Super simple Duck breast à l’orange
We’ve chosen to make a duck breast à l’orange because it’s the orange season. It’s during the months of autumn and winter that you should enjoy oranges.
And when we speak about oranges, we’re speaking about the traditional ones from Valencia. Ones that we have a stone’s throw from our Masía El Altet.
Since we’re from the Valencia area, we’re always going to defend the aroma and flavour of the Valencian orange. And to prepare any kind of dish, we’re always going to choose the best raw ingredients. So let’s get started:
Ingredients
- 2 duck breasts
- 1 onion
- 1 leek
- 2 carrots
- Thyme
- Rosemary
- Salt
- Pepper
- Masía El Altet extra virgin olive oil
Ingredients for the orange sauce
- The juice of an orange
- Grated orange peel for decoration
- 100 ml soy sauce
- 100 ml Modena vinegar
- 1 spoonful honey with rosemary
- Salt
Preparation
- Sauté the vegetables (previously sliced) in a frying pan with extra virgin olive oil.
- Add the salt and also the rosemary and thyme
- Leave the frying pan on a medium heat until you know from testing that the vegetables are tender. Set aside.
- Now is the moment to prepare the orange sauce. Put all of the ingredients mentioned before into a saucepan. Keep stirring until you see that the mixture is thickening. Set the sauce aside.
- Now it’s time to clean the duck breasts.
- Score them lightly being careful not to tear the meat
- Season the breasts with the salt and pepper and cook them in a frying pan on a strong heat. Don’t add olive oil. Keep turning them. Be careful to give the side with the skin on more time and in this way, the breasts will release part of the fat they contain. Eight minutes should be sufficient. The inside has to be a pinkish colour. Leave the meat to rest a few minutes before cutting it.
- And now it ‘s time to serve it. We’d like to give you some advice about that. It’s better to place the garnish in the centre of the plate first. On top, put the slices of duck breast. On top of them, put the grated orange peel and decorate with rosemary.
Duck breast is extremely popular… at the moment. But what’s certain is that it wasn’t used by important chefs until the 1960s. Up until then, cooking with duck was considered utterly outrageous. But as you can see from experience, it’s one of the dishes which is never missing from a good menu. You’ll have seen as well that this recipe is extremely easy to prepare and if you have people round for dinner, it’ll be a great success. Are you willing to give it a try?
Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vaionnoth/5597930384