Coffee Roasted Duck with Potato, Pear and Artichoke Ragu

Swedes are obsessed with coffee. They like it strong. They like it hot. And they like it many times a day. Consequently one of my favourite places in Gothenburg is a coffee shop called Bar Centro which is the hipster dive bar alternative to Starbucks. Their coffee is super strong and unbelievably good. They’ve got me hooked on something they call a 50-50 which is a double espresso super charged with hot milk. It’s a sort of lengthened version of a macchiato but without being as long or frothy as a cappuccino. It’s strong, bitter, sweet and creamy.

So when I saw a recipe for coffee roasted duck in Marcus Samuelsson’s book my eyes lit up and my pulse started racing as if I had just ingested a litre of espresso. The background story to this dish is a confluence of his Ethiopian and Swedish roots. He recalls the smell of his grandmother making coffee from scratch by roasting green coffee beans in a pan that filled their house with an enchanting scent and then layers the Swedish culture for coffee consumption on top of this to create a dish that is very unique. And delicious.

I’ve adapted Marcus Samuelsson’s recipe for both the coffee roasted duck and potato and pear ragu

Ingredients (for one):

Duck

1 duck breast
2 cups of coffee
12 cardamom pods
1 stick of cinnamon
2 handfuls of coffee beans
Cinnamon powder

Potato and pear ragu

1 firm pear
4 small potatoes
3 Jerusalem artichokes
3 tablespoons of crème fraiche
1 endive
Butter
Salt
Pepper
150 mls of chicken stock
Tarragon
Honey

Method

Wake up. Brew the coffee. Pound half of the cardamom pods and add them to the coffee along with the cinnamon. Allow the coffee to cool. Then slash the skin of the duck breast and marinate all day in the fridge.

Return from work and remove the duck from the marinate. It should look similar to the picture below. Pat it dry, sprinkle with salt and return to the fridge with nothing covering it so that the skin dries out.

Peel and core the pear leaving it in half. Simmer until tender in water with a few cardamom pods, a sprinkling of tarragon and some honey thrown in. You can cook it in red wine but I didn’t have any because of Sweden’s ridiculous licensing laws that mean you can’t buy wine in a supermarket.

Meanwhile boil the potatoes in chicken stock. When they are 8 minutes from being tender add the peeled Jerusalem artichokes. Remove from the heat and drain the potatoes and artichokes, but keep some of the liquor.

Now add you duck breast skin side down to a medium-hot frying pan and render the fat out. Shake some cinnamon powder over the underside of the duck. Drain off some duck fat. Then add the coffee beans and cardamom pods and turn up the heat. The kitchen should fill with an intoxicating smell. Once the skin is crisp turn the duck over and the heat down. Add some of the reserved liquor from the potato and artichoke pan and finish the cooking by braising.

Slice the vegetables and then return them to the heat and add the crème fraiche and some more liquor to heat through along with a touch of butter. After five minutes or so add some shredded endive and slices of perfectly poached pear. Season with gusto and add more tarragon.

Discard the coffee beans and cardamom and allow the duck to rest then carve diagonally and serve with the ragu for a very unusual, but utterly delicious dinner.

The combination works brilliantly. The duck was pink and moist with some of the crispiest skin I’ve encountered for a long time. It turns out that duck is tailor made for the bitter aromatic aspects of coffee. And the creamy ragu with the sweetness of pear is the equivalent of adding a tempering dollop of foam on top of an intense espresso. It’s an unusual dish. And I am delighted to have discovered it.

Further reading:

Coffee roasted duck recipe from Marcus Samuelsson
Potato and pear ragu recipe from Marcus Samuelsson
Aquavit and the New Scandinavian Cuisine on Amazon

Salted Duck with Roasted Sunchoke and Grapefruit Salad

After the success of curing a chicken breast in brine, I thought I’d try the same thing with duck, with a bit of guidance from a recipe in Marcus Samuelsson’s Scandinavian cookbook, Aquavit.

