The phone rings at Stone Church Farm in Rifton, New York, and Robert Rosenthal springs up from the kitchen table. It’s a collect call from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where a Mennonite farmer has driven into town to use a public pay phone. Rosenthal covers the mouthpiece with his hand: “I can hear the horse in the background,” he says in a stage whisper.
The man on the other end of the line belongs to a small, strict congregation of 11 families who speak German, refer to outsiders as “the English,” and farm without tractors or electricity, much less telephones. Despite their loyalty to custom, they are doing something fairly radical: raising European heirloom and classic French ducks for the Hudson Valley’s Stone Church Farm.
Today’s standard breed of duck raised for food is the American Pekin, descended from a Chinese breed that was introduced to England in 1873. It is a fatty and remarkably fast-growing duck that was a great commercial success in the U.S. during the 19th century, when most flocks were raised on Long Island, hence the nickname “Long Island duck.”
Occasionally a more daring restaurant might serve Muscovy, a full-flavored but chewy duck that originated in South America. The Moulard, a sterile Muscovy-Pekin cross, is renowned for the quality of its foie gras and its flavorful breast meat (called magret). But that’s been about the extent of experimentation in American restaurant kitchens.
Now Rosenthal is giving chefs a chance to serve up pasture-raised mallards, Rouen Clairs, French Pekins, and even Duclairs, a magnificent black and white duck notable for its depth of flavor but so difficult to raise that it is commercially extinct in its native Normandy. “The Duclair has a rich, dark red color and a gamy flavor, but the flesh itself is extremely tender,” says J. Bryce Whittlesey, executive chef at Wheatleigh, in Lenox, Massachusetts. Tom Colicchio serves it at New York’s Gramercy Tavern and Charlie Trotter, who became an early customer, says, “Most of what you get in this country is so bland. These ducks have real character and identity.”
You might say the same about 61-year-old Rosenthal, a Brooklyn native and perhaps the unlikeliest of poultrymen. He met his Puerto Rican–born wife, Noelia, at a jazz club in Greenwich Village, and somehow persuaded her to run away with him to the country in 1982. They found a massive 19th-century stone church that was built as a meeting house for Hutterites, but, prophetically, had since become the county’s most grandiose chicken coop. Robert and Noelia rehabbed the structure, began growing and selling vegetables, did odd jobs, and struggled to get by.
Eventually Rosenthal switched from vegetables to raising organic chicken for restaurants and specialty stores under the Stone Church Farm label. As demand increased, he contracted with small farmers to grow for him, expanding into rabbits, quail, and guinea fowl.
While on business in Pennsylvania, around 1999, Rosenthal encountered a “hobby farmer” on his way to auction. His truck was overflowing with a wild assortment of ducks—Khaki Campbells, Appleyards, Magpies, Welsh Harlequins, and Blue Swedish, old-fashioned European breeds that survive primarily in the backyards of duck fanciers, who keep them for pleasure or show. On the long drive home, Rosenthal recalls, he was captivated by a single thought: “Here are some of the best eating ducks in the world, and no one is raising them for the restaurants.”
Rosenthal heard about some Mennonite farmers who were getting such low prices for their poultry that they were ready to try something new. Their experience of growing poultry with old-fashioned methods made an ideal match, but they are an insular folk. “The first time we met, no one spoke to me directly,” Rosenthal says. “Everything was directed toward the person who brought me.”
Rosenthal struck a deal for the Mennonites to raise the animals for him (they are also processed nearby), and started buying rare ducks from all over the country. He experimented with so many breeds that his first catalog looked like an Audubon guide, but now he’s settled on the half dozen breeds with the best flavor and size. Gradually, the Mennonites came to trust him. After two years of doing business, he was finally invited into the kitchen for coffee.
Bernard Bouissou, the French-born chef-owner of Bernard’s Inn at Ridgefield, in Connecticut, served as unofficial product tester during the development phase, sometimes serving six different kinds of duck a night. Proper handling is critical. The ducks are so fresh that Bouissou ages them in oil and spices for several days, like game. “Then they are full of character, so superior to a regular roasting duck,” he rhapsodizes, as he adds the ultimate compliment from a Gaul: “That’s the way duck tastes in France.”
Ducks are available by mail order at 845-658-3243.
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