Seared Duck Breast with Earl Gray, Honey, and Orange Sauce

This is one of those recipes I bookmarked from Epicurious years ago and just recently got around to making. I liked it but am betting the sauce would be even better on chicken or pork as I think its subtle sweetness would compliment a less in-your-face meat. I subbed lavender honey for regular honey, and didn't bother using a sieve to make the sauce smooth. As I've said before, I'm a texture gal, and if I'm going through the trouble to saute onions for half an hour, I'd like the pleasure of eating them in the end. Also, by using tea bags instead of loose tea, you eliminate the need for straining the sauce anyway.

Finally - I normally brag that you can cook anything you love at home just as well as at a restaurant. This is equally true for duck but if you don't have a good hood vent/fan - don't bother. No one likes to smell like duck fat the following day... Restaurants, it seems, will always have a purpose.

I served this with baby brussels and baby yukon golds that were soaked in water for 30 minutes, drained and dried, and roasted in the oven (doused in 3 tablespoons of olive oil, sea salt, and pepper) for 20 minutes per side. After they came out I tossed them with lemon zest and freshly minced parsley.

Seared Duck Breast with Orange, Earl Gray and Honey Sauce
* Adapted from Bon Appétit via Epicurious
* Serves 3-4, as long as you have ample sides.

Ingredients:
2 boneless Muscovy duck breast halves (about 1 3/4 pounds total)

3/4 cup chopped shallots or sweet onion
sea salt and pepper, for seasoning
2 1/4 cups canned low-salt chicken broth
1 1/2 cups orange juice
5 Earl Grey tea bags, strings left on with just the end tags removed
1 tablespoon lavender honey
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Minced flat leaf parsley, for garnish

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400°F. Pierce skin of duck breasts all over with fork. Sprinkle duck with salt and pepper. Heat heavy large skillet over high heat. Add duck breasts, skin side down, to skillet. Reduce to medium heat and cook until skin is well browned, about 6 minutes. Turn duck breasts over; cook 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Set rack in roasting pan. Transfer duck breasts to rack (reserve drippings in skillet). Roast duck to desired doneness, about 12-15 minutes for medium-rare. (I wouldn't go beyond 20 minutes or you'll have tough duck which might as well be tough shoe leather.) Remove from the oven and let rest, tented with foil, for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat drippings in skillet over medium heat. Add shallots, season with a tiny pinch of salt and pepper and sauté until beginning to brown, about 10 minutes. Tilt skillet; push shallots to higher end of skillet, allowing drippings to flow to lower end. Spoon off drippings and discard. Add broth, orange juice and tea bags to skillet. Boil until mixture is reduced to 1 1/4 cups, about 17 minutes. Remove and discard tea bags, pressing against the sides of the pan beforehand to release any juice. Add honey to the pan; bring to simmer. Whisk in butter until melted. Taste the sauce for balance and make any adjustments necessary with salt and pepper.

Thinly slice duck breasts crosswise. Fan slices on each of 4 plates, dividing equally. Spoon sauce around duck. Garnish with minced parsley, if desired.

Seared Duck Breast with Madeira Sauce and Root Vegetable Confetti

(To just see the recipes, please scroll to the bottom;)

Thank you Food and Wine magazine. You not only showed me an incredible way to prepare duck this week, but you introduced me to Madeira, a fortified wine from Portugal. (You know I love to put booze in my recipes and now I have a new one to play with!)

Madeira is everything I wanted Marsala, Italy's fortified wine, to be. It's unapologetically flavorful - a liquid layer cake of sweet and spicy. When I first opened up a bottle and smelled it, I wanted to crawl inside of it and swim around like a mermaid.

The duck in this recipe was only supposed to marinate for 30 minutes, a detail I happened to overlook and instead marinated mine for 3 days. Mistake or not, that's the way I'll make it from here on out. A dead drunk duck breast is far superior to a tipsy one, in my opinion.

Duck Breasts with Roasted Root Vegetables and Madeira Sauce
Adapted from Food and Wine magazine, per Motor Supply Company Bistro (Columbia, South Carolina)
Serves 2.

* As I mentioned, I marinated my duck breast for 3 days. I also made the sauce two days ahead, put in the refrigerator, then just reheated on the stove while my vegetables roasted. This made a fancy weekend dinner an easily doable weeknight one.

Sauce:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup chopped shallots
salt and pepper
1 cup Madeira
1 whole star anise (OR SUB 1/8 teaspoon Chinese Five Spice powder)
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
1 cup low sodium chicken stock

Heat a medium, heavy pot over medium heat. Add olive oil, allowing to hear through for 1 minute, then shallots. Season with salt and pepper and saute, stirring every so often, for 4-5 minutes until softened. Add the Madeira, star anise or Chinese Five Spice powder, cinnamon stick, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil for ten minutes, until the liquid has reduced to 1/4 cup. Add the chicken broth and return to a boil for another ten minutes, or until liquid nets 1/3 cup. Spoon over duck or cool and refrigerate until you're ready to use. Don't forget to remove the cinnamon stick, star anise, and bay leaf before serving or storing.

