My little brother Ant and his lovely girlfriend came to stay on Monday night. They’re on their way to start a new exciting life a long way from us, so I wanted to send them off in style. Ant loves duck. So I thought I’d give it a burl. I had never roasted a duck before so I approached the task with mild trepidation. Turns out, it just isn’t that hard!
I consulted the interweb and adapted a recipe from delicious magazine. You can see the original here.
Crispy skinned Roast Duck with Cherry Sauce
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 – 2.5kg duck
6 golden shallots, peeled.
Sauce:
zest of 1 1/2 oranges
juice of 1 1/2 oranges
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 cup port
410g can of pitted cherries
1 tbsp cornflour
Method:
Preheat the oven to 230`C.
Zest and juice the oranges, keeping the rind for the cavity of the duck.
Rinse duck and dry carefully with paper towel. Stab the duck repeatedly with a toothpick – duck is fatty and the more little holes you create in the skin to let the fat out the better. Rotate the bird and continue the toothpick assault.
Insert what’s left of the orange and the golden shallots into the cavity of the duck. Close the cavity and hold the goodies in by tying the legs with kitchen twine .
Place the duck breast-side down on a wire tray in a roasting pan. I don’t have a wire tray that fits in my roasting pan, so I scrunched up pieces of aluminium foil, fashioned them into crescents and they held the duck off the bottom of the pan well.
Cook in the oven for 1 3/4 hours. After this, remove the duck from the oven and allow to rest for ten minutes before carving. Keep the duck fat – you can roast some pretty tasty vegetables in this liquid gold another day.
In the meantime, to make the cherry sauce combine the orange juice and zest, ginger, soy, lemon juice, port and pitted cherries in a saucepan; reserving two tablespoons of the juice from the cherries. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for five minutes. Combine the reserved cherry juice with the cornflour and blend, then add to the sauce. Cook for a further minute or until the sauce thickens.
Serve with sliced duck, home-made potato wedges and the tastiest brussels sprouts in the world.
Verdict:
The skin was beautifully crispy and the sauce was a great compliment – you’ve got to hand it to those folks at delicious, they know their duck!
Ant and Flic are still en route to their destination, I wish them every happiness in their new lives in Victoria. x
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