Duck is one of my favourite things in the whole world. But only if the skin is crisp and salty. Flabby, chewy, greasy flesh gives me the creeps. The salting process helps to keep the flesh moist and leads to the perfect skin.

And when it comes to vegetables, Jerusalem artichokes (or sunchokes as they seem to be called elsewhere) are pretty close to being my favourites as well. They bring back memories of my grandmother’s infamous “Fartichoke Soup” that was so hazardous that every window in the house had to be opened.

I thought about creating an artichoke risotto to accompany the salted duck. But, in light of the warm weather, a hearty salad balancing the sweet, sour and earthy flavours that work so well with duck seemed like a more seasonal option.

Ingredients:

1 duck breast
2 table spoons of salt
5 Jerusalem artichokes
Salad leaves
Half a grapefruit
Olive oil
Pepper
Parmesan

Method:

Make a brine by dissolving the salt in boiling water. Once the water is clear take off the heat and allow to cool. Then once at room temperature place the duck breast in the water and weigh down with a plate. Place in the fridge overnight.

On the evening of your feast, peel the artichokes and boil in well salted water until par cooked which will take 10 minutes or so. Remove and pat dry with paper towel. Then roast in a preheated oven in a trickle of olive oil for 20 minutes. Everywhere else that I have read (apart from Corrigan) has foregone the pre-boil (and you may want to as well), but I found that it created one of my most successful vegetable dishes ever so I’d suggest it’s worth the effort.

Gently render the duck breast in a cast iron frying pan allowing the fat to release. It helps if you’ve scored the skin. Gently turn up the heat and as the amount of fat rendering increases pour this over the artichokes. Once the skin is brown turn the breasts skin side up and pop in the oven for 5 minutes. Remove along with the artichokes and allow everything to rest.

Whilst everything is recovering from being blasted in the oven assemble your salad. Remove the flesh from half a grapefruit and squeeze the juice left in the hemisphere into a glass. You should get a dessert spoon’s worth. Add olive oil to the juice to make a very fresh dressing. Depending on how sharp the grapefruit is you may need a pinch of sugar. Coat the salad in the dressing and add segments of grapefruit along with parmesan shavings. If you’ve got time it might be worth caramelising the fruit for some extra flavour. To do this sprinkle with sugar and place under the grill for a few minutes.

Cut the duck on an angle and arrange the salad. It’s worth keeping the artichokes away from the salad leaves a bit because they will still be quite warm. Season with black pepper and tuck in.

The duck was succulent and blessed with crispy skin. But the stars of the show were the artichokes which were gloriously soft on the inside and perfectly crispy on the outside. They couldn’t have tasted any more of artichoke and brought out the earthy sweetness of the duck. And the grapefruit simply adds a sharpness that brushes any hint of grease to one side.

Happy farting and further reading:

Salt cured duck breast recipe from Marcus Samuelsson
Chocolate & Zucchini on Jerusalem Artichokes
Wikipedia on Jerusalem Artichokes and their potential use as biofuel and their dark days as part of a failed pyramid scheme
Cooking with grapefruit

Duck with Jumperland Sauce followed by Vanilla and Cardamom Plum Crumble

Down in Somerset you need to wear an extra jumper. Unless you are cooking, in which case do it as close to naked as possible, because the heat from the fire in the living room and Aga in the kitchen is fierce.

Duck with “Jumperland” Sauce

Score the skins on the duck breasts and place them all on a wire rack. Pour boiling water over them to draw out some of the fat. Repeat. Dry with a clean tea towel and season aggressively. Set aside.

Whilst the duck breasts are recovering from their spat with the boiling water it’s time to get stuck into the Jumperland sauce – so called because of Somerset’s chilly winters and its vague similarity to Cumberland sauce.

It’s a sauce of necessity. A sauce born out of improvisation.A sauce of great pride. Gently fry two chopped red onions in butter until soft. And then add 3 skinned and chopped apples and the same of pears. Pour in a large glass of orange juice and add a splash of Tabasco or Habernero hot sauce. Throw in some sage leaves. A glug of cider vinegar helps to give it some zing. And a spoon of red currant jelly delivers sweetness and gloss. Stir attentively on a low heat until the fruit has capitulated and the mixture has become a sauce. Check the taste frequently and adjust as necessary.

