I recently read Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and came across a passage about a meal at a Parisian restaurant where one of the dishes was canard al le presse. I looked it up in the Wikipedia:
Complicated! And I’ve never eaten any meat, AFAIK, that had blood left in it on purpose. Have any of you ever tried this? Is it any good?
You had me at “first, a duck is strangled…”
Never had the pleasure. However, here’s a lovely site with an illustrated description of the preparation, for you folks who like a bit of gore with your haute cuisine.
To me it looks a bit like the Food Network as portrayed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, but à chacun son goût, I suppose.
And really, who wouldn’t be proud to own a (rare, apparently prohibitively expensive) sterling silver duck crusher?
This dish featured on a recent TV show called Edwardian Supersize Me. It looked pretty good
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/edwardian-supersize-me.shtml
The perfect yuppie kitchen accessory! Costs a fortune, you have to go to a specialty store to find it, and you’ll probably only use it once!
They do that right out in the open, in the middle of the restaurant? :eek:
Almost enough to make a vegitarian out of me. 
Sissy stuff! I want a restaurant where the duck is strangled at your table!
Maybe that’s okay for you Bourgeoisie out-of-touch types, but I remember back in the day when us kids fought over who strangled the duck last time and who get’s to this time.
Is it anything like pressed ham?
I made a dish for my grill once called “chicken under a brick”.
But, that’s just slicing a roaster down the backbone, and using a few bricks to keep it flat over the coals.
One of the murders in Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe is memorably carried out with a Duck Press. They don’t show the actual murder (thank god), but you do get to see Robert Morley reacting with delight at seeing a duck itself pressed in it, and the juices running out.
Suddenly, drowning ortolan in cognac and eating them whole sounds positively civilized.
Am I the only one who thinks that sounds really yummy? Also is “strangling the duck” anything like choking the chicken?
You got to press the duck?! All we got to eat was the bones and stuff after poncy types like you got to press all the good parts out.
Not exactly. The point of strangling the duck is to retain fluids.
They work really well with kittens, too. I don’t strangle them first, though; I like mine a little on the dry side.
If you work the press slowly, you get an additional benefit from unstrangled kittens - a little light pre-dinner music.
Years ago pressed duck was a fairly standard menu item at a lot of Chinese restaurants. It is really good, but a lot of work, so you don’t see it much these days. I do know of one place in downtown Cleveland that still makes it.
I have been looking here in Houston for a Chinese restaurant that still serves this. My dad used to order it all the time back in the day. It was called wor shew ap. I’ve called a few places that actually have duck on their menu, but nobody has ever even heard of it. It was served as a rectangular shaped serving, with layers of duck meat, IIRC. (Which is doubtful!)
Not the same as the French recipe, surely?
Wouldn’t there be a lot of duck poo in the sauce? They’re literally squeezing the shit outta that duck. Or do they disembowel the duck after strangulation? But that would cause blood loss (it’s not like de-veining a shrimp is it?)