Bigoli All'Anatra

This book was another gift. I swear I must be the easiest person to buy for, I'd make the perfect wife for some curmudgeonly old misogynist. My dad once gave my mum a cheese grater for Christmas, where are all the real men?
Anyway, The Geometry of Pasta appeals to me as a cook and as a comic book fan. The graphic cross sections of pasta shapes are beautiful and fascinating, pasta is such a ubiquitous food that it's easy to overlook it's functionality. Incidentally, another recent pasta book, Pasta by Design reduces pasta to three basic origins of shape, cylinder, sphere and ribbon, each one is intended for a different kind of sauce. It's written by an architect and he maps the shapes using imaging software to produce the equation for the form, there is an interview with he author in New Scientist which can be read here, or I should say must be read, and then do this quiz!!!! (the maths nerd is the painfully unbearable subset of loser foodie nerd, I can't even...).
Anyway, the author is a big pasta fan and says he would like to see a book that deals with the seasoning as rigorously as he deals with shape, The Geometry of Pasta might be it.
I have a big crush on this book, Jacob Kenedy's tone is so warm and welcoming that I would probably read it for fun, he goes beyond the recipe and history and you can tell he loves his subject.
The recipe gives instructions for extruding the bigoli using a meat grinder, I loved that idea and just had to try it. I used sifted wholemeal flour for the dough - the grainy rough texture is meant to be especially good for picking up the rich duck sauce we're making.
For the sauce you boil an entire duck (I used 4 legs instead), skim the resultant stock, use the fat to cook off the vegetables for the sauce, shred the meat, use half of the stock in the sauce and the other half to cook the pasta in (you're also supposed to add the liver, heart and kidneys to the sauce but I didn't have them). I love the economy and self sufficiency of that, don't you?
Well all that self sufficiency results in the richest meal I've had in a while. Even in the depths of winter this seems like a bit too much. Kenedy makes a point of mentioning that this is a rough peasant meal. It's absolutely delicious, and after a long day in the fields it would be amazing, but I don't think I would ever be able to justify this again. Save me, diet!
If you love pasta but don't love the calories, put it near your face instead of in your face.