Saturday, October 17, 2015 – Another week, another ingredient challenge. This time, it’s neither all meat nor all veggie.
My friend Alice picked walnuts, duck, cabbage, ginger, and blood orange. Sadly, it seems blood oranges aren’t in season right now, so I had to make do with regular oranges. The orange and the ginger make a pretty good sauce. The rest? Well, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Ingredients
1 duck breast
salt
black pepper
3 large leaves of cabbage
2 oranges
1 Tbsp Port
1/2-inch piece of ginger, minced
1 tsp cornstarch
2 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp chopped walnuts
Instructions
- Bring duck to room temperature and dry with paper towels. Coat duck with a bit of salt and pepper.
- Preheat oven to 425 F.
- Blanch cabbage for 2 minutes. Set aside.
- Slice two thin wedges from one of the blood oranges. Set aside.
- Juice and zest the blood oranges. Mix juice and zest with Port, ginger, and cornstarch to make a slurry.
- In a frying pan over medium-high heat, saute the duck in 2 Tbsp melted butter, about 2 min each side.
- Remove duck from frying pan and onto a baking sheet. Sprinkle chopped walnuts over the duck. Bake for about 7-8 min.
- Add the liquid mixture to the frying pan. Lower to medium heat. Heat sauce until it simmers and covers the back of a spoon. Lower heat and season with salt and pepper to taste.
- To plate, layer the cabbage, then the duck, then top with sauce. Garnish with blood orange wedges.
Serves 1.
Keep in mind that this will cook the duck breast medium rare. According to the USDA, you should always cook duck breast well done, but they also say the same thing about steaks. The general consensus is that it’s okay to eat duck breast medium rare, but if this freaks you out, or if you’re like the USDA and are worried about foodborne illness, you should increase the cooking times to well done.
That said, regardless of whether you prefer medium rare or well done, you should definitely start the duck skin-side down on much higher heat, and cook the skin longer, so you can make it nice and crisp. (I made the mistake of cooking the skin on too low and too short, and it wasn’t crispy the way I wanted.) Then, once you have the skin nice and crispy, you can lower the heat back to medium-high and cook the other side of the duck for a shorter amount of time.
Flavor-wise, the citrus flavor of the sauce came through, but it could have used more ginger. Next time, I should double up on the ginger. (Although I’ll have to take care not to make it too gingery.)
The part that didn’t go so well, though, was the cabbage and the walnuts. The whole “nut-encrusted duck” thing doesn’t work (at least not for coarsely chopped walnuts”, and the “bed of cabbage” doesn’t work really well. If I were to do it again, I’d shread the cabbage and make a cabbage-walnut slaw. (It’s a thing.) I’ll gladly sacrifice the port for mayo to make the slaw come together.
As a final note, duck is actually kind of hard to find, at least in the Bellevue area. I was able to find previously frozen duck breast at Uwajimaya, but the fresh stuff would probably have been better. I’ve heard Whole Foods carries duck, and possibly butchers. If you’re making this dish, plan ahead, and figure out where you can buy duck. Or you might have to settle for chicken. Which isn’t the same.