Name: Duck Breasts or Duck Legs with Pink Lentil Sauce
Yield: Makes 4 main-course servings
Cuisine: Indian
Ingredients: Four 6- to 8-ounce Pekin (Long Island) duck breasts, 4 slow-roasted duck legs, or 4 braised duck legs; ½ cup pink, red, yellow, or brown lentils, rinsed and drained in a fine-mesh strainer; 2½ cups brown duck broth, braising liquid from the duck legs, chicken broth, or water; ¼ cup heavy cream; 1 teaspoon ground cumin; 2 teaspoons ground coriander; Salt and pepper; 7 to 9 tablespoons unsalted butter; 1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped; 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, or more to taste; 1 small onion, peeled and chopped; 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

Preparation info

Makes
4
main-course servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Duck Cookbook

By James Peterson

Published 2003

About

French cooks have long served lentil puree with game while Indian cooks have used lentils to make their almost universal dish, dhal. I’ve combined the two concepts to come up with a sauce for duck that’s lightly flavored with cumin and ghee. The French use whole butter, but because ghee (called beurre noisette, or “hazelnut butter,” by the French) has a more pronounced flavor of butter, you can use relatively little and still taste it. You can make this sauce as light or as rich as y