In season Succulent and tasty, duck is the perfect dish for a bit of high-class dining

’TIS the season to eat duck, so we caught up with Giancarlo and Katie (below), the partners behind top London restaurant and cookery school Caldesi (www.caldesi.com). They’ve also just opened Caldesi in Campagna (pictured above right), an eatery in Bray, Berkshire.

Duck in orange sauce

INGREDIENTS
2 whole ducks, gutted and cleaned, weighing 2kg each 1 ½ tsps black peppercorns Salt and black pepper 500g caster sugar 8 oranges 3 celery sticks, 4 carrots, 4 onions, roughly chopped ½ bottle red wine Innards of the duck, roughly chopped 750ml chicken stock

Halve 4 oranges and place pieces in each duck. Put the veg and innards on a roasting tray, with the ducks on top. Roast, uncovered, in a preheated oven for 1 hour.

Carefully pour off the duck fat from the veg and discard. Using the same tray, place the veg on the hob, over a high heat, add the wine, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and allow to simmer for about 15 minutes.

Pour the veg, innards and juices through a fi ne sieve and pour the juices into a large pan and return to the hob. Add meat stock and bring to the boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and continue to cook until the juices have reduced by about one third.

Peel the remaining oranges. Chop the zest into fi ne shreds and the orange into small cubes. Add the orange and zest to the reducing liquid.

For the caramel, place the sugar into a saucepan with 400ml water. Bring to the boil over a medium heat, then simmer until it thickens and turns lightly golden. Remove from the pan straight away. Stand well back and, wearing oven gloves, pour the caramel slowly into the orange stock. Leave it all to simmer on a low heat for 5 minutes. Then carve the duck into 8 pieces.

Transfer some sauce into a pan and allow it to thicken a little. Once the sauce has thickened to a rich gravy, add the duck pieces to the orange stock to coat in the sauce and warm thoroughly.

Place 2 pieces of duck onto each plate, pour over some reduced orange sauce and serve.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 3:45 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.