Every since that weekend in Paris, (see here) my first trip to Paris, I occasionally crave for and dream of a nice piece of duckmeat. I have decided recently that I’ll buy a whole duck soon and will prepare it in the oven. Since duck costs € 36,- a kg over here, I decided I needed some practise (never made duck before!) before testing my skills on such an expensive piece of meat. Yesterday I went into a fine butcher in the expensive part of time and asked for some duckmeat. What they offered me was a “magret de canard” of about 400gr, google told me it’s the breast of the duck. That’s what I noticed when I unpacked it too. I’ve got many cookingbooks so combined what I thought would be tastiest (and simplest! I decided not to marinate the meat but to make a sauce.) and here’s my improvised recipe;

  • Cut the fat of the duck in squares without cutting into the flesh, do diagonals all the way and again to produce squares on the fat. Leave on the side on room temperature.
  • Put your oven on at 150 degrees and prepare a deep dish and tin foil for when the duck is cooked and you keep it hot while you finish the rest of the preparations.
  • Cook on a high fire on the fat/skin side for 5 minutes. Do not touch for five minutes, then cook on the flesh side a further 5 minutes.( if the meat is about 2,5 cm think; its 5mins + 5 mins for it to be bloody – it tastes best bloody, but if you want it medium cook 6 mins on fat side and 7 min flesh side).
  • Once your duck is done, put it in the oven & cover with the foil ( I put the meat on top of some almost roasted slices of sweet potatoe in an ovendish; amazing combination with the duck!)
  • Put the fire of the pan you baked the duck in to minimum, and add some beer to the pan, continuously stirring. I decided I’d add wine to the sauce, but the French sweet dessert-wine I felt like drinking with dinner and thus bought,would make the sauce to sweet in combination with honey, so I poored some of the beer I was drinking while cooking in the pan. I added some (real!) butter, 2 table spoons of honey and 3 teaspoons of balsamic vineagar, kept stirring to use all the juices of the meat and added some thyme (which I picked & dried myself on an island in Croatia). I reduced the liquid by half to get a nice thick sauce.
  • Next; Cut the duck into slices about 1cm thick, leaving the fat on there ( it tastes great) and serve with the sauce according to your liking. Some freshly grinded pepper over the meat finished it off for me.

I served the duck with some mashed potatoe,
ovenbaked sweet potatoe slices,
stir-fried crispy Pak choi with garlic
and the balsamic-honey-beer sauce and I loved it. I left it a minute too long in the oven ’cause I’m not a fan of red meat but it was lovely. I’m sure it would have been even tastier if I would have made the meat in goose- or duckfat instead of sunflower-oil.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Wish I had leftovers for today but this small piece was just a test. Yes. I’m ready for the whole duck.

Next on my shoppinglist is Goose- or duck-fat. Anyone going to France soon & passing by Amsterdam after?