Challenge 2- citrus

As part of the cookbook challenge, I thought I'd also challenge myself to cooking with different meats as well. With the theme of citrus for the second challenge, I was thinking along the lines of a Duck a l'orange, a classic French dish in which the duck is roasted and served with an orange sauce. I found a recipe of whole roasted duck with orange that fitted my purpose from the July 2010 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller by Daniel Southern of Comme Kitchen, Melbourne.

Whole roast duck with orange

Serves 2

Cooking Time Prep time 30 mins, cook 1 hr (plus drying, resting)

Ingredients

1 duck (about 2kg)

2 tbsp olive oil for drizzling

2 oranges

1 tbsp caster sugar

Method

1. Blanch duck in a large saucepan of boiling water (10-15 seconds). Drain well, then place breast-side up on a wire rack lined with baking paper and placed on a tray and refrigerate uncovered until skin is taut and dry (2 days) - [instead of using this method as it was going to take too long I prepared the duck by wiping it dry as possible with kitchen paper and refrigerating for 8 hours to get the same effect.]
2.  Preheat oven to 220C. Transfer duck to a roasting pan, season with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast, basting regularly, until light golden (20-25 minutes), reduce oven to 170C and roast, basting occasionally, until medium to medium-rare and golden on the outside (20-30 minutes). Rest in a warm place (5-10 minutes). [We also removed the excess dripping of duck fat at every 30 min interval to use to cook roast potatoes on the side, so decadent!!]
3. Meanwhile, remove orange rind with a peeler (reserve flesh), then remove pith (discard) from rind. Cut rind into julienne, then blanch (10 seconds). Drain, then repeat process 4 to 5 times until tender. Set aside. Combine sugar and 80ml water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Add rind, then cook over low heat until rind is sweet (2-3 minutes). Meanwhile, remove pith (discard) from flesh, cut into segments, set aside.
4. With the help of learning how to carve up duck on YouTube, it was served hot, scattered with orange segments and a little orange rind. Adding a few roasted potatoes cooked in duck fat, they were soooo good!

At the moment, we've discovered watercress as an alternative to rocket for salads. Watercress, avocado with balsamic vinegar and drizzled in olive oil was the perfect accompaniment with the duck.

I'm including a new segment of matching wines to the dish as most of my meals always include a glass of wine. My in house sommelier, Pepe suggests a Pinot from Central Otago region NZ or a Phillip Shaw Pinot Noir from Orange. Having tried wines in both these region, these full-bodied wines have beautiful earthy, plummy flavours and are ideal for game. And for dessert a Botryitis Semillon to offset the tartness of the lemon.

Now for dessert, as I had a craving for something sweet and I totally adore the flavour of lemon, especially the zest. One of the best ways to get my fix is with a sweet tart. The buttery curd is delicious spread on toast with fresh ricotta, or as it appears here, spooned into bite-sized tart shells.

This dessert serves 12 (as I didn't need to cook this many I just halved all the ingredients to make 6 mini lemon tarts)

Lemon Curd (care of Stephanie Alexander - The Cook's companion)

4 egg yolks

3/4 cup caster sugar

60g unsalted butter

2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

100ml lemon juice

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar by hand until well combined and pour into a heavy-based non reactive saucepan. Add in butter, two heaped(!!) teaspoons of grated lemon rind and juice. Stirring constantly bring to simmering over a medium-high heat. This will take about five minutes. As soon as it starts to bubble, remove from the heat, continuing to stir for a minute or so. Allow to cool.

Pastry

120g soft butter

100g icing sugar

2 eggs

250g plain flour

Place butter and icing sugar in an electric mixer and beat until pale and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well. Stir in flour by hand until well incorporated and then bring crumbs together to form into a disc. Wrap pastry disc in plastic and refrigerate for a few hours (or freeze for half the time!).

Roll out pastry on a floured surface to a couple of millimetres thickness, and cut into circles. You want the circles to fit into whatever mould you have, in this instance, a mini dipping bowl. My circles were about 6cm in diameter. Press well into the greased holes and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Now blind bake (i.e. lined with paper and filled with rice/beans) at 180C degrees for 7-8 mins, remove paper and rice and bake for a further 2-3 minuted. Take shells from the oven when they are golden and dry. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

Assembly
Once both parts are cool, spoon curd into shells and flatten top with a spatula or knife. You can serve as is, but if you are handy with and have access to a kitchen blowtorch, sprinkle the top with caster sugar and brulee. Unfortunately I ran out of gas on this occasion, so that's for next time but I did sprinkle the left over cooked orange rind from the duck dish for presentation.