Saturday 12 January - Magrets de Canard

We had a hunt through some books for something new, as we are in a bit of a rut, and Bob found a recipe for duck cooked in red wine and chocolate sauce which looked pretty good - we had a duck breast in the freezer that was big enough to serve three of us, so we decided to go with this from Rick Steins French Odyssey.

The sauce was made by frying chopped onion, garlic and carrot, then a whole bottle of red wine was added, brought to the boil and the alcohol flamed off.

 

Some bay, thyme and cloves were added to the sauce and it was simmered for another 10 minutes before adding the seared duck breast to it - we cooked this for around three minutes each side, then kept it warm while the sauce was enriched with a square of dark chocolate, then sieved and some soaked prunes were warmed through in it.

The poached duck was thinly sliced.

 

The duck was served with potato puree, green beans with crushed poached garlic and some PSB

For afters, we used up the wonderful Panettone that we were given for Christmas, in the form of bread and butter pudding.

This was sliced and lightly buttered - in between the layers I added some dried fruit which I'd soaked in Brandy. A custard of eggs, single cream, milk and lots of vanilla bean paste was poured over and it was left to soak, before sprinkling with sugar and baking in the oven in a water bath.

This was served with a scoop of vanilla icecream.