Cook and Drink

So Many Possibilities

Obviously Breast of Duck is great when combined with an orange sauce (or even better, with Mandarine Napoléon). Or combined with a Green Pepper Sauce, or with hoisin, soy sauce and five-spice powder (as used for Peking Duck). We combine the duck with fresh ginger (a bit spicy, but since the ginger is cooked in the sauce it will be very mild), yuzu (citrus fruit originaly from Japan, Korea and China) and sweet mirin and soy sauce. The cabbage comes with tamari and sesame oil, so this dish is full of wonderful flavours. Have we mentioned the pickled cucumber?

Wine Pairing

You could combine the duck with white wine, provided it has lots of character, for instance a Gewürztraminer. A red wine is the more obvious choice: a rich, warm Carignan will do nicely. The wine needs to combine with the richness of the dish and of course the sweetness of the soy sauce and the mirin. Duck is somewhat sweet in its own right and the sauce amplifies this. The wine should be fruity (plum), spicy and definitely not too woody.

What You Need

• 2 Small Breasts of Duck or 1 Large One
• Soy Sauce (we prefer the version with less salt)
• Mirin
• Yuzu
• Ginger (fresh)

What You Do

Check the breast of duck for remainders of feathers. Remove the vein on the meat side of the breast (and the odd membrane you don’t like). Put on a dish, cover and transfer to the refrigerator. Leave in the refrigerator for a few hours, making sure it’s nice, firm and cold. We want crispy fat, so we need to fry the meat relatively long. In order to get the right cuisson, we start with cold meat (so not your normal room temperature).
Fry the duck in a hot, non-sticky skillet for 12 minutes on the skin side. Reduce the heat after a few minutes. You don’t need oil or butter, the duck fat will do the trick. Now fry for 2 minutes on the other sides. Remove from the pan and cover with aluminium foil in such a way that the crispy skin is not covered. The foil should only cover meat.
You may want to remove some fat from the pan. Add some water and a generous amount of grated ginger (let’s say 3 – 4 centimetre), stir, add mirin and soy sauce. Keep warm. Add liquid from the duck to the sauce.  After 10 minutes or so the ginger should be soft and the falvours integrated. If not, just give it a few more minutes. Remove the breast from the foil and slice. Make sure that any liquid left is added to the sauce. Quickly stir the sauce, add a bit of Yuzu to bring acidity to the sauce, heat a bit more, dress on a plate and put the slices of duck on top of it.

Serve with…

• Vegetables
  • Oxheart or Chinese cabbage
  • Olive Oil
  • Tamari
  • Sesame Oil
• Rice
  • Whole Grain Rice
  • Pickled Cucumber

Grate the cabbage. Fry in a warm skillet in some olive oil. Add some tamari. Taste and adjust if necessary. Before serving add some excellent sesame oil. In parallel cook the rice and add some chopped pickled cucumbers to the rice.