A Simple Roast Duck

Biteshare.com Culinary Series: Michael Sheffley [REJECTED BY EDITOR]

May 16, 2022

In this exclusive interview, restaurateur Michael Sheffley discusses his upscale Manhattan eatery, The Hen & Drake.

Q: I won’t beat around the bush: Why duck? More precisely, why only duck? Are you worried about being duck-holed by your specialized offerings?

A: Oh, believe me. I’ve been fighting that fight from the beginning. My investors begged me to expand my menu. I could have opened the restaurant years ago if I’d listened to them.

Q: What changed?

A: I fed them.

Q: You fed them.

A: My dishes changed their minds the way my own mind was changed as a child. From the first bite I knew that duck was the superior protein, so rich and fatty it chews more like red meat than poultry. I ate duck eggs for breakfast, duck salad sandwiches for lunch, and pan-seared duck filets for dinner. My first pet was a duck. Nobody in this city, maybe not even in this hemisphere, knows more about cooking duck than me—because nobody’s eaten more duck than me.

Q: Pardon me. Did you say your first pet was a duck?

A: (Laughs) Yes. Nobody’s asked about that part before. Her name was Flannery. She liked to be scratched right here between the eyebrows.

Q: A little ducky told me that you apprenticed under Charlotte Deschamps in Montreal as well as Min Liu in Hong Kong. How do the influences of these two esteemed masters coalesce in your own culinary style?

A: Flannery wasn’t really a pet, strictly speaking.

Q: Uh—

A: She was just livestock that I happened to take a particular shine to. And she took a shine to me as well. Whenever she heard the screen door open she’d waddle over with her wings held out for a hug.

I didn’t understand back then why we had ducks on our property. In my mind there was no connection between the pig and the pork, the chicken and the chicken dinner. I was five years old. I knew of death; George Washington was dead. Jesus was dead, sort of. But that had no relevance to the people and animals I knew personally. You remember how that was, don’t you? Before everything you did or thought was underscored by the inevitable?

Q: Uhm… Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about how you source the ingredients? Michael?

A: The ducks got big and fat throughout the summer and autumn. When the mornings got too cold my father arranged a place in the barn for the birds to keep warm. Except for Flannery, of course, who would have no part of it. She simply wouldn’t rest until we let her in the house. She slept with me in my bed, right here next to my head. My parents let her sleep in my bed, knowing what they knew. Can you believe that?

Q: I…

A: I refused, of course. The other ducks didn’t have names. We could eat those ducks but Flannery was mine. What if we saved Flannery for last? Two weeks without TV, six months without TV, double Language Arts lessons, I hated Language Arts, extra chores, no Christmas presents ever again, birthdays too. I offered everything that was mine to give but that night was the first time Mom and Dad ever agreed on anything. I stood no chance against this freak united front. Flannery would be the jewel of our Christmas dinner and that was that.

I stopped opening the flaps in my advent calendar but the days slipped past anyway. Before I knew it, Christmas Eve was upon us. Snow whipped against the windows like the white ghost of a hurricane. I lay in bed, scratching Flannery between the eyes and studying the window.

I didn’t know where ducks migrated to in the winter. It was possible that I’d never see her again, but that was a chance I had to take. The alternative was unthinkable. Literally unthinkable. That corner of my mind was less than black, a turbulent vacuum that precluded all contemplation. With a heavy heart I scooped a dozing Flannery under one arm. She chittered drowsily as I marched to the window and pried it open. Cold wind poured inside and Flannery flapped out of my arms at once. She side-eyed me from the opposite end of the room, wary and resentful.

“Please,” I croaked, keeping my voice low. My parents couldn’t know what I meant to do. “You know I’m going to miss you. You know I will. But you have to leave now.” I carried her back to the open window again and again but the December chill repulsed her utterly. “Don’t you understand? You can’t stay here.” Again I dragged Flannery to the window, this time pinning her wings against her body until I was holding her aloft outside. For the first time ever, she bit me. I let go and she scrambled back into the bedroom yowling like a cat.

I snatched her and brought her eyes close to mine. “You—will—die,” I seethed. Spittle flew from my clenched teeth. My vision grew blurry as I shook her. “Are you stupid? You have to leave!” I kept shaking her.

Flannery, confused to the point of panic, bit my other hand even harder. A bead of blood fell to the carpet. I stared at it for a moment. Suddenly I was too exhausted to fight, and Flannery wriggled out of my grasp for the last time. I sat cross-legged on the rug and held out my hand. After a moment she waddled over and bowed her head under it, allowing me to rub her between the eyes.

We lay down side-by-side like any other night except that my tears rolled smoothly off the feathers of her back. “You have to go,” I whispered. I just kept saying it. She nibbled my ear as though I were the one that needed comfort. Drowsiness accumulated on my eyelids like snow on the windowsill but I resisted. Every hour of sleep would be an hour I could have spent with her and didn’t.

