February 11, 2005
Grilled Magret de Canard Salad with Asian Marinade
This is an easy and light dinner or appetizer, especially here in France, where you can buy fresh magret de canard (breast of duck) pre-cut or in pre-packaged form in the super markets. This recipe takes about 1 hour from start to finish.
(Not a picture of our dinner -- we still forget to take pictures! -- but a nice one of a magret de canard.)
Ingredients
1-2 large magret de canard (enough for two)
2 cups Hariots Verts (French thin green beans)
4-6 cups of Mixed Greens*
2-3 Mandarin Oranges (called Clementines here in France)**
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
Base Salad Dressing (e.g. Balsamic Vinigrette or a Lemon/Lime Vinigrette)
Sliced Small Radishes for garnish
* Make sure you have colourful and different tasting greens like radicchio and frisé
** Substitute regular oranges or tangerines if you have these instead.
Marinade*
2 cloves of garlic, 1.5 Tb grated ginger, 1 juice of lime, 3 Tb of soy sauce, 1 Tb of fish sauce
1 Tb of sesame oil or vegetable oil, 1 Tb of rice vinegar, 1 Tb of hot pepper sauce
* If you don't have all of these ingredients just improvise until the marinade tastes good and tangy.
Steps
1. Score the duck breast on the skin side with a knife, making a nice cross hatch pattern.
2. Marinade the duck breast for about 20-40 minutes in a bowl with ingredients. Preheat oven for 200 Cel. or 325 F.
3. Then prepare the rest of the ingredients: Wash the greens and mix, if not using a premixed version. Steam the green beans until desired doneness. Peel the oranges, trimming away the white pith parts. Chop the garnishes and cilantro. (If you have any other veggies in the fridge that might add colour and flavour, like yellow peppers, feel free to add and improvise. )
4. Grill the duck in a frying pan or grill plan skin side down for about 2 minutes at high heat or until crispy brown. Be careful not to burn! Start checking after 1 minute.
5. Then put the duck in the oven (just put the whole pan in if designed for that) for about 8-10 minutes for rosé/rare or 12-15 minutes for medium. Good quality duck shouldn't be cooked any longer than that. Put the marinade in the oven too so that it cooks a little, but put it in a separate pan so as not to overpower the duck. (Toby disagrees. He puts the duck back into the marinade and cooks it in that.)
6. After pulling the breast out of the oven, let it rest for 5 minutes covering with some foil to keep warm. This allows the juices to retreat into the meat.
7. Meanwhile, dress the salad with the oranges and chopped cilantro and vinigrette, adding some of the marinade to the dressing to flavour it.
8. To assemble: plate individual portions of salad with oranges. (We use our large ceramic shallow bowl-plates for this.) Top with the green beans. Thinly slice the duck and place desired amounts (about half) in fanned fashion on top of the green beans. Drizzle more Asian vinigrette over duck and salad. Garnish with radishes.
Serves two people.
Posted by nicole at February 11, 2005 01:35 PM