Duck, Duck, Jus

I love duck. If it’s on the menu at a restaurant, and I’m not paying, I’ll order it every time. I was thrilled, last time I was checking out the meat section at Coles, to find whole ducks for $17.99. I bought one. Tonight, I cooked it. Duck a l’orange style. That’s how I’m spelling it anyway. I mostly followed this recipe here, but I made a few additions.

It was spectacular. I served it with roasted baby carrots, potatoes and garlic.

Here are some grainy iPhone photos.

I was a little surprised to unwrap the duck to find the neck still attached.

I salted the skin and pricked little holes in it (following that recipe) to let the fat drip out during cooking.

This was my little tray of veggies.

Here’s the duck after an hour. It took about three and a half hours to cook.

The sauce was orange juice (squeezed by hand, with a fair bit of pulp), roughly a cup of moscato, a spoon full of orange marmalade, and some of the duck fat. I reduced it a fair bit, basically until it was a syrup. I cut a couple of slices from the middle of each orange to make my candied orange garnish (one of my additions).

I tipped a few lid-fulls of castor sugar (from one of those CSR bottle things… I think they’re CSR bottles) into a fry pan with a dash of water, and let it heat for a little while. Then I dropped my orange pieces in and tried to caramelise them. They ended up tasting a bit like marmalade and being a nice sticky texture. Perfect.

This sauce had been sitting for a while (as I finished off the veggies) a quick stir settled the oil (from the duck juices) back into the orange syrup. Delicious.