“Everything but the quack,” my friends and I took to saying as we were preparing a dinner of epic proportions together a week or so ago.

You see, my friends Kurt and Brian recently redesigned and remodeled their kitchen. And it. is. fabulous. I wasn’t about to let them have such a thing and not share it with me, so I connived and finagled and said I’d go out to Vinland and get some farm-raised ducks if they’d let me come over and cook them in their state of the art, beautiful and well-planned kitchen.

I had never eaten a duck before, let alone cooked one. But nothing like that has ever stopped me in the past. I did a little reading, thought through my plans, and then threw them all out the window along with several empty wine bottles. My friend Adam (of the chocolate torte) was a godsend because at least nine times an hour, as we cooked, I said “I don’t know what I’m doing. Is this right?” And he helped. In fact, I think at one point during the six hours we were in that kitchen I just sat down and nursed a whole bottle of wine while he whipped around and made six dishes at once. Kurt and Brian patiently did dishes and hauled their KitchenAid mixer here and there for us. It’s the first time I ever used a “professional” series one — the top doesn’t flip back like on my “artisan” one. So fancy.

The plan was to cook two ducks, and we decided to do one with a glaze, sort of in homage to “duck a l’orange” and one just roasted with herbs and spices, so we could compare. We also planned to make duck fat fries since I have heard so much about the miracle that is duck fat, and then as we cooked we discovered all those pretty little duck livers staring at us from the cutting board where Adam had left them after ridding the ducks of their necks and the leftover feathers, so we decided to make a little duck liver pate. Because we could.

Because I’m working backwards through this meal, I’ll leave the pate, soup, and the other appetizers for next week, and just concentrate on the ducks themselves and the ensuing fries today.

But first, indulge me for a moment so I can tell you about going to get said ducks. I drove out to Vinland to Vesecky Family Farms on the recommendation of Free State Brewery’s Chef Rick Martin to purchase my little beauties, and dang if that wasn’t worth the price of admission. The Veseckys have the equivalent of a petting zoo out there. My baby was able to gawk at turkeys and cows, pet a baby goat, some chicks, and a big dog. And, the piece de resistance, they have a tame elk. That’s right, we petted an elk. How cool is that? I’ll tell you how cool it is. It is cool enough to make me feel A-OK about spending over 70 bucks for two ducks, that’s how cool.

Back to the ducks. I had thawed them well in advance, so they were room temperature. We preheated the oven to 300 degrees, and Adam and Kurt cleaned them up — removed the necks, remaining bits of feathers, and livers, which was the only organ meat left in them. Then I gave each one a nice coating in olive oil, inside and out. Next, I cut a lemon in half and put one half inside each duck, along with a handful of cut up onion, some cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and fresh thyme. I also sprinkled all those ingredients on the outside of the duck, except the garlic cloves which I used to give the duck a good rub before putting it inside. Once I had them prepped and stuffed full of flavorful goodness, I tied their little legs together and Adam cut slits in their skin in a diamond pattern, in order to allow them to release the fat. Also, we gave them several good stabbings with a fork. We wanted as much fat out of those beauties as we could possibly get.

Then we popped the ducks in the oven and set the timer for one hour. Our plan was to cook them for 3 1/2 total hours, but to take them out of the oven three times (once per hour) and flip them over and re-stab with the fork. In the last half hour, we turned the heat up to 350, because at that point we dumped a whole jar of my homemade orange marmalade all over one of the birds, and we wanted it to get good and baked-on and sticky.

Once the ducks were finally cooked, we removed them from the oven and set them aside to rest for awhile, which is important.

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And right before we ate, we carved.

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People those two little ducks (a five pounder and a six pounder) rendered about a gallon of fat. I am not kidding you. Maybe more. It was crazy. It was like when a 97-pound woman gives birth to a 12-pound baby and you just scratch your head and go, “How?”

Once the ducks were roasted and the fat was rendered, we were ready to cook fries. I had prepped by slicing up some yukon golds — eight or nine for five people (they’re small) into french fry shaped sticks.

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Adam heated the oil in a sauce pan over medium-high heat, and began the frying process. Just look at the richness of the color of that duck fat. There is nothing else like it.

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Fries work best if you do them twice — once for cooking and once again for browning and crispiness. So we did them in batches (don’t crowd) and when one batch was pulled out of the “round one” pot and laid to rest on a bed of paper towels, the next went in, and when it came out the first batch went back in for “round two”. Get it?

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This way, you get maximum “fry”ness out of the deal. Then you just grind a little sea salt over the whole mess and eat it. And cry. This is not a time to be concerned about your heart health or the 5K you’re running tomorrow, or about even how long you might live. This is a time to eat duck. And duck fat fries. And drink far, far too much wine. (Disclaimer: because our entire meal took about six hours to cook, I had to e-mail Adam several times as I composed this article and ask questions to fill in a few gaps. Because I drank wine the whole time.)

I brought home the leftover fat (there was a lot) and the duck carcasses for future frying and soup/stock making. Truly, those little ducks gave their lives to very appreciative folks who let no part go unused. Even the livers, which I will talk about next week, when we discuss the appetizer and wine part of the show.