Duck Breast with a Sauce of Honey, Soy Sauce and Spices

When I presented this on 4 plates to the family I got ‘oohs’ and ‘aahhhs’ galore yet it was so simple! It was a combination of two recipes; one from The BBC Food website and one from Fine Cooking. http://www.finecooking.com/recipe/chinese-five-spice-crusted-duck-breasts

My recipe goes like this:

INGREDIENTS

4 Duck breasts with fat and skin

75g honey (runny is best)

50 ml soy sauce

2 teaspoons ground (or fresh) ginger

1/2 teaspoon 5 spice

1/2 teaspoon curry sauce plus extra

WHAT TO DO TO MAKE THE SAUCE

Mix together the honey, soy sauce, ginger, spices and curry sauce

Whisk or blend in small blender/nutribullet

Done! It will keep for days in the fridge or you can make extra and freeze in ice cubes for further use

Warm in a pan or in an ovenproof jug in the oven before pouring over the duck just before serving

NOW COOK THE DUCK LIKE THIS:

Put oven on at gas 6/200

Score fat of duck through to (but not into) the meat. I do 3–4 slashes per breast, you can do crisscross if you prefer. It’s to let the fat out of the duck when you cook it

Sprinkle breasts with curry powder and rub in with the back of a spoon.

Heat a large ish frying pan on the hob with no fat

Add breasts, fat side down, cook for 5 mins

Drain off the fat, turn over each breast and cook for 1 min.

Transfer to an ovenproof dish and put in oven to continue cooking. If you like it pink in the middle, just 3-5 mins. Ten for well done.

Put each breast on a plate, fat side up, pour over the sauce

I served it on mashed parsnip (boiled parsnips and mashed with cream, butter, S&P – sooooo good!) and I roasted some butternut squash sprinkled with caraway seeds to add colour.

The flavours worked really well together, the caraway seeds worked so well I might be tempted to throw some in to the sauce next time too.

Cooking duck this way makes it really simple to get a crispy layer of fat and retain ‘pink’ meat.

Duck is very easy, don’t be frightened of it, it won’t bite!