Ducking Felicious

So, March's new thing is duck. I finally cooked duck and it was awesome! Some bits nicked from his Godliness JO and the rest made up from past cooking attempts. So, here goes:

Rin's Pan-fried duck with roast squash couscous (serves 2)

Ingredients:
2 x duck breasts (skin on)
1/2 medium butternut (peeled and cubed)
1 x sweet potato (peeled and cubed)
1/2 cup couscous
1/2 lemon
tsp mint sauce
1-2 chillies
1 clove garlic
runny honey
chinese five spice
fresh thyme
olive oil
seasoning

broccoli to serve

Method:
Turn the oven to 180 degrees. Open a nice bottle of red wine.

Put the peeled butternut and sweet potato into an oven proof dish. Drizzle with olive oil. Finely chop 1 chilli and add to the dish, crush in one clove of garlic and toss well. Put into the oven for 40 mins.

In the meantime, score the fat on the duck breasts in a criss cross and put the breasts on a chopping board skin side up. Put a good pinch of chinese five spice on each breast, sprinkle over some fresh thyme, a pinch of salt and a drizzle of olive oil and rub all these flavour into the breast, turning it over to ensure the seasonings get into each side.  Get your pan ready. Once the sweet potato and butternut has been in for 20 mins, heat up the pan and once hot, put the breasts in skin side down. Use a pot lid smaller than the pan to squish the breasts down and really get the flavour in. Leave the lid on and remember to turn the breasts every so often. I like my duck medium which is about 20 mins so gauge how long it needs to cook depending on how you like your duck cooked. I nicked this bit from JO's 30 min meals duck salad recipe and to ensure my overseas followers can watch the episode, this is a YouTube clip for the complete recipe Jamie's duck salad recipe. The dressing for the duck is also from the recipe but I used mint sauce rather than fresh mint.

While the duck is cooking, prep your broccoli and cook, timing it to be ready when the squash is done. As well as prepping your broccoli, boil the kettle and make up the couscous as you usually would (1/2 cup couscous to 3/4 cup of boiling water - stir and cover). Also, in a small bowl, put a decent glug of olive oil, about 3/4 tsp of mint sauce, the juice of half a lemon, a bit of honey (taste to check) and 1/2 a finely chopped chilli, season this well and mix. Set aside. Don't forget to turn the duck regularly.

Once the duck is ready, take it off the pan and drain on some kitchen paper. Put it on a board and slice each breast. Pour over the dressing (keep some aside for tomorrow's lunch - details in a sec). Mix your roasted squash pieces into your couscous. Serve the sliced duck breast on a pile of yummy couscous with the broccoli on the side. We had this with a French red - not too heavy but full of berry flavours.

Unless you are completely piggy, you should have some of the couscous with squash left over. Warm this through the next day, pile on top of green leaves and pour over your left over dressing for a delish salad! Perhaps a few sunflower seeds in there too or toasted pine nuts.....

In other news:

• In searching for a link to JO's duck salad recipe, I found this. I am not alone

 http://www.nicksthirtyminutemeals.com/pages/the-challenge

• EEROD continues to confound me - no idea what makes her sleep through or not. We started swimming today so hoping that will knacker her a bit
• We are starting the garden next week. Cannot wait to have a nic(er) bit of outdoorsyness to enjoy on the 3 days of summer we get a year. We are going artifical grass
• LOD has dinosaur fancy dress day at nursery tomorrow so I have crafted a costume. Pics to follow
• It is too cold to even start thinking about this year's veg but with the new garden layout (and a sad goodbye to the apple tree), I am going to have to think quite carefully about what to focus on. LOD's little cherry tree seems to have survived the cold so will aim at a minumum to plant it properly and keep it alive!