A favourite family meal at home is pan-fried duck. Some people feel intimidated by the idea of cooking duck, but duck breasts are widely available to buy pre-packed and boneless, so there is really little preparation required.
This method of cooking duck breasts is simple and yields delicious results. Duck meat is darker than that of chicken and contains little fat. The skin, however, contains a lot of fat – thereby necessitating plenty of scoring before cooking to allow it to become crispy. A boneless breast of duck is referred to as a magret on restaurant menus.
I love cep mushrooms as they have a unique, slightly woody flavour. Cep sauce is wonderful with duck. Dried ceps are widely available and are just as tasty as fresh ones – after soaking, of course.
Ingredients
Serves four
2 large duck breasts
2oz duck fat
50g/2oz shallots (chopped)
50ml Armagnac
100m dry white wine
200ml Madeira wine
200ml water
50g/2oz dried ceps/porcini mushrooms (soaked)
25g/1oz butter (diced)
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Method
1. Make several incisions in the duck skin, then rub with sea salt and sprinkle with pepper.
2. Heat the duck fat in a frying pan over a low heat. Add the duck breasts to the pan, skin side down, and cook for eight minutes. Turn them over and cook for a further six minutes on the other side. Transfer the duck breasts to a serving dish and keep warm in pre-warmed oven (at about 100 degrees centigrade).
3. Pour off most of the fat from the pan and add the shallots, cooking gently for two minutes over a medium heat.
4. Mix the Armagnac, white wine and Madeira wine in a bowl and pour half of it into the pan. Reduce over a medium to high heat until only a quarter of the liquid remains.
5. Add the remainder of the alcohol mix and add the ceps. Reduce the liquid by half, then add the water and cook slowly for ten minutes.
6. Slice the duck breasts and add the juice that results to the sauce. Pass the sauce through a sieve, beat in the butter using a hand whisk and pour the sauce around the duck.