Today it's my birthday and for that reason I decided to cook something special for lunch for me and my girlfriend. I remembered that it was ages since I last had duck and went out to find the best piece I could. After much search (in Spain they don't eat much duck) I found a lovely piece of duck breast weighing just around 400g. That was the main part. Then I started thinking what would go nice with it and thought of using some seasonal ingredients such as wild mushrooms and fresh grapes with some fried spinach on the side. It was delicious....
Ingredients (2 people):1 duck breast (aprx. 400g)
1 big handful of spinach
1 clove of garlic
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
salt pepper
Mushroom and Grape Sauce:
500g wild mushrooms
1 tbsp butter
2 charlottes
1/2 tsp dry thyme
2 tbsp sherry
1 dl port wine
1 cup grapes, cut in half and seeds removed
1 dl chicken stock
Clean the spinach and remove any thick stalks. Crush the garlic into it, add the soy sauce and olive oil and a tiny pinch of salt. I overdid the salt a bit as you can see from the picture. Mix and set aside.
Fry the mushrooms at high temperature in a bit of olive oil. Add some salt. They will start sweating out all the water and when that is evaporated after some 10-15 minutes (you can hear the sound changing), add the butter.
Add the finely chopped chalottes.
The thyme.
When the onions are translucent, add the sherry and let it evaporate a bit. If you dare you can tip the pan and flambé it.
When the sherry is almost evaporated, add the port wine. Again, flambé or let the alchohol evaporate a bit.
Add the grapes.
And the chicken stock. Lower the temperature and let it simmer for 20 minutes.
First of all, turn on your oven at 220º. Then prepare the duck breast by removing any white parts off the back of the meat.
Score the front with a sharp knife but don't cut into the meat. This will help the fat run out when it fries and leave the skin crispy.
Salt and pepper well on both sides. Rub the salt in between the cuts in the skin.
Heat up your frying pan until it's smoking hot. But don't add any fat (there's plenty in the skin). Place the breast skin-side down and fry it for 3-5 minutes until you see the skin is brown and crispy.
Turn the meat and fry it on the other side for 3 minute while basting the skin with the duck fat accumulated in the pan.
Remove the fat and keep it for when you are going to roast potatoes.
Put the frying pan with the breast on in to the hot oven. Leave it for about 6 minutes.
Add 1 or two spoonfuls of the duck fat to the mushrooms.
The duck is medium when the internal temperature reaches 60º. Take it out of the oven when the thermometre reaches 55º as the temperature will keep rising a bit. If you don't have a thermometre press lightly on top of the breast (carefull, it's burning hot, use kitchen paper) and it should be springy.
Quickly fry the spinach in the frying pan for 1 minute until the garlic is lightly fried.
Cut the duck breast into 4 pieces and serve 2 on each plate. If you cut it in less, the meat will go colder faster and lose more juice. Serve with the mushrooms and spinach on the side.
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