Whilst stirring the Jumperland sauce it’s time to render the duck breasts. Having salted the skin side liberally place the breasts skin side down in a hot frying pan in 2 batches. The fat should freely run. Spoon the fat out of the pan and retain for roast potatoes another day. Once you’ve got as much fat from the breasts as you think is possible and skins are feeling slightly crisp to the touch transfer them to a wire rack in a roasting tray. Repeat for the second batch.

Re-season the breasts and launch them into the top of a hot oven to roast for 10 minutes MAX. Assemble mashed potato and beans in the meantime. Remove breasts from the oven and allow them to rest for as long as you can. Carve on the diagonal and serve.

The Jumperland sauce was a great success. It was sweet and sour with a satisfying background kick of chilli. It was a great plate-mate for the duck which had emerged from its three stage cooking process with crisp skin, pink flesh and deep flavour. Perfect.

Vanilla and Cardamom Plum Crumble

This is an evolution of my recent baked plums recipe, but given a tweak and then crumbled.

Steep a bowlful of plums in rum, bourbon or Canadian whisky (you want sweetness rather than the woody, smokiness of Scotch). Add half a dozen cardamom pods and a quarter of a vanilla pod to the mixture. Leave for half an hour. Then lay out the plums in a roasting tray, sprinkle with brown sugar and roast for 10 minutes. You want the fruit to slightly caramelise and the booze to burn off. Remove from the oven and breathe in the incredible smell. Your nostrils will tingle with the fragrant burst of tropical cardamom and the sweet homeliness of vanilla. Remove the cardamom pods and the vanilla and set aside. Once cooled slightly, add a layer of crumble which is comprised of equal measures of flour, sugar and butter.

The crumble emerged with splendid appearance that resembled an old fashioned map of the world. You can clearly see a plumy North and South America, Europe and a distorted Africa seeping through the crumble topping.

Cook at a lowish temperature for the best part of an hour before serving to excited friends and family with a dollop of crème fraiche. The vanilla and cardamom add layers of sophistication to an otherwise humble crumble.

Tea Smoked Duck

I pottered down to the Northcotte Road this morning to get some stuff for breakfast and landed up buying a couple of duck breasts for supper. Wondering what to do with them I remembered that Hannah smoked some duck breasts with lavender on Master Chef to great effect and did a bit of sofa research.

There are loads of recipes for smoking duck. There are 730,000 entries on Google all with different instructions! I read quite a few of them before deciding that I would base my strategy on the simplest suggestion from Wino Sapien.

So. I started by coating the slashed duck breasts in Fleur de Mer salt, smoked paprika, freshly ground pepper and ginger. I left these to develop in the fridge for half an hour or so before rinsing them off and patting dry.

In the meantime I threw a variety of tea leaves into a foil lined wok. White Monkey tea, Earl Grey Creme from Moby’s Teany, a bit of Lap and my Blends for Friends concoction. A drizzle of honey and a scattering of dried shitake mushrooms finished things off. I fired up the gas and got the tea to smoking point before popping the duck breasts in a suitably sized colander and sealing with a lid.

Around 8 minutes of smoking did the trick. You’ve got to make sure the lid is secured tightly and any gaps are plugged otherwise you’re going to be airing your house for the rest of the week!

After smoking for 8 minutes take the wok off the heat and let it rest with the lid still on. You want to get as much smoke into the duck as possible. Then remove the duck breasts and rub a bit of salt into the now golden skin before lobbing skin side down into a scorching hot griddle pan. Sear until the skin is crisp before turning over dabbing with butter and then shove it under the grill for a few minutes to cook through.

Spoon over the juice in the pan, leave to rest for a moment or two and then slice. Delicious and far better than I had hoped for!

Well done Wino Sapien. Great recipe. I added a couple of dabs of lime marmalade and apricot jam to the plate to give the plate a bit of colour and some sweetness.