Roasted Root Vegetables:
2 beets, washed and scrubbed, and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 small carrot, washed and scrubbed, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
2 small parsnips (or 1 large), washed and scrubbed, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
couple tablespoons olive oil
sea salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 425. Place your vegetables on a large, rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle over a good amount (large pinch) sea salt of kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. Drizzle the olive oil over, making sure there's enough to coat each vegetable piece as well as a little leftover for the bottom of the pan as a bed, to prevent burning. Put veggies in the oven for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 for ten minutes, remove from oven and flip over. Return to oven for 25 minutes, or until nicely browned on the other side and a little shrunken (this indicates a deepening of flavor and that they're cooked all the way through.) Remove and set aside (if they're done early, you can take them out, then just return them to a 350 degree oven for 5 minutes or so until reheated through.)

Duck:
1 nice-sized duck breast (enough meat for two people)
1/4 cup Madeira
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 whole star anise, or 1/4 teaspoon Chinese Five Spice powder
1 cinnamon stick

1 tablespoon olive oil plus 1 tablespoon butter, for pan searing

Using a sharp knife, gently score skin side of duck breast diagonally to create a 1/4 inch diamond pattern. Place the rest of the marinade ingredients (Madeira through cinnamon stick) in a large Ziploc bag and slosh around to meld. Add the duck breast, seal and refrigerate for at least 8 hours (or as I recommend - 3 days!)

Remove duck from fridge 30 minutes before cooking. Remove from marinade and pat dry with paper towels. Set aside. Preheat your oven to 375 (if you're making the vegetables above, your oven should already be on.) Meanwhile, heat the olive oil and butter in a heavy, medium sized, oven proof skillet over medium/high heat (if you don't have an oven proof one - just transfer the duck to an aluminum lined, Pam sprayed cookie sheet after searing to bake off.) When the oil/butter is hot, add the duck skin side down. Reduce heat slightly, and sear for 7 minutes, until some of the fat has rendered from the skin and it's begun to crisp up to a deep golden brown. If you like your duck cooked to medium or medium well, flip and cook another 3 minutes on the other side. If not, simply flip the duck and transfer your skillet to the oven for about 12 minutes for medium rare and 15-18 minutes for medium to medium well. (The original instructions indicate to cook the duck for less on a much higher temperature - but my tiny oven smokes to much with the fatty skin of a duck inside it, so I've adjusted the recipe for NYC living. I also prefer my duck to be tragically over cooked compared to the culinary chic-ness of medium rare. But it's my duck and I'll eat it as I want to.)

Remove from the oven and let rest for ten minutes before slicing and serving in a fan over a bed of the root vegetables, drizzled with the Madeira sauce.

Painting the Plate Red; Roasted Duck, Beets, and Pomegranites

When it comes to cooking, I am a fiddler. Even if held at gunpoint, I'm not sure I'd be able to follow a recipe without adding a little of this or a little of that, or adjusting what's on the page by instinct. Perhaps this is due to my right brain being the alpha of my pea sized cranium, or maybe it's because I'm not really an adventurist (not into surfing or any extreme sports) and therefore get my kicks where I can in the safety and warmth of my kitchen.

Anyway, while I have posted many tweaked recipes here, I haven't included many that are completely mine. So this week, we're going buck wild with original recipes (insert KFC original recipe jingle HERE.)

The first is a duck breast served with roasted beets tossed with a confetti of chopped mint, cilantro, and pomegranate seeds with an orange scented rice pilaf on the side. Sounds fancy, huh? Well it's not. You're basically putting the beats and duck on cooking sheets, sticking them in the oven, and at some point, chopping up the mint and cilantro. (Oh and the rice is stovetop which cooks at the same time - just mix in toasted pine nuts and orange zest at the end.) The hardest thing is getting the pomegranate seeds out of the pomegranate, although I found it quite entertaining. It was like a little fruit massacre in my own kitchen.

Anyway, this is actually a light and refreshing fall meal, if you like duck. I first had duck in high school on a prom date at Vargo's in Houston. It was prepared the traditional way, with a rich cherry compote, and it was delicious. But today's duck is simply a duck breast, seasoned well with salt and pepper, roasted in a hot oven (400 degrees for 15 minutes), then topped with a fresh herb mixture (or as the Italians say, grimolata) - or put more simply - a handful each of chopped fresh mint and cilantro. Sprinkle over a handful of pomegranate seeds, and you're done.

Now onto the beets. I admit, I may be a little spastic about food and cooking, but I freaking love cooking beets. Just peeling off the wrinkled, ugly skin to reveal their whore-ish, velvety red interiors makes me happy. The color is unreal. And the smell is enough to make you run out and hug a tree. Earthy and sweet and cleansing.

But loving beets comes with a price, as you'll have stained red hands for a few hours, and possibly red colored pee. Quite worth it, in my opinion. It should also be noted that the key to delicious beets versus not so delicious is dousing them with olive oil, salt and pepper, then roasting low and slow (350 for 20 minutes, toss, then roast another 20.) You can also enhance their sweetness with a little drizzle of balsamic vinegar (just add and toss before you add the oil) or even sugar.

Since this particular post features two polarizing dishes that many people may prefer to look at a picture of rather than eat (beets and duck), I've chosen to provide the recipe free-style... If you want more explicit cooking details, just let me know.

Until next time;)