As you will
see from this post, I am not particularly good at cooking duck. This Duck
a la Cerise worked out ok but I did learn some lessons for next time.
First I
scored the skin of the duck breasts with the sharpest knife I had. But even that wasn't really sharp
enough. My scoring as you can see was a
bit haphazard. You really don't want to
cut right down through the fat. I am not
bad at scoring ham but this was a challenge.
I then
seasoned the breasts with salt and pepper and a light sprinkle of dried thyme –
I'm sure fresh thyme would have been better.
I heated a
pan and then fried the duck breasts quickly in a mix of oil and butter. The idea was to get them golden brown – which
I only partially achieved. Next time I
would not worry about the butter burning and would really give each side a
blast of heat. While my duck looked ok,
in fact not enough of the fat under the skin had cooked out. It is a tricky balance because if you
overcook duck it goes dry.
I then took
the duck out and popped it into the oven, covered with foil while I cooked up
the sauce in the pan. First I fried one
finely chopped red onion. White would
have been fine. I then added chicken
stock (about ½ a cup) and stirred it around to scrape any bits of stuff off the
bottom of the pan. Then I put in a
spoonful of apricot jam (redcurrant jelly would have been better), a hint of
chilli jam, a tablespoon of wine vinegar (I used white and added a little red
wine to it).
After your
sauce has come to a simmer, you put the duck back in and cover the pan and cook
until tender – say 8 to 10 minutes. You
take the duck out again (it is a bit like a yoyo) and put about 200g of pitted
cherries into the sauce and simmer it for a bit and check the seasoning. I found it did need more salt and pepper.
Then you
plate the duck and spoon the cherries and sauce over the top and garnish with
chopped parsley. Which I nearly forgot.
I liked the
taste of the duck but ended up cutting off the skin which was not crispy enough
and felt very fatty. Oh well, hopefully
I'll do better next time!
Hi Carole,
ReplyDeleteWhat an elegant dish and so full of flavor. Thanks so much for sharing your post with Full Plate Thursday. Hope you are having a great day and come back soon!
Miz Helen