When I opened my eyes to find that Flannery was no longer next to me, warmth escaped the house like oxygen from a punctured fuselage. Strings of lights hung limp and colorless. The tree in the living room was nothing but a pungent, mutilated plant. Presents were pushed into my hands and I opened them without expression. Mom clucked and told me it was polite to say thank you when one receives a gift. I forced a smile as I held up a Hot Wheels track and several packs of Pokemon cards. I shudder to think how my eyes must look in those pictures. Like the tree, I was dressed for the occasion and already rotting.

The sun set.

Dad didn’t make me watch what he did in the shed—again, I was five years old—but there was no mistaking the oily, headless thing on the table. I stood uncertainly before the dining room threshold, sensing that something precious would be destroyed forever once my bare feet moved from carpet to cold tile. Dad warned me not to make him get up from his chair. I tried to obey but neither my lips nor my legs moved. The next thing I knew his fingers clamped down around my upper arm. He dragged me to the table and lifted me into a chair. The heady aroma of duck fat was so strong the room swam before my eyes.

Dad began to say grace and Mom joined her voice with his. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive.

I followed along in a trembling voice, but a commotion at the center of the table forced my eyes open and my throat closed. There, under the buttery light of the ceiling lamp, Flannery clambered onto the bone-stumps of her legs and shook off the grease budding from her golden-brown skin.

In a world where so many are hungry may we eat this food with humble hearts.

With painstaking effort she turned herself in place on a casserole dish slick with her own fluids. She slipped several times, plopping wetly back onto the ceramic surface. Crystal glasses and silverware danced across the tablecloth.

In a world where so many are lonely may we share this friendship with joyful hearts.

At last the hole that had once been Flannery’s neck faced me, ragged and fathomless. She held out her bald, steaming wings for a hug.

Amen, my parents said in unison. I blinked and found that the roast duck rested right where Mom had left it.

Dad carved off a slice with a skewer and a broad knife, then lowered the delicate hunk of flesh onto my plate. I cried so hard something popped in my throat. He told me I might as well abandon the theatrics because I wouldn’t leave that table until that plate was clean. The idea that anything would be clean again seemed impossible.

Dad repeated himself, annunciating each syllable. He never repeated a command twice. With quivering hands I cut through the meat with the flat edge of my fork—it was so tender and juicy that no knife was necessary—and skewered it. I tried to lift the morsel to my mouth but a retching sob sent the entire fork clattering back to the plate. Under the weight of two unblinking stares I hiccuped and grasped it again.

It was… delicious. Even as teardrops soaked my shirt I kept chewing. The meat melted like butter between my teeth. My parents watched in silence as I cut off another piece and ate it. By the time I finished the entire slice the flow of tears had reduced to a trickle. My breathing was shallow and tremulous but mostly under my control. I dabbed my mouth with a napkin. I said thank you.

I asked for another.

Mom and Dad served themselves and ate alongside me. For half an hour or more the only sound was forks clinking against plates and the occasional involuntary spasm of my lungs. We ate until there was nothing left but bones and gristle and I found myself wishing that there were more.

That night I drifted alone in a sea of cold sheets. Flannery hadn’t just been a friend but a talisman against the imaginative terrors that plague all children. Prior to that fateful meal the shadows in my bedroom harbored a monster of my own invention, a frowning squid with thorny vines for tentacles. Now I sensed the presence of Flannery herself, in whatever form she took now that her old one was destroyed. My pleas for forgiveness felt wretched given that her flesh was still writhing in my belly. The thrumming silence stretched with no answer.

Anger bubbled up in me like bile, and it was easier to be angry than afraid. Words tumbled out of my mouth. I don’t remember which ones exactly. Something like, You never had to live in a world without me. Your pain is over and mine is just starting. It would be better if you never existed. Whatever I said must have been enough, because a vengeful thunder of feathers never erupted from the darkness to pry the meat from my bones. The shadows had become vacant. The only evidence Flannery ever existed at all was slowly becoming waste inside me.

When we’re haunted the dead are close enough to hear us. Not everyone gets that opportunity. What if she left this world thinking I meant what I said? The next night I found myself wishing she would punish me, if only so I could see her again and apologize, for everything. I threw open the closet door and cringed against an onslaught that never came.

On the third silent night I understood death.

In the chamber of my heart where Flannery once lived there was a tugging abyss that threatened to turn me inside out. I filled it with cooking. If I couldn’t love Flannery anymore, I could at least love the way she tasted. I worshiped the flavor of duck. I made myself a servant to it.

Does that answer your earlier question? If a simple roast duck prepared in a farmhouse can have such a profound effect, imagine pan-seared foie gras with caramelized figs; duck breast with plum slices and pickled radishes; bruschetta topped with duck prosciutto and manchego cheese; crispy Peking duck paired with pinot noir. One dish changed my life. Will you let me change yours?