even gizzards can become fork-tender when prepared in the confit style. "It just brings out all the flavor and gives it a texture like fondant," Philippe Padovani said.

Contemporary confits fall into three broad categories:

• "Oil poaching" means to immerse food in warm olive or grapeseed oil. Padovani said oil-rich fish lend themselves to this treatment: salmon, 'ahi, black cod (sablefish, the fish we know as butterfish). Less-oily fish seize up and dry out in the oil bath, he said.
• Another form of confit is produced by long, slow oven-roasting or cooking in an oily marinade until the liquid has evaporated and flavors are concentrated. Katagawa's onion confit falls into this category, as do most of the vegetable relish-type confits, including tomato, garlic, shallot and cabbage confits, which are usually served alongside meats or fish, in appetizers or as a spread on sandwiches. These intensely flavored confits are easy and almost foolproof to make and good to have around for impromptu entertaining.
• Sugared confits — candied fruits, ginger and such, which may be used in desserts or as a garnish.

Oil poaching is an interesting technique that requires some finesse but is quickly mastered and it's getting a lot of attention now. Its one downside: Cost. You can readily use up an entire large bottle of costly extra-virgin olive oil; the oil can be used again once for the same purpose, but after that, it begins to "break" and take on off flavors and must be discarded.

Padovani's signature Salmon Confit is prepared by a means not available to home cooks: a heat lamp. Heat lamps are standard equipment in restaurant kitchens for keeping dishes warm until the meals can be served. But Padovani found that he could actually cook delicate salmon under the heat lamp. He first heats extra-virgin olive oil gently in the oven, then places the salmon in the oil and allows it to cook for 3-5 minutes under the lamp. At home, a very low oven works (see recipes, this page).

Oil-blanching is a common first step in preparing seafood and meats in Chinese kitchens, but it's rarely used as the sole method of cooking. Rather, food is briefly immersed in a pot of hot vegetable oil (sometimes peanut oil, held at 275-300 degrees), then the ingredients are set aside for use in stir-fries or steamed dishes. Barbara Tropp, in her classic "The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking," (William Morrow, 1982), gave this method the delightful name "velveting." Ken Hom's "Foolproof Chinese Cooking" (DK Publishing, 2001) describes it, too.

Stanley Kee, an avid cook who lives in Kihei, Maui, always oil-blanches shrimp before preparing a stir-fry: For a pound of shelled, deveined, tail-on shrimp, he said, heat 3 cups vegetable oil to 300 degrees in a wok, add the prawns (seasoned with salt and pepper) and blanch until pink. "You just drain them, then you can stir-fry vegetables and add seasonings like shoyu and sherry and sesame oil and add the shrimp back in right at the end."

Stove-top oil-poaching is a specialty of San Francisco's Farallon restaurant, where a tuna confit salad has been on the lunch menu since 1997. Chef Brad Barker's technique is simple: Heat grapeseed oil to 180 degrees; season tuna with thyme and garlic; place 'ahi in the pan and cover it. Turn off the heat and leave the fish to cook through; about 10 minutes. This is served with steamed potatoes, tomatoes and the frilly lettuce called frisee. This technique can be used to make even well-done fish stay moist.

Oil isn't the only fat used for this form of cooking: A little restaurant in Seaside, Ore., used to make a butter-blanched asparagus that was guilt-inducing (and smile-inducing) in the extreme. The cook first melted an entire stick(!) of butter in a small, oblong terrine in a 400-degree oven; then, when the butter was piping hot and bubbling, he'd throw in spears of trimmed asparagus and return the dish to the oven until the asparagus was cooked tender-crisp. In the 19th century, French chefs routinely cooked salmon and lobster immersed in melted butter. At the prestigious French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley, Thomas Keller still prepares lobster this way.

In contrast to the immersion methods of oil-poaching and oil-blanching, the "dry" confits so popular today are not served as main courses, but as condiments or ingredients within a recipe. Tomatoes are roasted with oil, herbs and garlic until they're almost candied. Garlic or shallots are immersed in olive oil and slow-cooked to a golden-brown turn.

Katagawa, the Hawai'i Kai home cook, first had an onion confit at a restaurant during a trip to Seattle some years ago; she came home and scoured her considerable cookbook collection, experimenting until she had reproduced the confit recipe to her satisfaction. It's a sweet-sour mixture of sauteed onions slow-cooked with wine, sugar and vinegar. Katagawa uses it in a wide variety of ways.

"I love this with steak or steak sandwiches, even hamburgers," she said. "I make a quick pasta sauce with ground pork, lots of garlic and parsley and tomato paste, and I'll put some confit on top of the pasta. I give it away to friends as a gift sometimes. It keeps well in an airtight jar in the refrigerator but you have to reheat it a little before using it."

She laughed. "My son, who was a teenager when I started making this, used to call it 'comfy.' He said it made him feel 'comfy' to have some on his hamburger."